Jonathan Chait is not a serious person

Why can't regular media journalist types come up with some new songs to sing about bloggers?

They have three, old standards by now, like Stardust. 

The first one, a simple ballad, goes, "Bloggers are bad/because they're angry, foul-mouthed hippies."

The second includes the lyrics, "Bloggers are bad/ because they aren't professional journalists/And they don't know I'm smarter than they are/And besides I don't like it/When they talk like/Angry, foul-mouthed hippies."

And the third, more like a show tune, goes, "Bloggers are bad/because they have opinions and ideals/They care about issues and take politics seriously/As if that's what matters when you write about Washington/We Insiders know better/It's all a game/And the bloggers need to learn that/And learn their place/And besides.../They're angry and foul-mouthed hippies."

Jonathan Chait sung the last one in his TNR article on why, although I can say a few nice things about blogs, they're really bad.  The article has gotten a good going over by lots of people, most of them taking it seriously, even while shredding it.

Digby, hilzoy, and Eric Alterman and Matt Yglesias do the most thorough jobs, digby here, hilzoy here, Alterman and Yglesias here.

But any journalist who equates Cindy Sheehan with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, as Chait does at a key point in his argument, is not a serious person and should not be treated as such.  Jonathan Schwartz at This Modern World knows this and treats Chait accordingly:

Yes, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and Cindy Sheehan are exactly the same “sort of thing.” Just compare:

• Swift Boat Veterans for Truth garnered attention by falsely claiming Kerry was “lying about his record” in Vietnam

• Cindy Sheehan garnered attention by falsely claiming her son is dead

Thank you, Jonathan Chait, for following your logic wherever it led you. It’s this type of original intellectual inquiry that blogs—hampered as they are by their demagoguery and dishonesty—just can’t touch.

Chait points out that the national media did not treat Sheehan as a serious story, "understandably so."  Because she was just one more parent of one more dead soldier, you know.  Big deal.  Dime a dozen.  He doesn't mention that, on the other hand, the media treated the Swift Boat Liars as a serious story.  That is they reported the lies day in and day out for a week.  Not to tell us that the Swift Boaters were seriously lying.  They kept at it because John Kerry "let them."  Kerry wasn't quick enough to prove the Swift Boaters were serious liars.  It's not the Media's fault they had to report those lies as if they weren't lies.  It was John Kerry's fault for having gone to Vietnam in the first place, or something like that.

If Kerry had had the good sense not to volunteer and had dodged the draft, or if he had been classy enough not to mention the fact he was a war hero while running against a man who was happily calling anybody who disagreed with him a traitor, then the Swift Boaters wouldn't have had any lies to tell and the Media could have gone back to covering Kerry's sandwich choices.

Put clearly:  The only way that what the Swift Boaters did and what Cindy Sheehan did could be treated as at all equivalent would be if the Swift Boaters had simply banded together to voice their opinion that John Kerry shouldn't be President because of what he did and said after he came home from Vietnam (without misrepresenting what he did and said) or because of Kerry's stand on the issues at stake in the election at hand.

This is not even close to what happened.

Either Chait really sees no difference between Cindy Sheehan's legitimate act of protest and a concerted effort by the Bush Leaguers to lie their way back into the White House or he's doing what too many of his colleagues have done too often over the last six years---deliberately gone out of his way to criticize the other side while criticizing this one in order to be able to defend his criticism not on its being correct but on its demonstrating his "objectivity," as if his being able to follow the conventions of his guild is proof of his intelligence and insight not of the limits of his training.

"Yes, I'm criticizing you, but look!  I'm also picking on the other guys!  Nevermind that neither criticism is apt and they don't have anything to do with each other!  The point is that I'm obective!"

Either way, he is not a serious person.

Related:  Eric Boehlert revisits the lies of  the Swift Boat Liars and asks if conservative bloggers can tell the truth?  Part One and Part Two.

Welcome to folks coming over from Pandagon and thanks to Amanda for the link.  I wrote this post mainly in order to link to This Modern World, digby, hilzoy, and the others.  Since then I've done some more thinking about just how wrong Chait's portrayal of Cindy Sheehan and the Swift Boat Liars is and wrote a follow-up, looking at the point of Sheehan's protest and the reasons for her effectiveness.

Comments

[SV]

There's a quote that I can only remember in paraphrase, but it works if you insert Chait's name: that Chait will see two people arguing, one saying that 2 plus 2 equals 4, and the other that two plus two equals 8, and Chait will condemn both for fanaticism and pronounce the answer 6.

[Cecil Franklin]

If you take "falsely" out of BOTH statements, you've got a clearer take on the situation.

[Mithrandir]

If you take "falsely" out of BOTH statements, you've got a clearer take on the situation.

So wait, let me get this straight. If you take out the fact that the Swift Boat's statements about John Kerry's service record were out-and-out, thoroughly debunked lies... the situation gets clearer?

Or are you asserting that maybe Cindy Sheehan's son didn't really get killed?

I'm confused.

[R.Cromwell]

Bravo Mr. Mannion.I noted sadly that several bloggers were gulled into responding to Chaits inapt squib as if it was an honest (if poorly reasoned) effort offered in good faith.It was not.Happily, you answered it with the measure of contempt and derision it so manifestly deserved.The article was a clumsy and prolix libel masquerading as analysis.His C.V. is well known;He stooged for Peretz for years,stumped enthusiastically for this nitwit war.Nothing daunted,in this latest clownish screed he actually has the bumptious temerity to accuse the Netroots(actual,you know,liberals)of being...wait for it...PROPAGANDISTS.Ooooh, scary!Oh, and we're also Deeply Unserious.Or something.Mr. Chait,along with Jokeline,Kaus and the other Slate microbes,Althouse,TNR and every other clapped-out hulk in the false-flag-liberal Fleet of Glorious Wankitude have been getting holed below the waterline by the Intertube Grenadiers,and it's made them a little peevish.He's responded,as have they all,by ignobly calumniating his betters(again,actual liberals).Not complicated.All done!

[denisdekat]

Don't take them (MSM) seriously Lance, no one does anymore ;)