Well, with the end of the “Scott Thomas” affair, John Cole looks like a total ass, but he won’t let it go.
It really pains me to link and quote the asshat site Balloonjuice but this much asshattery cannot go unanswered:
My position on Beauchamp has been clear- who cares? Really, while you all are trying to excuse your chest-thumping groupthink by claiming “TERRIBLE CRIMES HAVE BEEN COMMITTED” and whipping yourself into a lather screaming about how much this hurts the troops and it just can’t be true, the rest of us are looking at you and wondering what the hell is wrong with you. First, the enemy doesn’t read TNR. They really don’t. Al Qaeda in Iraq is not going to justify their next IED because Beauchamp reported that some GI’s made fun of a woman in a mess hall. Saying otherwise is absurd.
Second, I don’t know how many people read TNR, but I never even heard of Beauchamp until I saw the hysterics brigade massively linking the issue on memeorandum.com. Your childish and goonish antics and response have given this story 100 times the play it ever would have received. Seriously- try this at a bar tonight- ask if anyone knows who Scott Beauchamp is. Then, enjoy yourself trying to explain to the people who just looked at you quizzically and shrugged their shoulders that IT IS A SUPER BIG DEAL AND THE TROOPS ARE IN DANGER AND THAT MICHELLE MALKIN THINKS IT MEANS THE LEFT HATES AMERIKKA. Seriously, have fun with that. The absurd response has given this stupid story far more legs than anything the TNR PR department could dream up.
Finally, is it possible that Beauchamp is just the company shitbird and many of these claims, while rooted in truth, are exaggerated? Absolutely. Are you telling me that you have no faith in his NCO’s taking care of this, and that unless you keyboard comandos go crazy and make sure Beauchamp is publicly executed, he is going to get off scot free for lying? Sheesh- as a former NCO, I am a little miffed you all have so little faith in our current Army’s non-coms.
So, the righty blogs who pursued this are hysterics, after a trivial story and whipped inot a lather.
Let’s compare this case to the Jeff Gannon hysteria.
“Scott Thomas” gained the right’s ire by posting, on a “reputable”, national magazine. Jeff Gannon wrote for the tiny Talon News. His principle sin? Being gay and having the wrong politics. How did the Left respond? By digging into his personal life with the express desire to get him fired. Now I’m not saying the guy was a saint, but who among us would want their entire personal life spread out on the ‘net, and for the spiteful reason that the lefties didn’t like the questions he was asking in White House press conferences.
In contrast, the Scott Thomas affair was about right bloggers exposing a liar who was smearing U.S. troops as part of a leftist magazine’s propaganda machine designed to subtly, in a million ways, work to hurt the military and turn public opinion against the War they are fighting in Iraq, helping the Dems in their quest to defund that war.
And, instead of digging up dirt on “Scott Thomas’ ” personal life, they dug into the facts (something for which Cole roundly derides them, snarking about “Powerline proving with a scale model you can’t run over a dog with a Bradley”- yeah, trying to prove things with research and collaborating sources is something so foreign to the left that they hoot and ridicule it like chimps hurling feces at some object they don’t understand, like say a Port-O-John.
John Cole being a leftist demogogue and partisan shill is no surprise and pretty standard for the left. To cling so stubbornly to “I was right even if I was wrong, and they are wrong even if they were right” is pretty risible. But if you want to start talking “hysterics” you need to read some of the links when you Google Jeff Gannon, especially by gay leftists like those at Ameriblog (sorry, no link). The true hypocrisy is stunning.
Imagine the calls of troglodyte and bigot that would have been hurled by the left had Scott Thomas been correct in his stories, but the right had gone after him because he was GAY, and exposed him and ruined his career just because they didn’t like his posts, true or not.