Categorical Aperitif

I see that Michael O'Hanlon has responded to Glenn Greenwald's calm, rational, respectful criticisms of his writings, his views, his media appearances as a supposed critic of the war who's now seen the light, etc.—with the kind of words usually used to dismiss a liar or a lunatic:

“Well, I don’t have high regard for the kind of journalism that Mr. Greenwald has carried out here,” O’Hanlon said. “I’m not going to spend a whole lot of time rebutting Mr. Greenwald because he’s had frankly more time and more readership than he deserves.”

Well now: all Mr. Greenwald has done is to take the time to examine O'Hanlon's own voluminous pro-war, pro-surge writings and use them as evidence to show that the portrayal of O'Hanlon in the media as some kind of "war critic" is mistaken at best and deceitful at worst. Greenwald also brought forward some highly relevant but largely ignored facts about how the recent O'Hanlon/Pollack "tour" of Iraq was orchestrated and organized by the U.S. military—which raises obvious questions about how "independent" their assessments were. In doing all of this, Greenwald has been nothing but calm, reasonable, and respectful. He has backed up his assertions with evidence, and he has not resorted to name-calling, abuse, or insult—unless one thinks that the very act of rationally criticizing a member of the opinion-making elite constitutes abuse.

Is that what O'Hanlon thinks? What exactly does he mean by "the kind of journalism that Mr. Greenwald has carried out here"? That's awfully vague. What exactly is wrong with what Greenwald did? Did he get key facts wrong? Did he misquote someone? Did he make stuff up? Did he lie? If so, it should be easy for a well-heeled think-tanker like O'Hanlon to provide appropriately damning specifics that would put yon upstart Greenwald in his place. Where are they?

And pray tell: how much readership does Glenn Greenwald deserve, exactly? Is there a definite number x that represents how many readers he deserves? Should we install a meter or something on his blog that will cut off access once he's had x number of readers—or that will at least warn visitors if they come along after x has been reached so that they can choose to click away rather than (*shudder*) exceed his deserved-attention quota? Does Brookings have something like this in the works? I wouldn't be surprised.

Think-tankers must pine for the good old days, before the internet, when it was so much easier to get away with consent-manufacturing bullshit like passing off officially choreographed PR exercises as objective research trips, passing off longtime war cheerleaders as war critics, etc. Most of the media still goes obligingly along with this kind of Potemkin journalism, but thanks to the internet, critically inclined citizens have more and more places where they can go for a peek behind the curtain. And all the pundits, bobbleheads, and think-tankers can do about it, apparently, is chafe—and make vaguely disparaging remarks about their critics, no doubt hoping that this will divert further attention and keep them safely marginalized.

Well, if there's more than one kind of scoundrel, it stands to figure that there's more than one kind of last refuge, too.