The Guardian’s Michael Tomasky apparently suffers from poor reading comprehension. Any fair-minded reading of what I wrote about the JournoList yesterday would deprive him of the opportunity to call me “wingnutty.” Suffice to say, it’s obvious I’m not bemoaning that there isn’t a similar list-serv on the right or that I haven’t been invited to their little internet clambake. But, rather, I’m pointing out it’s disingenuous for participants to claim the list doesn’t have an agenda and, moreover, there are potentially some specific ethical problems with the list that should be addressed. In fact, I was quite clear about this, particularly in my follow-up post on the list:
If explicitly liberal bloggers, activists and policy wonks want to want to get together several times a week and burn black candles and perform obscure magick rituals to converse with FDR from beyond the grave, that’s fine with me. But when supposedly objective journalists or, worse yet, people such as Peter Orzag who until recently was the head of the Congressional Budget Office, participate in their shennanigans and at the very least fail to disclose it, then I have a problem.
However, I’m pretty sure that Tomasky didn’t read my follow-up because that would mean he’s reading the Corner. No, I’m pretty sure he only read the first post I wrote because that was posted to the JournoList. So if or when this also gets posted to the list (Hi!), can someone who participates in the list who’s more fair-minded than Tomasky is address my actual objection? Of the people that have spoken out since the story yesterday, Ezra Klein, Brad “Funmeister” DeLong and now Tomasky — they’ve all been utterly dissmissive. If the list-serv really is no big deal, you should be able to defend it without too much effort instead of sweeping any questions about it under the rug.