Thoreau on Marc Ambinder and Company
Thoreau writes:
Wrong to be right, right to be wrong, redux § Unqualified Offerings: Greenwald has a post up about the fact that those of us who were right for 8 years are still considered “not serious”, even when information comes out vindicating us (like, say, a former Homeland Security Secretary saying that terror alerts were based on politics rather than serious intelligence). The basic charge seems to be that although we were right, we were merely guessing the worst based on blind, partisan hatred.
Let’s start by taking the charge at face value: If the basic assertion is that you could get it right for 8 years simply by guessing the worst, what does that say about the Bush administration? What does that say about its defenders? If the “serious people” were consistently less accurate than a stereotypical Democratic Underground poster whose magic 8 ball always says “Chimpy will do evil!” then perhaps the allegedly “serious” people should hang their heads in shame, you know?...
Ezra Klein somewhere said that he did not understand why the press corps not only ignored Ron Suskind's Esquire articles and books at the time, but continues to ignore them today. I can't find it, but it is a very big question. For Ambinder and company to be maintaining today that they were right not to pay attention to Suskind (and Krugman, and company) cannot be good for their long-run career prospects, can it?
