Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Scoop! Author Shown to Have Ties to Publisher! [Mark Steyn]
I'm just catching up with Powerline's discussion of the Washington Post "investigation" into . . . Van Jones? The NEA? Acorn? No, the Post investigation into James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, the undercover twosome who exposed the Acorn child-sex racket.
What John Hinderaker says about the Darryl Fears/Carol Leonnig Post story is well put, but I was struck by two very broad points. The Post report is:
a) ridiculous;
b) butt-numbingly boring.
On the first point, Fears and Leonnig have an amazing scoop:
O'Keefe insists that he and Giles's work was done independently and rejects liberal suggestions that the videos were bankrolled by conservative organizations. He does, however, acknowledge receiving help and advice from a conservative columnist and Web entrepreneur.
That would be Andrew Breitbart, who is O'Keefe and Giles's — what's the word? — "publisher." That's like writing about Woodward and Bernstein being revealed to have shadowy ties to liberal party hostess and newspaper owner Kay Graham.
Which leads to point (b). You would have to be a dazzling wordsmith to make the Post's dull obsessions readable, and Fears and Leonnig aren't.
So, on the one hand, we have Breitbart's scoop — a federally favored organization closely tied to the President is offering public money to subsidize child-sex slavery from the Third World — and, on the other, we have the Post's scoop — the people behind the scoop are revealed to have shadowy ties to their publisher.
This is why the Post is losing a buck ten per copy it sells. Putting aside its biases, it pursues them in ways that are portentous and unreadable — even if you agree politically. That's why even Americans who are interested in newspapers look elsewhere. It's nothing to do with new technology: U.S. newspapers are the dullest in the English-speaking world. If they had a care for their business, the Post wouldn't be "exposing" Breitbart, they'd be hiring him.
09/22 08:54 AM
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