Bob Somerby just rips Josh Marshall a new one.
And, because I can’t leave well enough alone, some general flame-baiting:
“Does Josh Marshall qualify as a member of the Reality-Based Community?”
Ouch
by John Cole| 49 Comments
This post is in: Politics, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
Anderson
I have no investment in Josh Marshall, but I don’t see how he’s been blessed with any new orifices.
Marshall: “On CNN today, Sen. Roberts (R) said Valerie Plame couldn’t be covert since she was working at CIA headquarters at the time her identity was exposed.”
Somerby quotes Roberts: “And I must say, from a common sense standpoint, driving back and forth to work to the CIA headquarters, I don’t know if that really qualifies as being, you know, covert.”
Somerby: “Sorry. Plainly, Roberts did not say that ‘Plame couldn’t be covert since she was working at CIA headquarters.’ He plainly said, two separate times, that he ‘didn’t know’ if Plame was covert—that it was ‘still questionable.'”
This is literalism at its worst. Roberts, an experienced senator, is too clever to commit himself to a declarative sentence. But anyone can read his statement and see that he’s implying that, if she did drive to CIA every day, she wasn’t covert—which more knowledgeable folk than I have denounced as hokum. (Whether CIA *should* be more careful is another issue, one that this Roberts investigation might actually do well to address.)
So if Marshall’s guilty of anything, it’s of requiring too much intelligence of his readers. But hey, when your blog is the “Daily Howler,” then howlers must arrive daily, no matter how you have to work to create, er, discover them.
M. Scott Eiland
Looks like JMM just pulled another steaming pile of “reality” out of his ass.
KC
I wrote this post in the comments section on Dean’s statements but think it applies more here:
I wish the Left would take a look in the mirror sometimes when it comes to heated rhetoric or misalligned facts. Somerby offers an especially good example of why a mirror is good sometimes today.
Normally, I enjoy reading J. Marshall, but lately I’ve drifted from reading him a little. Part of it is because I get plenty of insight filled schooling from reading Balloon-Juice, but it’s also because I think Josh is starting to go overboard a little. In fact, I emailed him last week asking hoping for some sor of explanation or rebuttal to Somerby’s recent criticisms. I never expected a reply, most people are busy, J. Marshall especially, but I was hoping for at least an acknowledgement of Somerby’s points on his website. So far it hasn’t happened. The question is, will it?
Steve
Underneath Somerby’s vitriol is really just a nit-pick.
Sen. Roberts didn’t say Plame wasn’t covert, but he did express doubt as to whether she was covert, based upon a disingenuous premise. Namely, he said gee, I don’t know if Plame could really be considered covert, since she went to work at Langley every day. Marshall’s point was that the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee either knows or should know that hundreds of covert operatives go to work at Langley every day.
But Marshall did overstate the case by claiming that Roberts said Plame definitely wasn’t covert, when he actually said that he wasn’t sure if she was covert. Still, the fundamental point, that you shouldn’t claim a settled matter is doubtful based upon a premise you know to be false, is rather valid.
SamAm
Here’s a better question.
What kind of moron doesn’t understand that all sorts of covert agents go to Langley? And why would that person be chairman of the Senate intel committee?
If we’re going by a literal reading of what Marshall said, then yes, he is incorrect.
Roberts only strongly implied that Plame could not be covert, and that driving to Langley makes one not covert.
My overall take? “Josh Marshall has learned that recently Pat Roberts became a dishonest administration shill.”
ppGaz
Is there really anyone out there, with the exception of the irrepressibly stupid and dishonest Ben Stein, who doesn’t know that an agent’s covert status is not based on what she is doing right now, or where she is posted?
Good lord. I can’t believe people are actually talking about this at this late date, unless it’s to point out that the apologists’ attempts to use this red herring as a deflection is getting pretty tiresome.
Steve
Something cute that I saw, from the CIA’s website:
Gosh, do you suppose the guy who manages the CIA on a day-to-day basis goes to work at Langley every day? Or do you suppose he calls in all his instructions from his top-secret base at the bottom of the sea?
Roberts is basically playing on the gullibility of people who get their information about the CIA from watching Alias, but I think he knows better.
BinkyBoy
What Roberts was trying to do is put out the little wiggling bug that Plame “might not have been covert”. Its a propaganda tactic that starts with creating doubts and then allows a much broader brush to stroke over the next big lie “she wasn’t covert, so no crime could have been committed”.
Somerby is just being an arrogant prick. He could have just ran an article stating that he doesn’t believe thats what Roberts said, but instead he rushes in to rub Marshall’s nose in what he thinks is a mess on the carpet.
KC
Steve, SamAm, I think you’ve both made fairly strong points. Roberts is an experienced Senator. I doubt he’d suggest that driving back and forth to Langely undercuts one’s covert status if he wasn’t trying to mince words a little. Still, I thought Somerby had some fairly good points about Marshall here and here.
Steve
I agree with that. Somerby usually gets it right. But just like those he criticizes, he can occasionally slip into a little rhetorical excess himself.
Recently, for example, Somerby has complained about people like John McCain and David Brooks who claim that they “don’t know why Judith Miller is in jail.”
Well, yes, of course. But being a LITTLE more charitable to these folks, do you think maybe their point is that they don’t get why Miller’s testimony is so gosh-darned important to the criminal probe? I doubt they literally meant that they don’t know why she’s in jail. “Well, gee, I guess she’s in jail because the marshals took her there.”
Sometimes, on a slow day, Bob will do some razor-thin parsing of someone’s words, and then run with it for 6 or 7 paragraphs of ranting. I guess that’s life as a blogger.
Geek, Esq.
Marshall is guilty of reading between the lines. Something all pundits are guilty of at one time or another.
Otto Man
Not sure why you’re pounding the “reality-based community” thing, since it’s a phrase dreamed up by a Bush administration member to say that, sure, Democrats are stuck in a world of facts and details, but we Republicans can use our pixie dust and faith in unicorns to do whatever we want. I’d rather be in reality than in the “clap harder!” fantasyland of the neocons.
Tim F
It’s obvious that Somerby has a hard-on for Josh Marshall. Marshall hasn’t been much more disingenuous than practically anybody else in punditry, seeing as Roberts really is playing semantic games with Plame’s status and his probe really is planning to investigate the Fitzgerald investigation itself, so Somerby must think that Marshall is unusually important to merit the attention. My read is that Somerby makes the mistake of mistaking JMM’s online punditry for his role as a journalist. Somerby makes his living slamming people who have some stake in defending their credibility, e.g. elected officials and journalists. If he made a business of slamming pundits for disingenuousness he’d need staff.
If JMM is being a bit disingenuous, and I think he is, there is an element of strategy to it. Now is a very uncomfortable time to be seen as a Bush lackey. Make the ‘lickspittle’ charge stick then Roberts will have to work twice as hard to prove his independence. Same story with Rockefeller, it works to our advantage if he’s defending against charges of being weak and compliant. People will get called who might not have gotten called and questions will get asked that might not have gotten asked.
Seen in that way, Marshall’s playing politics. In a town whose game is politics it’s a lot smarter than playing foursquare.
Andrei
You think that article qualifies as ripping someone a new one?
My god, you are very close to jumping the shark.
Geek, Esq.
Under Rove’s direction, the Republicans m.o. has been to suggest and imply things without actually stating it in so many words.
No one in the Bush administration was quoted as saying that Saddam was behind the 911 attacks. However, it’s no coincidence that the overwhelming majority of people who thought that Saddam was involved were Republicans. They mislead and deceive while being literally truthful.
Somersby somehow doesn’t get why that kind of communication should be challenged as it operates.
KC
Tim F seems to have a plausible theory for this one. Marshall’s smart, he has clearly been somewhat activist lately (see all the stuff he’s done on Social Security), so I can see this being true too. I guess it gets to the heart of why Somerby calls it “propaganda” in his post today.
I’ve also noticed Somerby has hit Kevin Drum pretty hard several times. I remember at one point he said he was going to focus on Democrats and liberals for a while to try and push the discourse in a better direction or something. Maybe that’s why he has been so focused on Marshall recently?
rilkefan
Somerby has a bee in his bonnet about liberal bloggers who have a higher profile than Daily Howler and who in his mind are out to become pundits and hence are afraid to shake things up. Here he’s decided (for some bee-in-the-bonnet reason) that the liberal view “Plamegate is important” is herd think, so of course he’s obliged to attack Marshall. I link twice to The Poor Man showing Somerby’s characteristic occasional crankness here.
norbizness
When coupled with Roberts’ numerous other Administration water-carrying moments detailed by Marshall, I would conclude that the ongoing activities by the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee is of slightly greater import than a one-phrase characterization by the author.
But I’m sure he’ll never work in this town again, etc., etc.
P.S. It is possible to disagree with Bob Somerby.
P.P.S. Actually, the comment thread should have been closed after Anderson’s first comment.
Anderson
P.P.S. Actually, the comment thread should have been closed after Anderson’s first comment.
Only if we’re prepared to become an Anderson-based community, which I would have to strongly advise against.
(But thanks, I was starting to wonder whether the comment was showing up on anyone else’s browser.)
p.lukasiak
I get the impression that Somersby offered to be a part of TPM Cafe, and was turned down.
Of course, our host has nothing to say about the fact that Roberts REFUSES to hold hearing on the outing of a covert CIA agent (and yes, Plame was COVERT, although she may not have been NOC), and left out a variety of highly pertinent facts — and distorted others — about Wilson’s trip to Niger, and is now acting like a partisan shill by trying to imply that it doesn’t matter that Plame was covert — that the CIA keeps too many secrets. (Hey, you want secrets, explain why Shrub won’t open up the Reagan and Bush I papers like they are supposed to be open under the law….)
Rick
Kinko’s is back!
Cordially…
KC
Just read your first comment Anderson. Norbizness is right, it sums up things nicely.
d
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors.. and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community
I would have thought that Marshall’s leap-in-logic is a relatively minor transgression.
DougJ
When the liberals say they are “reality-based” they are usually refering to left-wing pseduo-scientific hoaxes like evolution, the big bang, and global warming. That’s the irony of it.
Tim F
Ok, I’ll play along. Describe something that constitutes real science. For a bonus point describes what is different between your example and evolution.
DougJ
“Describe something that constitutes real science.”
I’m not a scientist, but I’ll name a couple off the top of my head: the discovery of DNA by Watson and Crick, Galileo’s gravity experiments, that experiment where they established that the speed of light is constant around a hundred years ago. Pretty much anything that involves reproducible experiments.
DougJ
Bonus point: macro-evolution cannot be verified by experiment. I know, I know, micro-evolution can with fast-reproducing bacteria. So I DO believe in that.
dirk strom
Hating everything DougJ says merely makes me stronger. Ha.
The clear dyspepsia re: Marshall suggests if anyone needs intestinal rearrangement, it’s Somerby himself.
jg
You used Galileo as an example? How ironic.
Tim F
I had the same reaction.
Tim F
Galileo did not ‘discover’ the law of universal gravitational acceleration by removing gravity. He made observations and developed a model to explain them. Then he made predictions based on the model and tested them. Evolutionary research works exactly the same way.
Doug didn’t mention Galileo’s duscovery of the sun-cenered solar system because the “big bang” was discovered more or less the same way. Then again, the big bang hasn’t been proven conclusively so it doesn’t really belong in the same category as evolution.
Darwin’s theory of evolution actually constitutes five theories. Let’s list them and see which one is bothering Doug.
1) Evolution proper. The world is not constant, it is not recently created and it does not continually cycle back to a starting point.
2) Common descent. That is to say, organisms alive today derive from common ancestors.
3) Multiplication of species. A single species can diverge into two or more distinct species.
4) Gradualism. Populations diverge by slowly accumulating changes.
5) Natural selection. This theory depends on three sub-theories: First, any population contains diversity. Second, in a diverse population some individuals will have a reproductive advantage. Third, advantageous characteristics can be inherited.
Talking about “evolution” in general is a great way to get lost in digressions and generalities. Let’s be specific and see where the problem is.
albedo
“When the liberals say they are “reality-based” they are usually refering to left-wing pseduo-scientific hoaxes like evolution, the big bang, and global warming.”
I know I shouldn’t get drawn into this, and you may be kidding/trolling, but calling evolution a “left-wing pseudo-scientific hoax” is flat-earther territory. (The “left-wing part is especially crazy, as if there aren’t any republican, conservative, or religious scientists).
Well known evoutionary biologist Douglas Futuyma:
“A few words need to be said about the “theory of evolution,” which most people take to mean the proposition that organisms have evolved from common ancestors. In everyday speech, “theory” often means a hypothesis or even a mere speculation. But in science, “theory” means “a statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles, or causes of something known or observed.” as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it. The theory of evolution is a body of interconnected statements about natural selection and the other processes that are thought to cause evolution, just as the atomic theory of chemistry and the Newtonian theory of mechanics are bodies of statements that describe causes of chemical and physical phenomena. In contrast, the statement that organisms have descended with modifications from common ancestors–the historical reality of evolution–is not a theory. It is a fact, as fully as the fact of the earth’s revolution about the sun. Like the heliocentric solar system, evolution began as a hypothesis, and achieved “facthood” as the evidence in its favor became so strong that no knowledgeable and unbiased person could deny its reality. No biologist today would think of submitting a paper entitled “New evidence for evolution;” it simply has not been an issue for a century.”
And I’m not even going to get into the preponderance of evidence for global warming, since you have to be joking, anyway.
rilkefan
The evidence for the big bang (light element abundance, cosmic microwave background, the observed matter distribution) is very strong.
DougJ
“Galileo did not ‘discover’ the law.”
I didn’t say he did, did I, Mr. “Reality-Based”? He did run experiments about gravity at the leaning tower of Pisa. I realize that he then used this to model the solar system.
Look, I believe scientific experiments. I don’t necessarily believe every crack-pot theory about the past that left-wing scientists cook up.
Tim F
That would be no, and no. The gravity experiments used inclined planes, rolling balls and a metronome. The solar system came from work with a telescope, which he didn’t invent but might as well have.
That’s true. The difference that I would draw is that despite strong evidence people who matter still dispute substantial details of the big bang, while nobody who is qualified to have an opinion about the primary theories of evolution doubts any of them.
CaseyL
DougJ, if you believe in reproducible results, in science that can be proven experimentally, what’s your take on carbon dating, plate tectonics, and DNA testing?
albedo
“Look, I believe scientific experiments. I don’t necessarily believe every crack-pot theory about the past that left-wing scientists cook up.”
Evolution is not crack-pot. It is the accepted explanation for how life came about on Earth in the scientific/academic community – and that community includes republicans and deeply religious people. All available evidence gathered over the past 100 odd years including, as you mention, micro-evolution experiments, not to mention the fossil record, carbon and radiometric dating, transitional forms, vestigial characteristics, ontogeny, and speciation, supports it. Claiming disbelief because it cannot neatly be proved in one scientific experiment is a truly intellectually dishonest argument.
I urge you to go here and take a look around. You are simply wrong about this.
Bernard Yomtov
1. Anderson really says all that needs to be said abaout Somerby’s comments.
2. DougJ’s comments really need to be compiled and published as a book, along with the responses. He may be the first true artist of trollery.
Bob
If Kerry had spent less time discussing the Big Bang theory at the Dems’ National Convention he would be President today.
+++
By the way, has anyone of the “everyone” who knew Plame was CIA before she was outed come forth and revealed him or herself? Didn’t think so.
+++
I read the Daily Howler before I got here and saw no evidence of a new asshole. Just the same old one who writes the Daily Howler.
Stormy70
O/T Looks like Knoll did get in front of the cameras at the military funeral.
jg
And like the heliocentric solar system, evolution is being attacked as an assault on Gods word and again the bible thumpers are calling for people to stop pursuing a line of thougth that conflicts with what the bible says is true. Have they called for the jailing of people who teach evolution yet?
Sojourner
DougJ is a liberal mocking the righteous right with his insane (and insanely funny) comments. He’s a much more brilliant comedian than we’ve given him credit.
Just have a good laugh, thank him for the joke, and move on.
narciso
I know what the Langley website says; but someone forgot to
tell Jason Vest, last winter, when outed both the
operations and executive director in the Nation and the BostonPhoenix,maybe that same spokesman that confirmed Valerie Plame’s status ;
MI
Damn, my posting here is becoming obsolete since Steve keeps pretty much says everything I would say if I weren’t always late to these discussions.
KCinDC
I must say, I don’t know if Somerby really qualifies as being, you know, competent.
Tim F
Yes I know, and I’ve said so before. Unfortunately, science debate is like catnip for me. I wake up the next day wearing a window drape and nursing a headache.
Sojourner
I know what you mean.
HH
Drum comes in for a pounding in the follow-up…