August 24, 2007
Dear "The Editors,"
I noticed with some bemusement earlier this week Jonathan Chait's attempt to rally the TNR faithful by attacking William Kristol, and note that Jonathan Cohn returned to that theme once again yesterday afternoon, with the slight exception of focusing on Ramesh Ponnuru's criticism of Chait's rant. I find it fascinating that you have the time to dedicate to critiques of critiques, but I'd really rather prefer that you just did your jobs as editors.
It has been precisely two weeks since your last attempt to whistle past those "legitimate questions that have been raised" about Scott Thomas Beauchamp's articles. It has been even more troubling that you have stone-walled those who have asked legitimate questions about your own investigation, which is far from transparent.
As Scott Johnson notes at Powerline this morning, Fridays seem to be a big day for TNR editors when it comes to releasing Beauchamp investigation-related news.
Towards that end, and knowing it is a little late, I'd still like to offer up my services to help you with your investigation.
You see, it doesn't often take very long to conduct a legitimate investigation into matters such as these.
For example, once I was finally able to reach Doug Coffey at BAE Systems, the company that manufacturers the Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles that you refused to identify, it took only one email to determine that you didn't provide him with Beauchamp's dog-killing story to review for plausibility. I did, and his same-day response... well, we know how that ended up, don't we? It seems your researcher "re-reporting" the story just didn't know quite which questions to ask.
I seem to have a knack for knowing what to ask, so if you would be so kind, please provide the names of the civilian experts you claim to have interviewed during the course of your re-reporting, and I'll be happy to take a few minutes out of my day to make sure that you asked them the right questions, or for that matter, determine if you even asked the right experts the right questions.
Doing a thorough, transparent, and competent investigation doesn't take weeks.
Of course, that assumes that you want a thorough, transparent, and competent investigation.
* * *
Like you, dear readers, I find it rather doubtful that The New Republic will provide me or anyone else with the names of their civilian experts.
As details leak out, it seems Franklin Foer and his collaborators have become the cliché, and their continuing attempts to cover-up their editorial failures with even more questionable ethical violations and purposeful deceptions is worst than Beauchamp's fabulism. At this point, Franklin Foer and TNR's senior editors aren't so much editors as they are post turtles.
What's a post turtle? I recall an email where a doctor asked that same question when an old farmer whose hand he had been suturing used the term.
The farmer replied:
"When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle."
"You know he didn't get there by himself, he doesn't belong there, he doesn't know what to do while he's up there, and you just want to help the dumb thing get down."
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
10:38 AM
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