THE LA SLIMES

Gregg Easterbrook, as everyone who hasn't been holed up with Osama bin Laden in his Afghan cave knows, said something offensive in a blog post last week, got canned from his swank job at ESPN (Emasculated Sports Programming Network) for it, apologized, and had that apology accepted, but not really, by many around the blogosphere. It's important to note the blogosphere's reaction, because the tempest started right here in the blogosphere. Now many in the blogworld are regretful of their actions, swearing to be a bit more, well, something, in the future in the hopes that this sort of thing doesn't happen again. After all, before you know it we could lose Mark Steyn to some off-hand comment that offends the wrong blogger who in turn gets the right amount of attention, and we cannot have that. And there is exactly zero chance that such a bullet will ever strike a columnist who actually deserves it.

But hey bloggers, celebrate! We have hunted down and killed our first columnist! We've been trying to do that for a couple of years now. But unfortunately our trophy isn't any of game that we regularly get in our sights--the Ted Ralls or the Molly Ivins or Maureen Dowds or Robert Fisks--hacks for whom we coined terms like "fisking" and "idiotarian," and who deserve getting verbally buckshot for any number of crimes against journalism. Call Easterbrook a form of collateral damage in the blog wars: No one expected to kill his TMQ column when they fired at his Easterblogg comment, but kill it they certainly did.

And now enter the LA Times, or more accurately, the LA Slimes. That paper has become the lowest common denominator in journalism, combining the preening and prejudiced liberalism of the Howell Raines-era New York Times with the sewer ethics of the National Enquirer. During the California recall, its reporting was so biased in favor of Gov. Gray Davis and against both the effort to oust him and to the campaign of Arnold Schwarzenegger to replace him, that it packed polls with ethnicities and populations designed to shore up things for the Gov and make things appear difficult for recall and the Terminator. Its polls were lies dressed up as public opinion, spun to change that opinion to one that the Times found more appealing. Failing that, it dumped buckets of dirt on the GOP's answer to Kennedyism and the revenge of the overlooked Shrivers in the form of 30-year-old allegations that he had once behaved as a cad. How shocking--a bodybuilder, hopped to the brink on 'roids, would misbehave in his youth. And his not-so-youth. Tisk tisk. Failing that (since recall ousted Davis and Schwarzenegger won the governorship, both by wide margins), the Slimes promised to dump more on Ahnuld even as he assumes offices. To what end? Another recall to oust him, one supposes, or just to damage him so badly that he cannot fix the mess that prompted Californians to dump dull Davis to begin with. Some public service, that. And all while turning a blind eye, over a much longer period, to similarly unsavory and as badly sourced rumors about the behavior of Gray Davis, the man the Slimes intended to save. And to much more credible allegations of far more serious violations against the former president from Hope.

Add to that the Slimes' recent attack on a US general for being a Christian and having the gall to say so in public. And now to its after-the-fact slam against Easterbrook, penned by Tim Rutten. This is truly a punch long after the bell has sounded.

I was alerted that this piece was coming beforehand, by a blogger whom I respect but with whom I had and continue to disagree when it comes to Easterbrook's alleged anti-Semitism. I think suggesting that, on the basis of one lousy paragraph against a lifetime of stellar work, Easterbrook is an anti-Semite is ludicrous. This other blogger does not. That this other blogger wrote that he accepted Easterbrook's apology, but continued to criticize him anyway, suggested to me something short of sincerity--on the part of Easterbrook's critic. Sufficiently confused now? I'm not naming names because I don't want to start off another round of blogger circular firing squads. And because that blogger is no longer the issue, except insofar as he aimed me at Rutten's LAT column in the hope that it would convince me that I am wrong about Easterbrook. And because that blogger is more popular than me and a better writer than me, and if he chooses to can rhetorically squash me like a bug. Now he can choose to squash me or not, but I haven't forced him out where he may feel obliged to.

But back to the LA Slimes. Rutten is just another LAT slime artist; that much is clear from his Easterbrook column. It's a thing of beauty, actually, if you like hitman journalism. After reciting the crime, the immediate reaction, the professional consequences and the reaction of one of his critics, Rutten steps into the fray to slam one of Easterbrook's central lines of defense--his life.

Easterbrook's case is not helped by other aspects of his apology. In one, he recounts how he joined a particular Presbyterian congregation specifically because it shares facilities and finances with a synagogue. Experienced readers will find it a bit like the old "some of my best friends are " argument.

Well if it's true, what is he supposed to say? That he joined his church in spite of its Jewish congregation, or that their presence had no bearing on his decision to join? To lie, in other words? That's not a "some of my best friends are" defense; it's just a simple set of facts set to counter the accusation, no different from Easterbrook or anyone else citing his work at The New Republic as further proof that he's no anti-Semite. Rutten's characterization is unfair, to say the least.

And not content just to smear a good man and put his self-defense out of bounds, Rutten pushes Easterbrook's head down in the mud one last time:

What we have here — to gloss a phrase from the Gospels — is old wine of a particularly bitter vintage in glitzy new skins. The wine comes from a vineyard whose roots should have been yanked out and burned long ago. The fact that it hasn't been and that its fruit so readily finds a home in the brave new cyberspatial world ought to sober everyone involved.

The Gospel reference is rich, coming from a paper that never met a Christian it didn't want to destroy. But taken at face value, its meaning is this: You always say exactly what you mean, even if you don't mean it or say it clumsily or in the heat of the moment. Ever get mad enough at someone to say that you hate them or wish they were dead? In Rutten's world, you actually meant every word. Even if you didn't.

According to Rutten's formulation, Easterbrook must be an anti-Semite because he once said something that could possibly be construed to be anti-Semitic, no matter what else he may have ever written or done to prove otherwise. And the converse must be true, too--no good act counts for anything if you have ever done even one bad thing. Instead of being defined by the totality of our lives, choices and words, we are defined only by the worst. If this is a liberal's view of tolerance, I want no part of it. It makes mercy impossible, and grace a mere figment of imagination.

If we apply the essence of that standard to the Times itself, one must inevitably conclude that it is fundamentally anti-democracy. After all, as Armed Liberal discovered, the Times was objectively anti-democracy and against the rule of law in the way it treated both the California recall and the man who ended up winning it as an expression of the majority's will within the state's set of laws. How else should we view a paper whose work was so obviously one-sided? Either it is fundamentally anti-democracy, or merely anti-Republican--either position is indefensible for a paper that pretends objectivity in a democracy. And this finding holds, no matter what the Times may have done or will do to counter it. It could come out tomorrow and take it all back, pledge to never utter another unkind word about Ahnuld or any other Republican, and even declare that it was wrong about the recall. But none of that should matter. If there is no redemption for Easterbrook, there will be none for the LA Slimes.