Joe Klein has an aboslutely stunning post over at Swampland today, a site that is earning its name as a fetid cesspool of nonsense, proving to the Internet political community again and again why we do not like the mainstream media. In a short post, Klein manages to mangle reason, prove he can neither argue nor write, and prove why he should never be taken seriously again (as if proof were needed). The worst part, of course, is that I think I understsand what Klein was attempting to say - he supports the use of covert action in Iraq as opposed to traditional military action, which has consistently failed. One can agree or disagree with this position, but that becomes irrelevant by the way Klein frames the entire issue within a short paragraph.
In what follows, I am not going to treat with the substance, such as it may be, of Klein's post. I find it hard to deal with that substance for the simple reason that Klein comes off as so incoherent one wonders what the point of his entire post is. As Klein has continually derided bloggers for their seeming lack of journalistic virtues (whatever they may be), I suppose it not unkind or untoward to apply certain blogging virtues to Joe Klein's blogging. Sauce for the goose, as it were.
He attempts to answer a question posed by a commenter concerning reports that much of the sectarian violence is fueled by Iraqi militias trained by American counter-insurgency troops. Rather than address the question, Klein attempts to claim support for covert military action in Iraq. By American troops.
This is not the question the commenter raised, and by changing the subject, Klein makes himself sound as if he supports death squads. In an update, Klein tries to deflect what would be an obvious inference from what he had written, and in so doing, comes across as snide, superior, and still does not refute the allegation that he may just support the US training Iraqi facitonalist militias who operate as death squads in the civil war over there.
For someone who is contemptuous of bloggers for being snarky and ridiculous, Klein has certainly caught the vibe, as it were. His tone, in this post and in most of his posts, is one of disdain for his commenters, his readers, indeed anyone who does not heed the obvious wisdom and insight of a premiere journalist and author of eight books. The problem, sadly, is that Klein shows, in a short paragraph, totally incapable of framing an argument coherently, of writing out that argument thoughtfully, and in so doing totally undermines any confidence any non-commital reader may have in either his reliability, professional abilities, or indeed his professionalism. To others who have long since made their minds up about Klein, this particular blog post should only solidify the view that Klein's view of Klein is much inflated, and that reality hardly measures up.
Virtual Tin Cup
