Huffington recycles the Dowd argument from infallibility for Sheehan. Garance Franke-Ruta is impressed. Boil it all dowm: they’re making two arguments. One, Sheehan’s motivations cannot be questioned even when the entire rationale for her protest is her motivation. Second, they want to change the subject by complaining that statements by Administration officials haven’t been questioned by the media. This, is a strawman. Of course, Administration statements have been questioned, and quite relentlessly. This may not always take the form of directly dissecting a specifc utterance to Huffington’s content, but the administration’s positions have been subjected to whithering scrutiny. Meanwhile, the media — which created this frenzy, to the glee of Huffington & Co — is now doing what the media always does in such circumstances. If Huffington is shocked that it’s gotten tacky by her lights (while it started tacky and got worse by mine) maybe she should have taken that into account when she cheered on a process which inevitably would become even more grotesque. Don’t stand there and say, “I can’t believe this got out of control.”