16 Comments

1. gk:

After a while I think you just have to feel sorry for TNR and the MSM in general. They have been trying to gain some crediblity after Stephen Glass, just to have it flushed down the toilet again with SOP of their group think. I am still willing to believe they believe their own nonsense, hence the “we are conducting our own internal investigation blah, blah, blah” but after a while it just looks sad and pathetic.

Aug 22, 2007 - 12:53 pm 2. Neo:

A comment over at QandO:

Speaking of PVT Beauchamp.
I checked out his AKO account back when he first introducted himself. I found that he was listed as a PV2 and much was made of the fact by others that he had been a PFC but must have been busted to PV2 prior to his journey into journalism.
I checked his AKO information a few days ago. It still lists his unit as 1/18th however his rank is now listed as PV1.
So that, at least to me, answers the question of what punishment he got. Looks like an ART 15, reduction in rank to PV1, and who knows if he got extra duty or loss of any more pay.

It appears from this that Beauchamp got busted down a rank.

Aug 22, 2007 - 1:44 pm 3. Fat Man:

In the department of unintentional humor, I read a book review on the Powell’s Bookstore website, reprinted from The New Republic.

“‘Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero by Lucy Riall’ ‘The Hero Machine’ a review by Alexander Stille in The New Republic on August 16, 2007:

One of the interesting cultural differences that separates us from the culture of the Garibaldi cult is the almost willful use of wholly invented stories and details in the vast majority of Garibaldi biographies that circulated at the time. Even though there was plenty of dramatic and novelistic material from the real life of Garibaldi to draw on, writers seemed to go out of their way to fabricate stories and details. As Riall observes, conforming to the canons of contemporary romance and melodrama was much more important than any notion of journalistic accuracy and historical verisimilitude. “One of the most striking features of this script,” she writes, “was the apparently seamless blend of fact and fiction, of novelistic fantasy and political truth, and this blend…seems to have been at the heart of Garibaldi’s public success.”

Aug 22, 2007 - 3:33 pm 4. Insufficiently Sensitive:

So Jonathan Chait is hurling himself into the breach to protect editor Franklin Foer and his stooges Mr. and Mrs. Beauchamp. This is a dazzling case of the magazine doubling-down, and points to a future dramatic production far exceeding the Stephen Glass fake-story fiasco and movie, once Foer’s fake-but-accurate defense inevitably crumbles.

Enter new owner Can West, which is anything but liberal in its top-down approach to the editorial policy in its various publications. Will it indeed ‘cement TNR’s center-left ideology’, as Foer expects, or will it give up wasting resources in defending Beauchamp’s politically correct fables? Tune in the next time Foer emerges from his bunker and addresses his oh-so-nicely-busted slander against the US military.

Aug 22, 2007 - 3:52 pm 5. Mike K:

Chait has previously distinguished himself as an ad hominem warrior so this is nothing new. Lots of heat but not much light, to use an old saw. The TNR folks keep digging the hole deeper.

Aug 22, 2007 - 4:08 pm 6. Deagle:

Heh…yep, and TNR’s response is different from the normal MSM response how? heh… Let them eat their own crow…

Aug 22, 2007 - 4:15 pm 7. AlanC:

gk says: “After a while I think you just have to feel sorry for TNR and the MSM in general. ”

I say, why? I feel just as sorry for TNR as I do for the suicide bomber that has a premature detonation.

Malicious propagandizing is hardly worthy of sympathy.

Aug 22, 2007 - 8:40 pm 8. Barry Dauphin:

And now Andrew Sullivan is defending TNR by attacking Victor David Hanson? He’s not going to take back this?

Read TNR’s accounting. It is as I predicted: honorable and, except for one small inaccuracy, it checks out. All the aspects aggressively challenged by the usual propaganda organs have been verified and corroborated. The military is now conducting its own investigation. Given the record of such formal investigations, I’m not as confident in the Pentagon as I am in TNR. Can we now expect apologies from the people who smeared and maligned the magazine and its soldier-reporter? I doubt it. The attackers are not the kind to acknowledge their own errors.

or this

Well, I trawled through the various knuckle-dragging websites and there’s still no actual, you know, evidence that he fabricated anything.

or this

Again, it is fascinating that this tiny incident, in which a soldier’s account of his time in the Iraq war has been disputed by his superiors, and in which we have not yet heard the final word, is of such immense importance to the pro-Bush right.

This case has struck a lot of nerves. Of course, excitable Andrew has long since found another crowd to butter his bread. Where’s the concern about the soldier being married to the TNR fact checker? Only in America can someone like Andrew make a buck writing. Some folks have a lot of nerve suggesting W has lost touch.

Aug 22, 2007 - 9:26 pm 9. ShoreMark:

AlanC says, “Malicious propagandizing is hardly worthy of sympathy.”

True, but I guess I still feel empathy for them (TNR and the rest), as they’re going through some tough times. They know they’re history and are extremely frustrated as they also understand they have no way out of the abyss of their own making.

I speak of management, primarily, as most of the reporters have to know what has to be done (admit it in public or not), but are powerless to take the steps needed, so draw down an ultimately dwindling paycheck in the interim.

They’ll (the reporters again) get out and eventually prosper in the future; the “Politico” is an early example of where they’ll go, though that experiment is not a foregone success at this early date.

Aug 22, 2007 - 9:38 pm 10. Neo:

If Chait and TNR were upset and vented their furstration at Kristol, you can bet dollars to donuts that they will react to the possible busting of their “budding Hemingway” with even more vitriol.

This is all part of TNR as “victim”.

The question that TNR will try to obscure .. who is the victimizer ?

Of course, it is the fabulist, Mr. Beauchamp.

Aug 23, 2007 - 2:50 am 11. Lem:

There is little doubt; incest can also impair the judgment of those too close to the scene.

Also see battered wife syndrome.

It could get worse before it gets better.

Aug 23, 2007 - 5:19 am 12. Lem:

As we all know the Clinton legacy dictates that lying is ok as long as it is about sex.

The reason why TNR is delaying is because they haven’t quite figured out how to sex up the story.

Everybody does it wont cut it.

Earth to TNR - Its not the lying, so much as the cover up that really buries you in the end.

Aug 23, 2007 - 6:27 am 13. Mahon:

Re Chait, I don’t do this full time, but it seems to me that the NY Times op-ed by the 82nd Airborne guys is being treated with respect by the same people who are attacking Beauchamp - they may think it is mistaken but they recognize that it was done seriously and in good faith and they are engaging its arguments. The TNR pieces are fair game because they were not done in good faith and were not presented as what they really were. The difference in the reaction pretty clearly refutes both Chait and Sullivan with respect to “knuckle-dragging web sites.”

Aug 23, 2007 - 7:05 am 14. CTRepublican:

Could you explain why TNR should feel obligated to respond to PJs. Far as I know, PJs has not once responded to its own critics.

Aug 23, 2007 - 9:54 am 15. Lem:

Could TNR be shooting for jury nullification?

In TNR’s world Kristol is the war’s Mark Fuhrman.

The fabulist “tiny incident” is nothing compared to that ‘decrepit intellectual’ Kristol.

The war is the ‘n’ word.

Aug 23, 2007 - 10:43 am 16. gk:

I still stand behind my “pathetic and sad” verdict on this mess as I don’t think anyone particularly cares or reads TNR very much. Even now TNR is in the last death throes of “fake but accurate” defense being tossed out as they get surrogates like Andrew Sullivan or Chait to do their rhetorical fighting for them. If that isn’t sad and pathetic, what is? The only thing missing from this spectacle is an appearance from Lucy Ramirez

Aug 23, 2007 - 12:14 pm

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