An old editor of mine at Brill’s Content (at least I think that’s how I know him) writes a spectacularly dumb item about my column today. I think he’s upset about the things I don’t say but which he thinks I should so it would be easier for him to write something halfway intelligible. He writes:
Oh, wait, I get it. Goldberg isn’t actually, seriously, soberly advocating the extrajudicial assassination of a journalist for publishing material in contravention of a direct order from the state. He’s just having fun with the discontinuity between “left-wing accounts of the intelligence community,” which tend to portray spooks as hyper-efficient bloodthirsty killers, and the curious fact of Assange’s continued purchase on life. See! Liberals are stupid, because they think spies are bad, but look—Assange isn’t “a greasy stain on the autobahn already,” so liberals are wrong, spies aren’t bad, therefore liberals are stupid. Q.E.D.
As for really depriving Assange of his life without due process of law, Goldberg thinks that’s just a hair over the line: “[A]ssassinating a hipster Australian Web guru as opposed to a Muslim terrorist is the kind of controversy no official dares invite. That’s fine. And it’s the law. Ultimately, I don’t expect the U.S. government to kill Assange, but I do expect them to try to stop him.” When your respect for the law keeps you from murdering people you really want to murder—well, that’s true patriotism.
Anyway, this game of Jonah’s is fun, so back to our opening question: Why hasn’t he been punched, hard, in the face yet today? After all, he upsets liberals, and we all know that liberals are violent thugs, right? “The left” routinely justifies the “glorification of violence” and “gangsterism” of “black riot ideology” and wants to kill all white people as badly as Hitler wanted to kill all Jews. Liberals engage in a “symphony of violence” and, as Goldberg astutely points out in his book, are fascists. So how come some angry liberal hasn’t decked him yet today, fascistically? Just asking. We don’t think, by the way, that anyone should physically assault Goldberg. That would be illegal.
By the way, your blogger used to edit a column that Goldberg wrote long, long ago in a magazine far, far away. He liked him, even! Goldberg can be charming when he isn’t talking about Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, or how people who disagree with him are Nazis.
Sigh. A couple things. One, if Cook wants to weasel out of being a jerk by saying nice things about me at the end, he shouldn’t have bothered. And if he thinks I need to be punched in the face, I invite him to give it a whirl himself. If memory serves, it could lead to a fun few minutes for me. Oh, and he might bother actually characterizing my book correctly. When he was at Brill’s Content he had much higher standards.
If As*ange is placing United States citizens and soldiers in peril in a time of war, then, in my view, he is fair game to be taken out as any other legitimate military target. Because this danger is more than just As*ange, if we have other methods to shut the operation down -- using our friends in Europe and their domestic agencies to crush Wikileaks -- then that may be more effective. If, however, assassination of an American enemy will have a chilling effect on the rest of Wikileaks, much like the bombing of his family had on Gaddafi, let's roll.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI, too, do not understand why this guy and his operation have not been shut down. Was it not an act of espionage to acquire our military's classified information? How can he do that with impunity?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseActually, what this really reveals (at least to me), is that the writers at many of our favorite information outlets aren't the only ones who have viewpoints that may color and filter the outcome. At least I KNOW who wrote something. But the editor who is both nameless and faceless has a viewpoint, and I have no way of knowing if the explicit or implicit bias of an article is due to the named author or the unnamed "editor" hidden in the shadows.
Ivin
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou'd be bitter too if you ended up at Gawker.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe answer to Mr. Cook's question is as follows: because Goldberg is 6'4", 240 lbs, and at only 41 years old he's young and able-bodied. Leftists love to physically assault 110-lb women (Ann Coulter), and men either pushing 70 (David Horowitz) or over 70 (Pat Buchanan). They avoid physical confrontation with tall males born after WW2 like the plague.
But don't worry, Mr. Cook. I'm sure some brave young leftist will take a swing at Jonah in 2045 or so.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt is amazing to me that people write columns like that, then the next day write about things like civility in our political debates. I'm not sure that blogger has but I've heard that plea from the left plenty.
Additionally, even more revealing are the comments posted in response to the blog by all the faithful Gawker readers.
1. Few of them address actual issues or contain coherent arguments about Jonah's column
2. Most of them are personal attacks or include something related to appearance (I thought the left was non-discrimination!)
3. Several of them include attacks on Jonah's wife or late father, one of them by a user with Trotsky in the user ID.
Apparently the braniac blogging isn't the only braniac involved in that blog...
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Was it not an act of espionage to acquire our military's classified information?"
Well, I'll give you a real life example. A buddy of mine was working at a private organization in DC, and a letter arrived. He started to read the letter, and it had a list of names and addresses. Realizing it was sensitive and had been misaddressed, he called a phone number on the envelope. He was put through to a 3-star admiral, who was very polite and thanked him for calling. A courier arrived in 15 minutes.
There was no mention of any crime, and there couldn't be: When you get clearance, you sign what is essentially a non-disclosure agreement. My friend hadn't signed any such agreement. Moreover, he hadn't taken any action to acquire the information, beyond opening a letter that appear to be his responsibility to open.
Wikileaks has essentially set up a system whereby they are simply a place that happens to get anonymous donations of information. Legally, they are in the same situation as my friend. Morally is another matter.
One consequence of this arrangement is that every leak requires a leaker who must leave no trace back to Wikileaks, which means that person is the one who commits the espionage, and is the one who takes the fall for it. It puts Wikileaks in an incredibly cynical position: they stay safe while all these young, impressionable people go off to jail and ruin their lives.
Incidentally, information leaks. One silver lining to Wikileaks is that it makes clear just how much is leaking, and how bad our security is. We would be far better served plugging the gaps than going after Wikileaks. There are hundreds of very cynical antiwar groups that people can leak to if Wikileaks go down.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMore than As*ange (I like that format) I am dismayed by the fact that Americans (or our trusted allies) are leaking this stuff in such massive quatities. We're not just talking about one or two reports smuggled out and released but entire disk drives full of information. If we need to "alter someone's longterm retirement plans" it would seem to be these people.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI believe it is just as disturbing that this happened at all. We have been dealing with spies and turncoats since the days of Benedict Arnold: you have to expect that someone will attempt to do exactly this in this day and age, and put the security measures in place to catch it at least before the leak turns into a firehose.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Goldberg can be charming when he isn’t talking about Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, or how people who disagree with him are Nazis."
But that's when I find Jonah *most* charming.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAs far as plugging the leaks, the number usually quoted is around 800,000 people with top secret clearance. Stopping all leaks, or even a lot of them, is kind of impossible at this point. The information is far too dispersed and there are some serious structural problems that need to be sorted out.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGawker's not covering itself with glory these past few days. It's not just Bush Derangement Syndrome any more.
Shelby Steele called it bad faith in America which now passes for sophistication and hipness. It's especially convenient for writers because they can be jackasses and still moan about the lack of civility.
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