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Friday, June 25, 2010

Dave Weigel, Balloon Juice, Leakers And Liberal Hypocrisy

A firestorm across the blogosphere about Dave Weigel, a liberal writer for the Post, hired to cover the conservative movement, had emails sent to a private listserv (400 people give or take a few), leaked.

Yesterday he apologized preemptively, knowing those emails were going to be published, some of those comments are found today, via published by FishBowl.

•"This would be a vastly better world to live in if Matt Drudge decided to handle his emotional problems more responsibly, and set himself on fire."

•"Follow-up to one hell of a day: Apparently, the Washington Examiner thought it would be fun to write up an item about my dancing at the wedding of Megan McArdle and Peter Suderman. Said item included the name and job of my girlfriend, who was not even there -- nor in DC at all."

•"I'd politely encourage everyone to think twice about rewarding the Examiner with any traffic or links for a while. I know the temptation is high to follow up hot hot Byron York scoops, but please resist it."

•"It's all very amusing to me. Two hundred screaming Ron Paul fanatics couldn't get their man into the Fox News New Hampshire GOP debate, but Fox News is pumping around the clock to get Paultard Tea Party people on TV."



Weigel has now resigned.

Caught up? Good, because I don't give a damn about Weigel one way or another.

What caught my eye in all this, is some of the reactions I am seeing, where liberals are outraged, OUTRAGED I tell you, over the fact that an email sent to approximately 400 people was leaked.

Enter Balloon Juice, and to be clear, I am simply using this one as an example of what struck me as ironic hypocrisy.

John Cole, writer at Balloon Juice:

Also, the person who leaked private emails can die in a fire......


In another post, Balloon juice states:

I hope they find out who leaked the emails and his/her career is equally damaged. This is a disgrace....


One would assume that blog thinks leaks are bad.

One would assume wrong, it is just that some leaks are more equal than others.

It seems that to Balloon Juice, whom I assume is represented by their writers, some leaks are "essential" while others are reason to wish death upon the leaker.

Private emails are not to be leaked, but classified government data is okay to be leaked.

Wikileaks from their "about us" page:

WikiLeaks is a multi-jurisdictional public service designed to protect whistleblowers, journalists and activists who have sensitive materials to communicate to the public. Since July 2007, we have worked across the globe to obtain, publish and defend such materials


Balloon Juice writer mistermix, re: Wikileaks:

The real risk of Wikileaks is that the videos posted there will convince Americans that our endless entanglement there is both brutal and useless. That’s why they’re so essential, and why they’re a target: Nobody else is doing it.


So, while Wapo might have been extremely stupid in hiring a liberal to explain the conservative mindset, just as I would say hiring a conservative to explain the liberal mindset would be equally as stupid, to me the hypocrisy of some of the reactions I am seeing in regards to whomever leaked Weigel's emails, is much more interesting.

Leaking classified government information that could endanger our troops = Good.

Leaking emails that exposes a liberal for being hostile to conservatives = Bad.

Liberal thinking fascinates me.

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