Thinking Somerby will apologize for any of his factually challenging misdeeds on Plamegate is like hoping Cheney will come over to the Good Side of the force.
Somerby has his uses for a number of items, but his reporting on Plamegate is embarrassing. Too bad he's far too arrogant to admit such mistakes.
I hope you're not hoping for this, and instead you're just pointing out his mistake. You'll be hoping in vain for quite some time to come. Wait, I'm sure you knew that.....
Posted by MisterOpus1 at April 18, 2006 09:24 PMI'm doing this to correct the record before a bunch of Power Line type bloggers run with this crap and turn myth into "reality". It's a significant waste of my time and I wish I didn't have to do it.
Posted by eriposte at April 18, 2006 09:31 PMhttp://www.slate.com/id/2140058/fr/nl/
Posted by OutsideTheEchoChamber at April 18, 2006 10:49 PMInTheOtherEchoChamber - Hitchens has been on his back (and on all fours) letting Bush scratch his belly for the last five years. And Mr."Why not blood for oil?" makes no secret about it. Yeah, Im attacking the messenger. Tough shit.
Posted by jondee at April 18, 2006 11:01 PMLink to someone with more credibility next time. Like one of Bush's speech writers.
Posted by jondee at April 18, 2006 11:14 PMThe work is very much appreciate, eri.
eR,
Have you had any correspondence with Somerby? emailing him any of your posts?...because the more he writes, complains, and now whines about all of this, the more he just looks horrible and delusional here. What's up with that?
He's gone over the deep end for certain and has lost any shred of credibility he used to have as far as I am concerned. Not that he really cares what I think of him...but sheesh..this is just horrible crap he's spewing, just horrible and unforgiveable. Is he just trying to get attention here...because some people need attention so badly, even negative attention is something that they feel is good to them. Or does he have a vendentta against someone involved in this story, but either way he should know better, it's not his own motive that should be driving his stories, it's the facts that should be driving them. And he's clearly thrown facts out the window lately...How sad...What a fool...what a hack. I really wonder if he is on a payroll for some wingnut entity. I really do. How sad!
You exposed him as the true hack he has become..he appears to be the type that won't back down...He has no credibility anymore...he's worth ignoring and not wasting time on.
Posted by emal at April 19, 2006 06:56 AMBob Somerby used to be a cracker jack, logical news analyst. Sometimes not so good with laying out things clearly, but always good at meticulously laying out the logic.
And then Plamegate, Joe Wilson and the Niger documents. And he just lost it - completely.
He rried to make a big deal about "sought" a deal, or Joe Wilson getting some chronology wrong in an interview, etc. And all along refusing to ask the bigger questions:
1) Was there any evidence of a Niger deal? yes / no.
2) Did Iraq have a nuclear program, yes / no?
etc.
Personally I think it's rather tragic, the Daily Howler was a trail-blazer both as a blog and for media criticism, so it was very sad to see it just blaze.
Posted by Samuel Knight at April 19, 2006 11:08 AMPraise from Jane Hamsher, firedoglake: "As the premier Niger uranium document historian in the blogosphere his latest is a must-read...."
You're the greatest. Keep up the good work.
Posted by egregious at April 19, 2006 11:33 AMSomerby thinks almost exclusively about text, whether looking for internal consistency within a single text or comparing one text to another in an attempt to determine the most authoritative report. At its best, this technique provides useful insight into the media - how stories are reported and how "scripts" propagate, etc.
What Somerby evidently can't recognize is that the technique breaks down when the official text was designed to mislead. For instance, he frequently reiterates Bush's SOTU statement (that Iraq sought uranium from Africa), claiming that neither Wilson's trip nor any later revelation had any bearing on Bush's claim, since they only address the issue of an actual purchase. But the whole reason Bush used the word "sought" is that he and his people knew there was no evidence of a purchase but still wanted to imply it. "Sought" is a weaker, more ambiguous claim than "bought," making it much more difficult to disprove. It is a weasel-word, intended to obscure the facts. But Somerby's method assumes that it was uttered in good faith, so the underlying issue escapes untouched.
I see that Samuel Knight beat me to the punch here, so let me just second his comments. Keep up the good work, eriposte.
Posted by Joe Bridge at April 19, 2006 11:37 AM