A lot of readers seem to think I’m circling the wagons around my East Coast inside the Beltway friends. Here’s an email that’s at least offers friendly disagreement:

Sorry my friend but for only the second time (the first being your ridiculous comments about the finale of BSG, lol) I find your reasoning to be just dumb.
Weigel has to go because that kind of behavior cannot be tolerated any more. I don’t care if it was normal in the past or if he is just one in a million. No more! For every 2 liberal radicals in this country there are 4 conservatives and 4 moderates. And of those moderates only 20% align themselves with the left. We cannot maintain a free classically-liberal country if we allow a small elite minority to control the media. And such liberal radicals who are caught expressing their extreme hate must immediately be thrown out. The left has to know that their day is long gone and that there are new sheriffs in town. And your wimpy ‘they all do it’ article just allows them to maintain their arrogant illusion that they are mainstream and in control. They are not because the people are not with them!

First, if my reasoning comes out dumb only twice, I’m doing great.

Second, for the record, I’m not buddies –social, professional or otherwise — with Weigel (a lot of readers seem to think that must be the real explanation). We’ve met and talked at most two or three times. One of them was the other week when he was on a panel I moderated.The other was in the lobby at CPAC for about 10 minutes. I don’t know what the third was, but I kind of remember having met him one other time when I saw him at CPAC.

Third, I think I’m being a bit misunderstood here. My larger point was that Weigel’s comments (Most of which, I’m told, predate his arrival at the Post) were indicative of much of the mainstream press in their unguarded moments. When I say his crime was getting caught, I meant it. Meanwhile, his actual work product was more fair than a lot of mainstream journalists who haven’t been caught. My own cynical view is that this episode will do nothing to make the Post’s coverage more fair but it will cause liberal reporters to be more guarded about getting caught.

Here’s Jeffrey Goldberg on his conversation with a friend at the Post:

“How could we destroy our standards by hiring a guy stupid enough to write about people that way in a public forum?” one of my friends at the Post asked me when we spoke earlier today. “I’m not suggesting that many people on the paper don’t lean left, but there’s leaning left, and then there’s behaving like an idiot.”

Translation: His crime was getting caught.

Now, if everyone wants a wholesale purge of liberals from the mainstream press, I’m game. But I don’t see that happening any time soon.