Reading Power Line’s decimation this morning (yet another) of the Corey Pein piece on Memogate, I had the distinct impression I had seen this all (Pein’s line of “reasoning”) before. And then I realized - the OJ Defense! Who cares about all this DNA evidence? It can’t be true! This is Dan Rather… excuse me, The Juice… you’re talking about! Of course, that defense was just a pseudo-scientific variant of the old plea of the adulterous husband when caught en flagrante: “Who’re you going to believe - me or your lying eyes?” And of course, the “real murderer” of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman has not been found, not even in the “world of Faye Resnick.”
And - third of course - Johnny Cochran et al did a far better job of this kind of shoe-banging than pathetic young Pein and it would not be worth another comment had it not appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review. It almost boggles the mind that the house organ of America’s leading journalism school would publish such a thing - unless they were practicing auto-da-fé. [Maybe they were.-ed.]
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28 Comments
1. David Thomson:Columbia Journalism Review has thoroughly disgraced itself. I am totally stunned that Corey Peinís piece ever saw the light of day. Even I didnít think things were that bad. If somebody had told me that this was going to happen—I would have accused them of being silly. This article shouldnít have gotten past an initial editorial examination. How did it make the final cut?
By the way, Meryl Yourish has also done some splendid work on this fiasco:
http://www.yourish.com/archives/2005/jan2-8_2005.html#2005010401
Jan 5, 2005 - 8:34 am 2. Lola:What was Pein thinking? Expecting the intelligent gentlemen at PowerLine to approvingly read his article? It’s quite embarrassing, or amusing (depending on one’s POV) to watch someone being handed his ass on platter, but then some people are gluttons for being flagellated in public. To each his own, I guess. (shrug)
Jan 5, 2005 - 8:39 am 3. Roger:What was Pein thinking? Expecting the intelligent gentlemen at PowerLine to approvingly read his article?
I think he was looking for publicity. Well, he got it. And so did the Columbia Journalism Review.
Jan 5, 2005 - 8:41 am 4. richard mcenroe:Remember the brilliant closing by the law firm of Rather, Mapes & Pein: “If the facts don’t fit, you must convict anyway!”
Jan 5, 2005 - 8:56 am 5. Richard Nieporent:The MSM is at war with the Blogging community and as we know the first casualty of war is the truth. The wonder-child Pein, has introduced a new standard for truth. The fact that the memos were proved to be forgeries does not matter. If every single thing said by CBS was not shown to be false then by definition it must be true.
Jan 5, 2005 - 9:16 am 6. PeterUK:Pein has grasped the one essential quality required in the post-modern world,all you need is fame,infamy or notoriety and you’ve got it made.
Jan 5, 2005 - 9:32 am 7. DSmith:Why should it be a surprise that this came out of Columbia? Columbia, as “America’s leading journalism school” is one of the primary *creators* of the mindset that led to Rathergate. What would be a surprise would be if the CJR published a piece taking Amerca’s media to task for their clear bias and incompetence and, to put it plainly, lying.
Jan 5, 2005 - 9:39 am 8. Richard Nieporent:In the corporate world investors will sue a company that has done something egregious to cause its stock to lose value. With that in mind, I should sue Columbia University, since thanks to articles like the one in CJR, the value of my degree from Columbia has become worthless.
Jan 5, 2005 - 10:14 am 9. Lola:And here’s Daily Standard’s take on Pein . . .
click here
Jan 5, 2005 - 10:23 am 10. Richard Nieporent:This is too funny, Roger. I just noticed your Bolgads.
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Jan 5, 2005 - 10:29 am 11. Lola:Hmmm . . . the more I’m looking at this sideshow (it’s too rainy to walk down to the grocery store to get some popcorn, so I’m munching on cookies instead) . . . the more I’m wondering … just how did Pein get to write this stupid article? Was it assigned to him? Or did he write it and then try to persuade the editor that it was worth cutting trees down for? Did the editor (aka gatekeeper) really think through the implications of a flawed logic backfiring on CJR?
Jan 5, 2005 - 10:30 am 12. Lola:This gets even more interesting . . . go check the comments under Yourish’ post. Seems this guy went to the same school as Rachel Corrie did, and he wrote a thesis on “domestic propaganda in the war on terrorism”.
Jan 5, 2005 - 10:39 am 13. Rick Ballard:Lola,
I’m thinking that the CJR editor sacrificed a pawn in order to gain a bit of tactical knowledge. We mustn’t forget that the CBS report is a bit overdue (although it has probably been on Heywood’s desk for a month). If you look at this piece as a prelude to the report, then CJR’s cynical move makes sense.
The kid wasn’t the brightest bulb on the string to begin with and if he was ignorant enough to accept a hit piece assignment on this subject, well, he’s a bit wiser today.
Jan 5, 2005 - 11:10 am 14. Morgan:“We’ve got him” said Mapes to her better,
While waving what looked like a letter.
“These memos are hot!
Unimpeachably got!
We’ll be free of the Bushian fetter.”
“Have you checked them?” He asked - “Never mind.
Who cares what such checking might find
Between me and you
The content is true
And the people I talk to are blind.”
He sat in his chair and he spoke
He spoke truth to the ignorant folk
And the memos were props
For the arrogant sops
Who might question the Channel 2 bloke.
But not all eyes were blind to his tales
‘Cause the blogoshphere’s sight never fails
And in twelve hours flat
It had shown the world that
These were nothing but polka-dot whales.
The captain of media’s guards
Was certain he held all the cards
But he looked up and found
His career had come down
In a tinkle of Tiffany shards.
“I’ll avenge you!” cried Corey the Young
And holstered his pen like a gun
“I’ll end the sedition
In this month’s edition;
They’ve never seen JOUR 101!”
But the babe was sent back to the bottle
When he multiplied blather on twaddle
He missed with his dart
And they tore him apart
And said “this is the CJR model?”
So the MSM ended its run
And considering all they had done
As they trudged through the rain
Rather turned, said to Pein
“Don’t get tangled with power lines son.”
Jan 5, 2005 - 11:16 am 15. Terrye:Folks, the scarey ting is these guys really believe this stuff. Rather, Columbia and all the rest believe that the memos were either real or fake but accurate. Bush is the heavy they tell themselves, and they believe it.
You can talk about the facts all you want, it matters not.
Jan 5, 2005 - 11:20 am 16. Old Grouch:…and (to drift off topic) *THAT* is the thing that has driven me up the wall in multiple conversations about this. To wit:
Brings the mind a line in Screwtape Proposes a Toast, something to the effect that before the Devil created modern education, people used to be able to determine “whether something had been proven or not.” (Help me out, folks.)BTW, a belated Happy New Year to Roger and all here. Am also enjoying the versification!
Jan 5, 2005 - 1:58 pm 17. Pat Curley:Pein seems to be engaging in the same kind of “media criticism” that Noam Chomsky became infamous for with regard to Cambodia in the late 1970s. Chomsky devoted a great deal of energy to denying (apparently) that a massacre was taking place in Cambodia; when the Killing Fields were proven as fact, Chomsky weaseled his way out by claiming that he was just criticizing the media for being so credulous to the stories of the survivors.
Pein professes himself an agnostic on the issue of whether the documents are fraudulent (indeed in a letter to Romanesko today, he says that he started from the assumption that the documents were fake, and that it was “Only after weeks of research and reporting” that he concluded that their falsity had not been established).
Apparently he never heard of the first rule of holes.
Jan 5, 2005 - 2:13 pm 18. rgvdh:This is rather unfair to the OJ jury and the OJ defense team. If you were paying close attention to the trial (or read Dershowitz’ book) their argument was not “ignore the DNA,” it was “Of course the DNA matches, the samples all came out of Mark Fuhrman’s back pocket.” It is of course possible to argue with that claim, but it can’t just be dismissed out of hand.
If all you know about the trial was filtered through the MSM, it shouldn’t surprise you to learn you were misinformed on key details.
Jan 5, 2005 - 2:17 pm 19. David Thomson:Corey Pein is engaging in epistemological idiocy. The Rather documents have been solidly established as fraudulent. We are talking certitude at just about the highest level available to human beings. Pein is similar to an individual who argues that one cannot prove we will not turn purple and grow to the height of eight feet by tomorrow morning. Past evidence is not absolute proof that this will not occur.
Ludwig Wittgenstein played the same game. He remained unconvinced that an elephant was not in the same room with Bertrand Russell and himself. Extreme skepticism leads to madness. Polite society should laugh at the Corey Peins of the world. They are not deserving of respect.
Jan 5, 2005 - 2:28 pm 20. PeterUK:David Thomson,
I’ve never met a philosopher who will play the same game in front of a truck,amazing how unsceptical they can become.
Jan 5, 2005 - 2:41 pm 21. Peg C.:Great verse!
What strikes me after following these incidents (Rathergate, etc.), not to mention the MSM’s coverage of our activities in Iraq vs. reading actual milbloggers who are there, is the almost total lack of expertise on the part of journalists in almost every area. This is only highlighted by the expertise of bloggers in every area of life, politics, military affairs, typography (the Yourish post is a revelation but then so was reading Dr. Newcomer’s dissection of the forgeries in September), film (Roger), diplomacy, and so on. Journalists like the sloppy Pein and so many others are being shown up constantly by true experts. People in their pajamas - right. The only tools many journos are left with now are contempt and disparagement. Bloggers, especially when they display fine writing and civility besides their expertise (such as Powerline’s posts today), truly do make the MSM look like the ankle-biters they’ve become. It’s not pleasant but it is vastly amusing, as well as educational.
For those of us without our heads up our dairy errors, that is.
Jan 5, 2005 - 2:52 pm 22. Peg C.:One more thing. The MSM (and various subcultures) display an astonishing contempt for scientific and technical expertise. If they don’t understand something (usually they do not), they disparage the science and the expert, as Pein did Newcomer. This is a dangerous and growing facet of Western education and society. The MSM knows that the ignorant are easily fooled and manipulated. A blogger (PowerLine or ?) very recently commented that very few of this country’s brightest individuals are journalists. That is surely being demonstrated over and over again in this war between the MSM and the blogosphere.
Jan 5, 2005 - 3:00 pm 23. David Thomson:ìDavid Thomson,
I’ve never met a philosopher who will play the same game in front of a truck,amazing how unsceptical they can become.î
Alas, I would also like to convince Bill Gates to trade bank accounts with me. If indeed everything is relative, then I’m sure he won’t mind. The postmodernist/deconstructionist agenda is solely premised upon the principles of extreme skepticism. I will offer you another example. We take for granted that all human beings eventually die. Anyone who lived 600 years ago is most certainly dead today. However, an extreme skeptic will declare that maybe this isnít true in an absolute sense. This is why human societies must instead embrace the principle of reasonable certitude. If we donít, civilization collapses and we return to our savage roots. Some things are beyond reasonable dispute. This is definitely the case with the Dan Rather documents. They are fraudulent. Case closed.
Jan 5, 2005 - 3:28 pm 24. Neo:I read this piece a couple of times, each time finding something else to bemoan, but my all time favorite is the sentence describing Newcomer’s analysis .. The accompanying analysis was long and technical, discouraging close examination.
Talk about short attention span. This is the reason that news reporting of economic and scientific matters are pathetic in the press to the point of being more wrong than right all of time.
This piece clearly would seem to indicate that Columbia trains them that way, good grief.
With journalism like this it’s easy to see just how Enron could get away with it for so long; they just bored them into submission.
Jan 5, 2005 - 7:19 pm 25. J_Crater:The fact that Corey Pein of the Columbia Journalism Review would e-mail the Powerline folks indicating that his, Corey Pein’s, piece would be interesting, tells me that this smacks of opportunism.
Corey Pein is taking advantage of the imminent release of the Thornburg report on the Rather Gate matter. Positioning himself, Corey Pein, in an obvious attempt to attract attention to himself, Corey Pein, and improves his, Corey Pein’s, chances at pulling down a job with one of the major news organizations, especially CBS.
This whole line of comments here has Corey Pein out there, front and center repeating Corey Pein, Corey Pein and Corey Pein over and over again.
I think the 15 minutes of Corey Pein is about over. Now he is just a Pein in the ..
Jan 5, 2005 - 7:44 pm 26. Mark Poling:You know who Pein uses to authenticate his claim that the memos may be genuine?
David Hailey
In other words, he uses forgeries to defend forgeries. And if you read the article, he uses the debunking of Hailey’s work by WizBang as vindication of Hailey.
My head hurts.
Jan 5, 2005 - 7:47 pm 27. Mark Poling:One more:
My favorite little aside in the Pein piece is this:
Two points:
The fact that Burkett fits right in with the Harpers crowd and Democratic Party operatives pretty much encapsulates the problems with both sets.
And no, the forgeries make Burkett a forger.
Idiot. (Okay, that’s a third point and self-evident, but I had to say it.)
Jan 5, 2005 - 7:54 pm 28. JK Ribera:The thing I still don’t understand is the reason Columbia Journalism printed this nonsense. It makes them look like absolute idiots.
Jan 5, 2005 - 7:55 pm