Gentleman Jockeys Win the Derby (Hugh Hewitt)

The Weekly Standard ^ | 2/17/2005 | Hugh Hewitt

[NYS_Eric]

EAGER TO DIVERT ATTENTION from the incredible incompetence displayed in the handling of Eason Jordan's remarks before the Davos audience (and Jordan's November 2004 accusation that the U.S. military was torturing journalists), a number of voices within the mainstream media have argued that the credentials of bloggers are suspect and that in their amateurism there lays a danger to the public discussion. The most surprising of these attacks came in an unsigned editorial in the Wall Street Journal. The Journal chose to ignore Jordan's November 2004 accusation about the American military torturing journalists, and pronounced the Davos pratfall as less than a "hanging offense." That's a fair opinion, though one with which many reasonably disagree.

But the Journal also uncharacteristically slashed at the new media as "amateurs" from the "Internet and talk-show crew," and contrasted "the good judgment and sense of proportion that distinguishes professional journalism from the enthusiasms and vendettas of amateurs." The writer also asserted that those within the Journal's walls "make grown-up decisions" which, he believes, bloggers don't.

When I interviewed the Journal's always cheerful John Fund--the only member of the editorial board who agreed to come on my radio program on Monday or Tuesday--he insisted that the paper had in mind only a couple of bloggers who had gone on a vendetta. Perhaps. But because no names were named--lousy "journalism," that--the impression was communicated that this senior voice of the center-right had sided with Eason Jordan and CNN against the populism of the new media. Perhaps the editors did not intend to give such a slight to the amateurs. But if they did intend their slight, they may want to consider some of the credentials of those amateurs before they try to dismiss their opinions again. Another Journal writer, Bret Stephens, has specifically criticized Captain's Quarters, Dinocrat, and Easongate as blogs that have unfairly attacked him, and worries that the "amateurs" have no standards they have to meet as do the professionals.

The Eason Jordan double slander was aimed at the military. So it was no surprise that it struck nerves among veterans who are also bloggers. Given their varied military experience, these bloggers brought quite a bit to the table.

Let's start with three of the contributors to the Easongate blog that sprang up to follow the course of the Jordan affair:

Contributor Bill Roggio of The Fourth Rail enlisted in the Army in January of 1991 during Desert Storm. From 1991 to 1995, he served as a signalman, and from 1995 to 1997 he was in the New Jersey National Guard as an infantryman. While on active duty, he attended Airborne School, and served with the 22nd Engineer Brigade (Airborne) and 1st Special Operations Command (Airborne) at Fort Bragg, and with the 20th Signal Brigade in Germany. In the New Jersey National Guard, he served with the 114th Infantry Battalion. He is a superb student of military history, as anyone who reads The Fourth Rail can attest.

Contributor Blackfive was a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division, a weapons sergeant in the 7th and 12th SF Groups, a scout lieutenant in the 11th ACR, an Intel officer in the 10th SF Group (FWD), and a Company XO in the 3rd ID. He spent more years as an Intel officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Contributor Josh Manchester, from the Adventures of Chester, was on active duty in the Marines from 2000 to 2004. He deployed to Egypt, Kuwait, and Iraq. A combat engineer officer, he participated in battalion, group, and occasionally Marine Expeditionary Force-level planning for the invasion of Iraq. He also served for a short period as an intelligence officer, finding, sorting, and analyzing various intelligence products. Manchester has a wide familiarity with Marine Corps history and doctrine; division, regimental, and battalion-level operations, combat engineering, command and control, and logistics. He is a graduate of The Basic School and Marine Corps Engineer School, and received a BA with honors from Duke University in Comparative Area Studies, focusing on Japan and Latin America, with minors in Japanese and History.

So you can see why a reader might trust the judgment of these three writers on the seriousness of Jordan's slanders over that of, say, the Journal's editorial team

Now, what about the Power Line gents? They are civilians, and in the Journal's view they are also presumably amateurs when it comes to journalism. Are they qualified to opine? Well, let's go straight to the résumés:

John Hinderaker is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School. For the past 30 years, Hinderaker has had a broad-based commercial litigation practice. A veteran of close to 100 jury trials, he has appeared in courts in fifteen states. Hinderaker has been recognized by Minnesota's Journal of Law and Politics as one of the state's "Super Litigators" and was recently named by that publication as one of the top 40 commercial litigators in Minnesota.

Hinderaker has represented clients in such diverse areas of litigation as construction, antitrust, unfair competition, Lanham Act, trade secrets, product liability, professional liability, insurance and surety law, and the First Amendment. He also is experienced in class action litigation.

Scott Johnson is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the University of Minnesota Law School. He clerked for Judges Myron Bright and Richard Arnold of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit for two years, joined Faegre and Benson in 1981, became a partner in 1987, then left to join the publicly held regional bank holding company TCF Financial Corporation in 1997, where he works as senior vice president and member of the legal department. He is also an adjunct professor of law at the University of St. Thomas Law School in Minneapolis.

Paul Mirengoff is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Stanford Law School, where he served on the Stanford Law Review. He is a partner at Akin Gump in Washington, D.C. He concentrates in employment law and has litigated scores of federal employment cases involving all forms of alleged discrimination.

Prior to joining Akin Gump, Mirengoff practiced in the D.C. office of Hunton & Williams. Before that, he was a lawyer with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission working in the Office of the General Counsel.

All three are fellows of the Claremont Institute and contributing writers to THE DAILY STANDARD.

Surely the editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal have many credits to their records, but for them to suggest these men are "amateurs" who contrast poorly with the "grown-ups" is ludicrous.

Credentials, of course, have little to do with facts--either they are facts or they aren't. And one man's opinion, no matter who signs his paycheck, should be judged by the same standards of logic and persuasiveness as all others, regardless of the letterhead on which it arrives.

The Jordan affair revealed a lot of things about old media, including the revelation that guild membership can trump shared values. But I don't think I am alone in concluding that Vermont Royster and Robert Bartley would have been shocked at an elitist dismissal of main street voices, even if those voices aren't being paid to speak out.

Hugh Hewitt is the host of a nationally syndicated radio show, and author most recently of Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That is Changing Your World. His daily blog can be found at HughHewitt.com.

[NYS_Eric]

I sure was disappointed in that unsigned Wall Street Journal editorial the other day, and was glad to see this column by Hugh Hewitt address it head on.

[syriacus]

Thanks for posting this.

I don't think anyone should be blamed for Jordan's stepping down, except Jordan.

If anyone needs to be blamed for Jordan's stepping down, it should be Barney Frank.

[cajungirl]

Resumes and acronyms aside, is the WSJ suggesting that only they and "certified" journalists be permitted to opine on such things as Easongate?

Are we, well, like peons or children? Should we be seen and not heard? Apparently the WSJ believes in an aristocracy of opinion. We should like all good children be seen and not heard.

[David Isaac]

When Brit Hume was just getting started at FoxNews, he made a comment about Matt Drudge that was in much the same vein as the WSJ article. I did not think very highly of Mr Hume at that moment. But now, think he is absolutely peerless as a newsanchor. I also believe there is no other newspaper that can hold a candle to the Wall Street Journal.

That said, I do not understand everyone piling on bloggers at this point in time, when they were heroes not long ago. Maybe ink is thicker than water.

[Bahbah]

Excellent piece. The WSJ, more than anything I've seen, revealed the deep seated elitism of the MSM and was very disappointing.

[plangent]

The Liberati is following the LIB DEMS in technique.

Try to discredit the source of opposing ideas, rather than engage in a discussion of ideas.

Watch more and more of the MSM try the discrediting approach instead of facing reality.

[Nip]

The most interesting thing about the WSJ article is the article itself - who wrote it?
“..an unsigned editorial..”

The thing that most of the uneducated professional journalists fail to mention is that every blog/web site can be researched and who the owner’s are quickly determined and posted. And unlike the editorial offices opposing opinions can be found/distributed at the stroke of a key for nothing. That’s right NOTHING - no payment required.

If you are wondering what is going on you first must be a student of history and then do an “immoral thing - think”.

What the professional journalists are really complaining about is their loss of power, nothing more and nothing less. The last time mankind saw such a shift was in the middle ages when the moveable type printing press was developed. Now the reproduction and distribution of the “word of GOD” was removed from the church (who else could pay for hundreds of people to spend their entire lives copying a single book by longhand?). Worse yet - knowledge, and hence power, was available to everyone at a fairly cheap price.

Okay, where does this history lesson lead?

The “information age” has changed the very nature of information. Prior to the cheap PC and the internet information had an attribute of possession - you had to own the book, the experience, or the original thought. Now information, and hence Power, is one of location - you just have to know where to find it. The more effective blogs provide links to the sources and other discussions (see the root article for this posting). These easily accessible locations are what make the blogs so effective - you can do your own research (supporting or opposing) in a second. Now information and news involves cheap, active personal participation.

Enough bloging - past time to change out of my P.J’s, get a shower, and go to work at my real job.

BTW the next instrument of the MSM to be engage by “Blogers-R-Us” will be the video broadcast media - the trade shows are displaying software that will move bloging from key strokes to key strokes and video. Watch out ABC-CBS-NBC-CNN-PBS the blogers are coming to a video screen near you!

[RonDog]

See also these RELATED threads:

The media kerfuffle (re: Bloggers)
	Posted by JohnHuang2 On News/Activism 02/15/2005 12:33:42 AM PST · 23 replies · 366+ views Washington Times ^ | Tuesday, February 15, 2005 | House Editorial
The Jordan Kerfuffle(Excuse us serfs for asking questions)
	Posted by Pikamax On News/Activism 02/14/2005 11:53:46 AM PST · 12 replies · 447+ views WSJ ^ | 02/14/05 | editorial
It’s No “Kerfuffle” (NR slams the WSJ)
	Posted by pissant On News/Activism 02/14/2005 7:23:09 AM PST · 19 replies · 659+ views NRO ^ | 2/14/05 | Andrew McCarthy
The Jordan Kerfuffle
	Posted by jocon307 On News/Activism 02/13/2005 9:48:55 PM PST · 45 replies · 661+ views Opinion Journal (Wall Street Journal) ^ | 2-14-05 | The Editors

[OXENinFLA]

PING...

[RonDog]

And from www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords:

KERFUFFLE

"A commotion or fuss."

You will most commonly come across this wonderfully expressive word in Britain and the British Commonwealth countries (though the White House spokesman Ari Fleischer used it in January this year). It is rather informal, though it often appears in newspapers. One of the odder things about it is that it changed its first letter in quite recent times. Up to the 1960s, it was written in all sorts of ways—curfuffle, carfuffle, cafuffle, cafoufle, even gefuffle (a clear indication that its main means of transmission was in speech, being too rarely written down to have established a standard spelling). But in that decade it suddenly became much more popular and settled on the current kerfuffle. Lexicographers suspect the change came in response to the way that a number of imitative words were spelled, like kerplop and kerplunk.

In those cases, the initial ker– adds emphasis, as it does in other words, perhaps onomatopoeic but perhaps also borrowing the first syllable of crash. But we know kerfuffle was originally Scots and it’s thought that its first part came from Scots Gaelic car, to twist or bend. The second bit is more of a puzzle: there is a Scots verb fuffle (now known only in local dialect), to throw into disorder, dishevel, or ruffle. No obvious origin for it is known and experts suspect it was an imitative word. It is probably linked with Scots fuff, to emit puffs of smoke or steam, definitely imitative, which in the late eighteenth century also had a sense of going off in a huff or flying into a temper.

Some specialists think kerfuffle is also related to the Irish cior thual, confusion or disorder. It seems to be a minority opinion, though.

[RonDog]

www.HughHewitt.com
PING!

If you listen to Hugh Hewitt,
or read his WorldNetDaily articles,
or his commentary at the Weekly Standard,
then this PING list is for YOU!
Please post your comments, and BUMP!

(If you want OFF - or ON - my "Hugh Hewitt PING list" - please let me know)

[Bahbah]

Thanks for that great site!!!

[RonDog]

Gentleman Jockeys Win the Derby

See also, from www.westword.com:

In a moment of candor, the hard-knocking jockey Sonny Werkman once said of his trade:

"Two things there ain't in this world:
lady hookers and gentleman jockeys."

[Edit35]

I now rely on IBD, Investors Business Daily, rather than the Wall Street Journal for all my financial news.

In fact, in a strange way, I have to thank the JOURNAL for being such elitist twits.

Since reading IBD, I have made thousands of unexpected dollars profit investing in some of the stocks recommended in their IBD 100 charts.

The JOURNAL is way too complicated, and seems written for stuffy old school types. IBD has good info and is easy to decipher.

Also, the JOURNAL employs Peggy Noonan, another elitist who has recently shown herself to have little understanding of what attracts a majority of Americans to the Bush Administration style and policy.

I felt more betrayed by Journal employee Noonan than I did by all the America-blaming leftists who glee at the thought of US soldiers dying in the defense of our western culture and safety.

Maybe the WSJ is having circulation problems, and they are trying to attract lefties to their paper.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks for the pings. Been following this "KERFUFFLE pretty closely, and Hugh nails the "Professional Journalists".

[Grampa Dave]

Many of us wonder if this unknown editorial writer was a hired by a left wing fanatic who just recently left the Wall Street Journal, by the name of Al Hunt.

Anyone working for the WSJ, who was hired and/or promoted by Hunt should be identified and have a WLLL (Whining Liberal Lunatic Loser) tatooed on its forehead. The WLLL should be identified as such in any article or editorial it writes.

[colorado tanker]

Thanks for the ping. As usual, Hugh is spot on. (I'll probably be flamed for saying so, but I enjoy listening to Hugh even more than Rush.)

I wonder if the Journal is realizing that got this one wrong. There was a slew of letters telling them so in yesterday's edition.

[CHARLITE]

"What the professional journalists are really complaining about is their loss of power, nothing more and nothing less.

BINGO :)

Char

[GretchenM]

I am really getting tired of the specious argument that unpaid, citizen bloggers have to live by the same standards of personal communication as paid journalists are supposed to live by when filing news stories. How is what FR and blogs do any different than what the town halls of yesteryear did, of what the public-spirited men of the Revolution did when they met in small groups in town squares and taverns, and decided to go to war? If the almighty journalists of today were alive then, would they have tried to deprive the citizenry of their rights to free speech, public communication, and civic action?

This is apples and oranges and the OLD media needs to figure out that we are not them and they are not us.

It is the height of vanity for them to try to fit us into their world and call us lacking.

[RottiBiz]

Outstanding Hewitt article.

Thanks for the ping, RonDog.