His first article at Slate has a bizarre and complex subject: Democrats are telling him (evidently in all seriousness) that they are afraid Republicans will use the scandals of Maxine Waters and Charles Rangel as a latter-day “Willie Horton” gambit.
Really? I mean, really? If we are to take Weigel’s Democratic sources at face value, they evidently have been shouting “raaaaacist” at Republicans so long that they’ve actually begun to believe it.
Alternative hypothesis: Weigel’s sources are trying to inoculate Democrats against any possible GOP employment of these two glaring ethics cases in campaign ads by preemptively declaring that such ads would constitute evidence of Republican racism.
Either way, it’s interesting, although I don’t think it’s the kind of reporting Weigel does best. He did, however, get in some quotes from a couple of friends:
Ladd Ehlinger Jr., an Alabama political consultant who produced larger-than-life spots for Republican candidates like Dale Peterson and Rick Barber this year, laughs uncontrollably when told that Democrats are even talking about this. “I have advice for Republicans who are too weak-kneed to make hay out of Rangel,” he says. “If anyone starts coming at you about Rangel or any of this stuff, just [say] this is post-racial America. This isn’t about race. It’s about a fat guy lying out in the sun on a beach and not paying his taxes.” . . .
“This is the cry wolf syndrome,” says Breitbart, who will appear at a Republican National Committee fundraiser later this year. “The battle against legitimate racism, which does in fact exist, is suffering from cry wolf syndrome, Mike Nifong syndrome, Spencer Ackerman syndrome.”
No word on what Weigel will have to add to the usual Sarah Palin obstetric conspiracy theories and Israel-bashing at Sully’s.
What next for Weigel? Guest-hosting the Alex Jones show?
UPDATE: Note Ace’s reaction, including the not-gonna-link-Sully-no-matter-what standard. Very few sites qualify for that extreme ostracism by Ace. Meanwhile, Weigel explains his Sully past. NTTAWWT.
Summer is a great time for blog-fights because traffic always goes down during the summer anyway, and you might as well be in a pissing match as trying to get people to pay attention to politics on the cusp of the Fourth of July. (Why do you think Pat Leahy scheduled the Kagan hearings now, anyway?)
I didn’t know Dave Weigel from a hole in the wall until January 2010. At that time, I was researching and blogging about an idiot named Dale Robertson — who was caught holding this sign at a Houston Tea Party event. Dave Weigel broke the story for a wider audience and it was picked up by Chuckles at Little Green Footballs . . .
Weigel’s original story reported this reaction from the Houston Tea Party Society:
Update: Josh Parker of the Houston Tea Party Society tells me that Robertson was booted out of the event for this sign.I thought to myself: Wow, now there’s a newsworthy nugget that Chuckles seems to find irrelevant in his zeal to tar and feather all Tea Partiers as racists. . . .
Even Media Matters reported the Houston Tea Party Society’s repudiation of Robertson because Dave Weigel reported on it! Some folks at Houston TPS were kind enough to give me some praise for blogging on their behalf, but it was really Dave Weigel who got the Houston TPS their due in a way I never could have with my miniscule following.
When the online Left, and even the Washington Times, tried to elevate Robertson as a “Tea Party Leader,” Weigel pushed back against this clearly erroneous meme. Dave didn’t do that to curry favor with anyone, but simply because this raaaaacism smear was a bogus hit-job, an illegitimate narrative that was being exploited to perpetuate a falsehood.
From the Fringe to the Mainstream
Several of my friends have pointed to Weigel’s habit of covering the fringes of the conservative movement, the goofs and nutballs and tinfoil-hatters. “He’s just interested in making us look bad,” seems to be the basic complaint.
Actually, I think this points to Weigel having the same Hit-‘Em-Where-They-Ain’t instinct that drives a lot of my reporting expeditions. Rather than engaging in pack journalism — jumping on the big Story Of The Day that everybody and his mother is already covering — there’s more news opportunity (and a lot more fun) in reporting stuff that isn’t yet on the radar of the mainstream press.
Hit ’em where they ain’t: Find a developing story that deserves more coverage and then jump into it neck-deep.
That approach to reporting works no matter what the story is. Who was the first music critic to see the breakthrough potential of the Ramones or REM or Nirvana? Better yet, who set out on an expedition to North Wilkesboro, N.C., in 1965 to cover a hillbilly pastime that now rivals the NFL as America’s favorite sport?
In politics, the hit-’em-where-they-ain’t approach means keeping an eye out for long-shot candidates and marginalized movements. The nature of American politics is that today’s kooky fringe is tomorrow’s rising insurgency and perhaps next year’s power structure.
Obama’s early association with the fringe leftovers of the ’60s New Left (Bill Ayers, et al.) led to a successful campaign fueled in large measure by the same anti-American kooks who thought Ned Lamont would make a good senator. Glenn Beck has become a TV star and bestselling author in large measure by chronicling shady connections among members of today’s Democratic/Progressive coalition — connections once known only to readers of publications that most reporters would dismiss as “right-wing fringe” — including WorldNetDaily, David Horowitz’s Discover the Networks and the John Birch Society’s New American magazine. (Hey, who has the lowdown when the story is a Russian spy?)
Whatever Weigel’s sins, his reporting on the Dale Robertson meme shows that at times he performed the valuable journalistic service of separating the factual wheat from the bogus chaff in MSM coverage of the Right. I’ll also remind you of Liz Mair’s suspicion that Weigel got burned by a progressive on Journolist for the “sin” of defending Rand Paul.
And by doing such things, Weigel pissed in Charles Johnson’s cornflakes.
