Friday, June 19, 2009

Froomkin’s Sins of the Village

I like the idea of calling D.C. "The Village", particularly after seeing the M. Night Shyamalan pretty dumb movie of the same name. There's a whole world outside that fence you're not allowed to get close to! Heh.

Emptywheel on Froomkin getting canned from WaPo:

Aside from Froomkin's sheer productivity (particularly as compared to his colleague, Dana Milbank, who complains about writing 3-4 750 word columns a week), these posts reveal certain things. On some issues--torture and wiretapping--Froomkin is increasingly critical, particularly as to Obama's "schizophrenia" regarding "transparency." On financial, health care, and foreign policy issues, Dan has been balanced--critical at times, but definitely appreciative of the complexity of Obama's task and his successes there. And of course, he's still beating up Bush and Cheney.

And that, apparently, is enough to get you fired from the Village rag.

To my mind, Glenn Greenwald has the best take on this so far.

All of this underscores a critical and oft-overlooked point: what one finds virtually nowhere in the establishment press are those who criticize Obama not in order to advance their tawdry right-wing agenda but because the principles that led them to criticize Bush compel similar criticism of Obama.

Sure, Froomkin's critical. He's critical in serious ways--perhaps more serious than his criticisms of Bush. But they are--as Glenn said--principled.

Is that what gets you fired in the Village these days? Adhering to principle over party?

Read Greenwald. He hits many nails on the head.

You can get fired from anywhere for putting principle over anything the boss wants you to do. It's better to get fired than quit over it because you can get unemployment. Trust me.

I'm not worried that we'll lose Froomkin's voice. He'll be back somewhere soon. It's WaPo's mistake and WaPo's loss.

No comments: