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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Fallows Drops the Hammer

Reader Interactions

203Comments

  1. 1.

    schrodinger's cat

    Ferguson is a liar, he lies with such conviction, that Romney could take lessons from him.

  3. 3.

    Hunter Gathers

    If anything, Tina Brown’s enjoying the uptick in page views for her online vanity project today.

    Fucking logic, how does it work?

  4. 4.

    Alex S.

    I hate Niall Ferguson with a fiery passion. How someone like that can be a Harvard professor is beyond me. He must have gotten the slot of the token conservative.

  5. 5.

    pseudonymous in nc

    Quoth Fallows:

    According to an article in the Telegraph this year, Ferguson has chosen America over Britain because the intellectual life back home is so shallow.

    In truth, he chose the US over Britain because he very much likes wealth and prestige, gets paid a lot of money to shill for the American right, and is able to retain a nominal position in academia while outsourcing the hard work to grad students in return for helping them up the career ladder.

    An Oxford professor would be expected to do more history and less politics; wingnut welfare isn’t anywhere near as lucrative in the UK; also, his ex-wife and kids need to be kept in the manner to which they were accustomed.

  6. 6.

    MattF

    Conservatives just have to decide whether or not they’re going to be honest. It’s an easy choice for some, a hard choice for others. I get the bad feeling that the choice was easy for Ferguson.

  7. 7.

    lamh35

    POTUS taking questions at Press Briefing. I can’t see presser at work and can’t get on twitter unless I used my Iphone and that’s a no-no in the lab. Anyone watching?

  9. 9.

    Soonergrunt

    If only he had done this on behalf of The Atlantic in regards to McMegan McBechamelMaker a couple of years ago.
    Oh, well. I’ll take what I can get.

  10. 10.

    ...now I try to be amused

    Fallows:

    The men and women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan were not told that “nation building” was the reason for their sacrifice. A review of the relevant history will reveal that they were sent in to rout the Taliban and al Qaeda, and to prevent Saddam Hussein from exercising his impending threat to use weapons of mass destruction. Everything since then has been “mission creep” of a spectacular variety, and unlike Ferguson most Americans view it as a success rather than failure of Obama’s to be reducing rather than expanding America’s commitment in both wars.

    Ferguson, of all people, should appreciate the advantages of limited war, considering that limited war had been very good for Britain.

  11. 11.

    celticdragonchick

    Niall’s next writing assignment is to show us how the next presidential race will be Condy versus Hillary…since he has shown how good he is at being Dick Morris with an accent.

  14. 14.

    Jack Bauer

    I’ve had it with these right wing British Tories, they can’t get away with peddling that shit at home so they come here where the audience for it is bigger. Fallows did an excellent job of reminding this guy of who he’s supposed to be. And what a fact is.

  22. 22.

    Violet

    @lamh35: I watched. Seemed pretty good. Several questions about Romney’s taxes. Obama said “the American people expect it” wrt releasing several years.

    He did say, “I’m not asking him for details of his medical records…although we customarily release those too.” Not sure if I got that verbatim, but that was the gist. Reporters laughed. Seemed like a mini-gaffe to me, in that when it comes time for medical records, now Romney has cover if he doesn’t want to release them. But maybe it’s rope-a-dope or something.

  23. 23.

    Roger Moore

    @PeakVT:

    Dear England,
    __
    Please stop sending us Tory hacks.

    I get the impression that we’re getting their worst, furthest right wing Tory hacks because the US is willing to tolerate mainstream politics that’s much further to the right than Britain. If Ferguson were still in the UK, he’d find his home with the BNP, not the Tories.

  25. 25.

    FlipYrWhig

    Niall Ferguson is becoming, or has long since become, a kind of high-rent Victor Davis Hanson.

  26. 26.

    Joel

    Ferguson is a goddamn embarrassment. Once upon a time, being such an inveterate liar was enough to end your career. Ah, for the good old days.

  27. 27.

    Joel

    Ferguson is a goddamn embarrassment. Once upon a time, being such an inveterate liar was enough to end your career. Ah, for the good old days.

  29. 29.

    Yutsano

    @PeakVT: Pfft. He has a sinecure at Hahvahd. He has nothing to concern himself with regarding reputation. After all he’s not the only douchebag there.

  30. 30.

    Mike E

    Love the reference to EO Wilson, who would not only destroy Niall tête-à-tête through cogent argument, but hand to hand as well, despite being his senior by 35 years. Ants, indeed.

  31. 31.

    FlipYrWhig

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    The concept of a conservatism that was not dogmatic, that did not rest on eternal truths to be found in Plato and Aristotle but on the prudential management of contingent liberal societies … well, I realized I had left it all behind in Britain. I just had my Oakeshott in the Widener library for succor.

    From Sullivan himself.

  32. 32.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    If NewsWeek hadn’t already become a pale shadow of The Huffington Post (and I don’t say that to be mean, in this case the truth has a mean bias) this would be a stain on their reputation. Add Tina Brown to the list of those who have turned a British accent and an OxBridge pedigree into a long-term, lucrative grift.

    I went to Wiki to see if Brown were in fact an embarrassment to the dreaming spires, and I found this. If you were writing a parody, your editor would probably say you were going too far with it:
    Evans divorced his wife in 1978 and on August 20, 1981 Evans and Brown were married at Grey Gardens, the East Hampton, New York, home of then The Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn.[

  33. 33.

    Violet

    Also, President said if they got word that chemical weapons were in play in Syria, that was a line they wouldn’t allow to be crossed and that everyone in the area had been told. I guess that means he’d send in the US military?

    Wasn’t a long press availability, but it’ll shut up the whining that he hasn’t appeared in front of the press in months.

    RE: Aiken, a couple of people on after the President’s press briefing said they thought the fact that Aiken said he wasn’t dropping out didn’t mean anything since Cornyn had made it clear he should drop out.

  42. 42.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Christ on a cracker. Our failed media experiment, Volume the I’velostcounth

    Politico reporter Dave Catanese took to Twitter to defend comments made by Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) about rape.
    “Poor phrasing, but if you watch the intv @ToddAkin meant to convey that there’s less chance of getting pregnant if raped,” he said.

  45. 45.

    Roger Moore

    @Violet:

    Wasn’t a long press availability, but it’ll shut up the whining that he hasn’t appeared in front of the press in months.

    You want to make a bet about that?

  48. 48.

    geg6

    Nice and elegantly done, Mr. Fallows. I especially like his challenge to this fraud’s students.

  49. 49.

    geg6

    @Hunter Gathers:

    Who’s clicking on it? It sure isn’t me. But I’m happy to give James Fallows the clicks for his evisceration of the fraud that is Niall Ferguson.

  50. 50.

    Mnemosyne

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    “Poor phrasing, but if you watch the intv @ToddAkin meant to convey that there’s less chance of getting pregnant if raped,” he said.

    And in conveying that, ToddAkin was fucking wrong. It is not true. It goes against all known science and scientific fact.

    I would be embarrassed for this guy from Politico for defending an incorrect fact so publicly if I didn’t know that he couldn’t care less that Akin was wrong.

  51. 51.

    Ed in NJ

    Newsweek is really covering all the bases. First the Romney is a wimp cover and now this re: Obama.

    I’m sure the right wing retards will continue to claim that Newsweek is a useless rag that nobody reads anymore as a result of this latest cover.

  55. 55.

    Dave

    Sullivan may be finally having his “come to Jesus” moment. He rips Niall a new one and ends with this:

    The piece is sadly so ridden with errors and elisions and non-sequiturs it will require a few more posts.

  56. 56.

    Gregory

    Grest googly moogly, Ferguson dinging Obama for the lousy job picture in 2008 — yes, they *year before he took office* is bad enough. But can’t Newsweek afford editors?! And if so, can they do basic math?

  57. 57.

    Kristin

    What is frustrating to me is that people will read this in Newsweek and believe it. The fact checking failure is spectacular. Or deliberate.

  58. 58.

    geg6

    @pseudonymous in nc:

    Jeebus. Is there no disaster afflicting this country that doesn’t, somehow, land on his desk and get even more fucked up than it was?

    He’s the Dem’s Bill Kristol, I swear.

  61. 61.

    LanceThruster

    @PeakVT:

    Kisses, that crazy place across the pond.

    That reminds me of this joke —

    Boy hears his father singing “I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now”

    Boy asks, “Daddy, where is her ‘now’?”

  63. 63.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Gregory:

    But can’t Newsweek afford editors?! And if so, can they do basic math?

    They were using McMegan’s famous calculator.

  64. 64.

    Downpuppy

    I think Ferguson will be gone from the Beast by September 4th.

    That’s the date Megan McArdle arrives there, so not a major upgrade.

  67. 67.

    Violet

    @catclub: Sorry. I know someone with the last name Aiken, so I think I typed it out of habit.

    @Roger Moore: Sure. I didn’t say it wouldn’t stop the press whining. But they can’t say he hasn’t appeared in front of them in months, when he did so today. They can whine about how long he was there, how many questions he took, which reporters he took questions from, the subject of the questions, his answers, the color of his suit, etc., etc. But as to whether or not he’s actually taken questions from the press in several months, their whining about that specific issue will die down for a week or so.

  68. 68.

    MikeJ

    @PeakVT:

    He was a prof at Camford (in that order) before coming here.

    And I’ve frozen my ass off in Tesco’s machine room. Doesn’t make me a box of fish sticks.

  71. 71.

    JPL

    OT… Sorry if this has been mentioned but TPM is saying that Akin is going to withdraw from the senate race.
    no mention of Newsweeks correction though.

  73. 73.

    Roger Moore

    @SatanicPanic:

    Niall’s rebuttal of Krugman is a joke.

    Yeah, calling him a dishonest right wing hack is an insult to dishonest right wing hacks. There needs to be a new term to describe this level of distortion and dishonesty.

  74. 74.

    GregB

    And we have Tony Perkins warning Scott Brown to watch his mouth for calling on Captain Honest Rape to step down.

    Please, more of this lunacy it may be clarifying to some.

  75. 75.

    Violet

    @JPL: I wonder how that’s going to work. The forced birthers are supporting Akin. They aren’t going to like it if he’s forced out.

  76. 76.

    jwb

    @JPL: Ha, ha, ha. On Twitter there seems to be rather a lot of confusion as to whether Akins will withdraw. It’s only a matter of time, I think, but he sounds like he might be stubborn enough to trip the Tuesday deadline.

  78. 78.

    Nellcote

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Politico reporter Dave Catanese took to Twitter to defend comments made by Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) about rape.

    Politico fired their AA reporter for true statement saying Rmoney was most comfortable talking to white men. Will this by Catanese require any action by Politico?

  80. 80.

    Chris

    @PZ:

    Well… no. That’s the entire point of wingnut welfare. As long as the stupidity you uttered was in line with orthodox conservative thought, you’re good.

  82. 82.

    Mudge

    Ferguson should know better than to tangle with an old China hand. Sadly Ferguson’s article will be driven by Cokie’s Rule..it doesn’t matter if it’s true, it’s out there.

  83. 83.

    Anya

    Ferguson didn’t leave the U.K., the U.K. left him. Even the Tories kept their distance. They didn’t want to be stuck defending his outdated views. There’s so the matter of the new Mrs. Ferguson.

  84. 84.

    ChrisNYC

    How sad. Yet another day where Romney’s exciting idea on the economy (“I will GROW jobs!”) is drowned out. Bet they’re wishing they had actually campaigned for the last year of the campaign. Too risky though.

    ETA – OT and PS I despise N. Ferguson

  85. 85.

    Rob in CT

    Newsweek’s defense is, get this, they don’t have fact checkers.

    Because fact-checkers make Right Wing assholes cry, I guess.

  86. 86.

    ? Martin

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Politico, eh. Anyone else surprised? No. Okay.

    And Akin is certain to go after this. Obama’s all in on making Akin the poster child of the GOP position on women’s rights. They’re already pointing out that Akin and Ryan are on the same page wrt to abortion rights. The GOP needs to shut this down right now – and jettisoning Akin won’t accomplish that, but it’s a start.

  89. 89.

    Ash Can

    Fallows calls Harvard the world’s greatest university in his piece, and that’s understandable since he’s an alum. It’s certainly a dandy school, but world’s best? With this crap going on? I don’t think so.

  90. 90.

    JPL

    @? Martin: Don’t forget that Ryan was teamed up with Akin to redefine rape. Whether or not Akin stays in the race or not Ryan has supported him in the past.

    Is Niall here illegally? Enquiring minds want to know.

  93. 93.

    PurpleGirl

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:
    …Grey Gardens, the East Hampton, New York, home of then The Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn.

    That’s very interesting because Grey Gardens is/was the home of Edith Bouvier Beale, a cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy. Ms. Beale and her mother were featured in a movie about them and the house made by the Maysles brothers. Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn may have home in the Hamptons, but it wasn’t Grey Gardens.

  94. 94.

    Violet

    @Valdivia: Since Ryan and Akin co-sponsored at least one (several?) forced birther bills, it’s going to be pretty easy to tie them together. Now, will Dems continue, even if Akin drops out? I hope they hammer it home today to get people making the connection.

  95. 95.

    Catsy

    @? Martin:

    The GOP needs to shut this down right now – and jettisoning Akin won’t accomplish that, but it’s a start.

    It’s yet another delightful opportunity to drive a hard wedge between the forced-birth right-wing extremists on one side and the rest of the country on the other.

    And like so many other opportunities, it’s a problem that exists solely because the 27%ers who constitute the Republican base are so radically out of touch with the rest of the country–and think otherwise.

  96. 96.

    Ash Can

    @Nellcote: If Catanese were black, his office would be cleaned out, vacuumed, and have someone else’s name on it by now. Or maybe the folks at Politico don’t care about misogynistic stuff because, heck, women aren’t people and don’t figure into their readership.

  97. 97.

    Violet

    @PurpleGirl:
    Sure it is:

    In anticipation of HBO’s new film adaptation of the lives of Big and Little Edie Beale — immortalized in the 1975 Maysles documentary Grey Gardens — the woman who owns the infamous Hamptons mansion chatted with W magazine about living inside a legend. Author Sally Quinn, who is married to former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, had read about the Beales and their dilapidated house in a 1972 Gail Sheehy article in New York. In 1979, when she was looking for a new house on the East End, a real-estate agent mentioned it to her, because Little Edie, then 61, hoped to sell it. When they arrived, the broker, who was desperate to sell the house, wouldn’t go inside with her. Even after renovations in 1972 (paid for by Jackie Kennedy and her sister Lee Radziwill), the place was a wreck.

  99. 99.

    JPL

    OT.. TPM now saying Mitt is asking him to leave. Of course that was with a promise of a cabinet position. (teehee)
    Someone needs to ask Paul Ryan what exactly is forcible rape.

  101. 101.

    Bobby Thomson

    @GregB: Just kabuki theater to make brown look moderate. There’s no way Perkins can hurt brown (other than by praising him), nor will he try.

  102. 102.

    Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937

    “I was a good loser four years ago. But this year, fired up by the rise of Ryan, I want badly to win.”

    Says the guy who is not even a citizen of this country, unless he’s admitting voter fraud.

  103. 103.

    Ash Can

    Damn, I hope Akin stays in. I want him tied around the neck of the GOP. I want him to become the face of the GOP on the issue of women’s rights and welfare.

  104. 104.

    JPL

    OT.. new tpm Akin twitter

    I am in this race to win. We need a conservative Senate. Help me defeat Claire by donating: secure.campaignsolutions.com/toddakin/donat… #mosen

    Can we close our borders to tories.. ugh

  105. 105.

    Valdivia

    @Violet:

    I hope he stays and I hope they frame this as not just the idiocy about pregnancy but about categories of rape, as Obama did today in the presser. Because the rape category thing is a great thing to nail Ryan with since as you pointed out he co-sponsored that bill

  106. 106.

    ? Martin

    As much fun as it would be for Akin to stay in the race (which I agree), having him drop out guarantees that we hold MO-Sen without any spending needed, which was a completely lost cause. That basically prevents the GOP from retaking the Senate. That’s huge. That’s worth a LOT.

  108. 108.

    Hoodie

    @Dave: Sullivan never really comes to Jesus. He just can’t bring himself to the reality that Ferguson is a lying, disingenuous sack of shit who has made a racket of giving respectability to Republican inanity because it gets him attention and status. I guess it’s because he’s a “friend.”

    Sullivan is maddening in this way. He earlier wrote a piece on Ryan stating:

    I don’t share some Obama-supporters’ contempt for Paul Ryan. That’s in part because he comes across as a sincere, decent, fine fellow – whose Randian worldview has produced a reformist zeal known most intimately to an adolescent male. Indeed, he reminds me most of all of myself in my teens – dreaming of how to cut government in half, relishing schemes to slash taxes and slash spending and unleash revolutionary growth which, in itself, would render all other problems more manageable. There is no libertarian quite as convinced as a teenage libertarian. And it’s the adolescent conviction of Ryan that shines so brightly.

    He then proceeds to document facts that show what a lying, opportunistic hack Ryan really is, i.e., Ryan well knows what he is selling is utter bullshit and is far from the idealistic young kid Sullivan initially makes him out to be. I guess it’s because Ryan has such fantastic abs.

    Then, to top off his idiotic inconsistency, he shits out this gem:

    I

    ‘ll be frank, though, and say that some kind of premium support in Medicare seems to me the only solid way I can see right now to save us from fiscal catastrophe. If I had my druthers, I’d give the ACA a decade to make real progress on cost-cutting and then, if it failed, I’d move to premium support. Ryan’s right on the unsustainability of the current program and has made cutting it a campaign promise. We owe him thanks for that.

    Yea, let’s move Medicare to premium supports if the ACA shows premium supports fail for a healthier population. Ryan is not necessarily right; Ryan, like all swindlers, creates a false choice, and Sullivan swallows it hook, line and sinker.

  109. 109.

    peach flavored shampoo

    He aint dropping out. First rule of TeaTardom: piss off liberals at every opp.

    The louder libs and progs scream, the more likely he is to stick around. Christ, what if he actually wins in November?

  111. 111.

    JC

    But you know what, he got his lying piece as the COVER STORY on Newsweek.

    Prove him wrong, rip his facts to shreds, who will pay attention?

    For Ferguson, it is still, “Mission Accomplished”.

    The only way it could be Mission Unaccomplished, if next week, Newsweek would say, ON THE COVER, “We Apologize, Last Week’s Cover Story is Completely Wrong”.

    I don’t see that happening – though maybe we can start a campaign?

  112. 112.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @? Martin:

    having him drop out guarantees that we hold MO-Sen without any spending needed,

    Huh? The deadline for withdrawal is tomorrow, and if the GOP replaces Akin with Generic Republican, Generic Republican beats McCaskill.

  113. 113.

    Ash Can

    @? Martin: That’s a good consolation point, if that’s what happens. As long as it throws the race into sufficient turmoil on the GOP side, with split votes, write-ins, ratfucking etc., I agree it would be worth it.

  116. 116.

    jwb

    @EconWatcher: The GOP is definitely going to try to force it—they never wanted him in the first place—but Akin looks like a stubborn cuss; he probably figures that if he holds out until tomorrow (at which point it becomes considerably harder to replace him) and his poll numbers remain adequate (quick polling shows that he is still ahead) that the money will have to come back to him. He may well be proven right if he doesn’t continue to shed voters (although I think he will).

  117. 117.

    Punchy

    having him drop out guarantees that we hold MO-Sen without any spending needed

    No offense, but you’re flat-wrong here. MO is solidly red, and the only way it goes blue is…I dont really know. I dont think there is a way for Clare to win this, despite Akin’s mess.

  118. 118.

    mechwarrior online

    Brad Delong has called for him to be fired and for his position as a professor at Harvard to be reviewed. Sullivan has joined the dog pile as well.

  120. 120.

    Quaker in a Basement

    Shorter Ferguson: Yeah, I wasn’t blaming Obama for causing the 2008 job losses. I was blaming him for taking too long to clean up the mess.

  121. 121.

    Violet

    @? Martin: Don’t understand your thinking. How would another Republican in place of Akin mean that Claire wins? National GOP would probably rush in to spend money to defeat her.

  122. 122.

    jwb

    @Martin: How so? If Akin drops out today, the GOP can run another candidate and with a nice fat check from the Koch brothers be up and running in a couple of days.

  123. 123.

    Ash Can

    @Punchy: How did McCaskill win in the first place? (And I’m not trying to be snotty or anything; I’m really asking.)

  127. 127.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    Akin basically telling Hannity everything he said was wrong and he has apologized for it. Oh and the reason he is calling Hannity is to confirm that he will NOT be dropping out of the race.

  130. 130.

    piratedan

    echoing the sentiments that he needs to bring this candidacy to term…. after all, he was out there “interacting” amongst the reporters and media just asking for it with this salacious behavior of “vote for me, I know what you want and I’m gonna give it to you”. Seems to me that if you’re gonna go ahead and put yourself out there, you should have to deal with the consequences of your behavior.

  131. 131.

    scav

    He could just be going for a last minute surge in small donations and then dropping out at the last minute tomorrow. Cake + Eat.

  132. 132.

    Violet

    @Roger Moore: Yeah, but that’s not what Martin was saying, was it? I thought he meant Akin dropping out now (before Tues) meant Claire would win. I don’t see it that way. After Tuesday is something else entirely.

  133. 133.

    RyMaN600

    @Kristin:

    What is frustrating to me is that people will read this in Newsweek and believe it. The fact checking failure is spectacular. Or deliberate.

    It’s deliberate:

    Newsweek did not fact-check Ferguson’s cover story, according to Dylan Byers, a media reporter at Politico. Byers wrote on Twitter that a Newsweek spokesman said the magazine does not have a fact-checking department, and that “we, like other news organisations today, rely on our writers to submit factually accurate material.”

  139. 139.

    flukebucket

    @scav: Agreed. I would be willing to bet that tens of thousands of people will give up their Chick-Fil-A lunch for one day in order to donate to the loon.

  143. 143.

    Roger Moore

    @RyMaN600:

    Byers wrote on Twitter that a Newsweek spokesman said the magazine does not have a fact-checking department, and that “we, like other news organisations today, rely on our writers to submit factually accurate material.

    So now we’re just left with the question of what happens if/when they fail to live up to that expectation and submit obviously false material. Is Newsweek/The Beast actually going to punish Ferguson in any way, or will they continue to let him publish obvious falsehoods without consequences? If they don’t fire him for this, it should tell everyone exactly what they need to know about their journalistic standards.

  148. 148.

    peach flavored shampoo

    Hannity pounding on Akin, telling him he is putting the whole race in jeopardy, even Missouri for Romney/Ryan.

    That doesn’t sound very Fair and Balanced.

  149. 149.

    El Cid

    @RyMaN600:

    “we, like other news organisations today, rely on our writers to submit factually accurate material.”

    Thus, a recipe for business failure: They have no value added.

    Ferguson’s writings or similar such can be obtained directly from writers’ websites or blogs.

    If Newsweek openly states that it adds no value other than simply being one among many locations to find these words, one form of which being printed and mailed with lots of advertisements and another form of which is online with its own type of ads, what’s the incentive for me to spend any money doing business with Newsweek?

    What’s the value added? What’s the business model?

  151. 151.

    Calouste

    @jwb:

    The primary was a 3 way race in which Akin got 36% and the other two 30 and 29%. There will be a fight, probably dirty, between the other two for who gets nominated as the replacement.

  154. 154.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @Ash Can:

    How did McCaskill win in the first place? (And I’m not trying to be snotty or anything; I’m really asking.)

    It was a tight race (50/47) in a good year (2006) for Dems in general.

  156. 156.

    Downpuppy

    @Roger Moore: Saying they rely on writers to get it right sounds a lot like Niall is canned, no? Otherwise they’re saying they have no reason to exist & we have no reason to read them.

    On second thought, they’re saying that part even if Ferguson has been fired. And I see El Cid got there first.

  157. 157.

    El Cid

    @Downpuppy: Same thing as I’m saying — but they have to justify themselves as a business, too: what reason are they giving us to read their material (thus justifying their advertisers’ purchases with them) and in particular to subscribe or otherwise directly profit them?

    If journalists just quote what politicians say without any real evaluation of claims and counter-checks and the like, and if publications simply publish what ideologues write without any review or approval whatsoever, what do they offer more than a politician’s PR on his or her website or than a similar piece written on a blog or any other location?

  158. 158.

    Joel

    @? Martin: Disagree. I think MO is conservative enough that they could paradrop a candidate and still beat McCaskill. I would rather take our chances against Akin.

  159. 159.

    Joel

    @? Martin: Disagree. I think MO is conservative enough that they could paradrop a candidate and still beat McCaskill. I would rather take our chances against Akin.

  160. 160.

    gogol's wife

    @Raven:

    Fabulous!

    I’m so embarrassed that I once quoted Ferguson approvingly in a book I wrote. It was his book on the Rothschilds, which seemed good to me at the time. Maybe he was a real historian back then.

  161. 161.

    different-church-lady

    @Gregory:

    But can’t Newsweek afford editors?!

    Of course they can’t; they’re giving all their money to Tina Brown instead.

  164. 164.

    Chris T.

    @RyMaN600: Man… someone should write a Newsleak article about how the moon is made of green cheese, raw sewage is good to drink, and so on.

  168. 168.

    Violet

    @kay: They’re trying. But they can’t MAKE him resign, can they? He hasn’t breached ethics or whatever would be a reason they could force him off the ticket. He won the primary fair and square. They can only “encourage” him. He doesn’t seem to want to go.

  170. 170.

    Roger Moore

    @El Cid:

    If journalists just quote what politicians say without any real evaluation of claims and counter-checks and the like, and if publications simply publish what ideologues write without any review or approval whatsoever, what do they offer more than a politician’s PR on his or her website or than a similar piece written on a blog or any other location?

    They’re an aggregator. They go out and find the most engaging writers and put them all in one place so you don’t have to go looking for them yourself. That may not be of much value to anyone who knows how to operate a feed reader, but to people who have always counted on a publisher somewhere to do that for them, it has some potential value. Of course it has much less value without having actual editors and fact checkers and all that other journalistic stuff, but what do you expect for the price you’re paying?

  171. 171.

    ThresherK

    @RyMaN600: In all seriousness, are we to trust what Politico tells us about Newsweek?

    The laws of probability state that the intersection of the former getting a correct answer from the latter, and relaying it truthfully, approaches zero.

    To put it more bluntly, if you’re trapped in a burning building and a Newsweeker and a Politicoer tell you “this way out”, you’re done for.

  173. 173.

    Mnemosyne

    @gogol’s wife:

    There are quite a few right-wingers who are pretty good historians as long as they stick to actual history. It’s when they start trying to evaluate current events that they run off the rails.

  174. 174.

    raven

    Here’s a hot one he must have gotten from Guliani:

    “He later invoked 9/11 to explain his pro-life views, saying the first responders didn’t ask for identification of those they saved because all lives are important.

    “They don’t check their ID to see whether they’re important or not, they just take them to safety and run back for more,” he said. “They, by their lives, speak as Americans of what we think about the value of human beings and how much respect we hold people with.”

  175. 175.

    El Cid

    @Roger Moore: Google News is an aggregator. So is Yahoo News. So is the Huffington Post. So is Memeorandum. So are a lot of peoples’ blogs.

    That Newsweek’s best argument for its worth to the consumer as a business would be that they gather together particular writers — most of whom have work available elsewhere — would be a truly weak business model indeed.

    This isn’t the model for all publications. There are all sorts of publications which are quite popular and widely read and not as large as Newsweek (certainly at its historical heights) and likely a smaller budget, but they insist on the quality of the subject matters discussed by authors seeking to publish in their pages / site.

    Think if science magazines did this, and not just for every article but over time. ‘Yeah, well, we don’t check out the articles or their basic claims, and we don’t really aim to do something if it is shown to be nonsense even after it happens,’ who will subscribe?

    So maybe for some people, Newsweek‘s function (if it so claimed) as filter-free ‘aggregator’ is worthwhile, but the number of people who will need this intermediary to find the writers that they do or may like will dwindle quickly.

  176. 176.

    Penus

    Playing devils’ advocate here…where were the falsehoods in the Ferguson piece? (I’m coming back to this thread after doing other things and might not be remembering something completely, obviously wrong. If so, it was an honest mistake born of a newborn baby and a workday that started at 7 a.m.)

    Don’t get me wrong, I found it completely disingenuous. It was a terrible piece where he contradicted his own argument repeatedly. But he didn’t mess up actual facts, as far as I can see (again, could be forgetting stuff). He distorted them and cherry-picked date ranges that reflect poorly on Obama while ignoring facts that make him look good, but I don’t know that there were any out-and-out lies.

  177. 177.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @gogol’s wife:

    It was his book on the Rothschilds, which seemed good to me at the time. Maybe he was a real historian back then.

    That was around the time he was heading towards the exit. He managed to persuade the Rothschilds to open up their private archive to him (or, more precisely, him and his collection of undergrad and graduate researchers) and as a result, it draws upon a lot of unseen primary material.

    I’d say The Pity of War, his shitty revisionist book on the Great War, marks the point at which he stopped doing history and decided to go with rah-rah-empire for big advances from Murdoch.

  178. 178.

    Napoleon

    @Penus:

    They have been covered at something like a dozen other blogs at this point. Check Delong, Krugman, Drum, Fallows and Sullivan as a start.

  179. 179.

    bondirotta

    The timing here is perfect. One week for the Tampa freak fest. GOP thought they would slide Paul Ryan under the media radar and nobody would dig into his abortion views.

    Now even US journalists will be forced into dig into the whole “forcible rape” craziness. Abortion is going to be the theme for the entire pre-convention week.

    So sweet.

  181. 181.

    Amir Khalid

    @RyMaN600:
    That statement amounts to a public confession: “We at Newsweek have abdicated an important part of our responsibility as journalists: to ensure that what we publish is the truth, without lies or evasions or slant. Because some of our writers, such as Harvard professor celebrity intellectual Niall Ferguson, are too big to be fact checked or edited.”

  182. 182.

    Napoleon

    @Napoleon:

    PS, my favorite is Drum’s recounting of his reply to Krugman on why just counting the expenditures in the ACA and not the revenue was OK to do in support of his contention that Obama reneged on his promise not to run up the deficit with the ACA.

  183. 183.

    kay

    @Violet:

    They can’t force him to do anything. He won.

    This whole “rape”exception theory is nonsense anyway. Rape is a serious crime. If it goes to trial it’s going to be months and months, and what if there isn’t a conviction? No abortion for you!

    What’s the plan here? Special abortion-rape-exception hearings? Is an accusation of rape enough? THAT’S a nightmare of unintended consequences, dontcha think? Or do we wait for charges filed?

    I have never had any idea how these people plan on administering this “exception”. By the time we convict the rapist the pregnancy is either very advanced or actually over. It’s just more bullshit from the most impractical, fanciful people in the world, modern Republicans.

    I’m almost grateful to him. Maybe people will start thinking about how nothing anti-abortion people say makes any sense.

  184. 184.

    Penus

    @Napoleon:

    Honestly, I read those this morning but my brain is broken right now. I’m being lazy, but was wondering if there was any smoking-gun blatant fact that was a complete lie. The stuff I’m remembering is just things like Ferguson citing unemployment dating back to 2008 (while not actually getting the numbers wrong) and mentioning the expensive parts of ACA while leaving out the money-saving parts.

    And oh yeah, not mentioning what’s-his-name, that dude that was hanging out in Pakistan.

  186. 186.

    dance around in your bones

    @Raven: Haha – thanks for that.

    You know, she really wasn’t unattractive, she just had a rather large schnoz for her face.

    The penciled eyebrows were a bit much, but rather like fastening an onion to one’s belt, it was the style at the time.

  187. 187.

    RyMaN600

    @El Cid:

    Thus, a recipe for business failure: They have no value added.
    Ferguson’s writings or similar such can be obtained directly from writers’ websites or blogs.
    If Newsweek openly states that it adds no value other than simply being one among many locations to find these words, one form of which being printed and mailed with lots of advertisements and another form of which is online with its own type of ads, what’s the incentive for me to spend any money doing business with Newsweek?
    What’s the value added? What’s the business model?

    They have no interest in “adding value” if it involves paying anybody to do anything.

    It’s the default mentality of any publicly traded company nowadays: Find some way to make money hand-over-fist and post record profits in the coming quarter, all other business objectives be damned. If they could go web-only overnight and become an automated editorial aggregator dependent on obnoxious banner ads while cutting 90% of their workforce, they’d do so in a heartbeat.

    If they can’t recognize that a major, historic news magazine should have a goddamn fact checking department, they don’t deserve to have a reader base.

    Oh look, Newsweek actually IS going web-only in the near future! But I’m sure printing complete garbage had nothing to do with it. Good thing they got rid of those expensive fact checkers! I’m sure that’ll turn them around!

  188. 188.

    Cap'n Magic

    @El Cid: That also impinges on Sully as well, since they share the same parent.

    So now he’s part of the problem. Oh, goodie.

  191. 191.

    ? Martin

    @pseudonymous in nc:

    Huh? The deadline for withdrawal is tomorrow, and if the GOP replaces Akin with Generic Republican, Generic Republican beats McCaskill.

    Ah, indeed. I did get the timing wrong.

    I’m not certain that generic Republican beats Claire, though. If it was a name that MO voters were familiar with, that’d be a different matter. But Akin was that guy. The other contenders aren’t from what I can tell.

  192. 192.

    Napoleon

    @Penus:

    Those are lies in my book. I don’t see how anyone could conclude otherwise (especially with the whopper about the ACA). Just because he maybe cherrypicking doesn’t make it something other then a lie.

  193. 193.

    kay

    @Violet:

    I can’t wait for the “prove you’re pregnant by a family member” abortion+
    -permission hearings. Those will be memorable events for the girl-victims.

    There aren’t going to be any rape exceptions if they outlaw abortions, and these pathological liars damn well know it. They have to lie about it or people would see them as monsters, but there’s no way to administer this imaginary “exception”.

  194. 194.

    ? Martin

    @RyMaN600:

    It’s the default mentality of any publicly traded company nowadays: Find some way to make money hand-over-fist and post record profits in the coming quarter, all other business objectives be damned.

    Welcome to Mitt Romney’s America. That’s all he’s ever done – and any company that did add value got bought out, leveraged, equity extracted and tossed into the trash.

  195. 195.

    ? Martin

    @kay:

    There aren’t going to be any rape exceptions if they outlaw abortions, and these pathological liars damn well know it.

    Of course. The proof is that they’re systematically shutting down clinics so that even if you do count as an exception, there won’t be anyone around to do the procedure.

  197. 197.

    Evergreen (formerly Betsy, forever ago)

    A tenured professor of history at my undergraduate alma mater has written a cover story for Daily Beast/Newsweek that is so careless and unconvincing that I wonder how he will presume to sit in judgment of the next set of student papers he has to grade.

    Silly James Fallows. Niall Ferguson doesn’t grade his own papers.

  198. 198.

    John D

    @Penus: When his defense to Krugman’s shredding his article is to say “I specifically said ‘the insurance provisions’…”, he is arguing in bad faith and hoping the rubes would not notice. THAT is the falsehood.

    His entire thesis is that Obama broke his campaign pledge of revenue neutrality for the ACA, quotes the 1.2 trillion number and says “See! He broke his promise!”, when the reality is that the ACA will save money, the promise was not broken, and Niall *KNOWS THIS*.

  199. 199.

    dance around in your bones

    @rlrr: Or tossing tuppence out the sides of their carriage to that amusing – though filthy and hungry – mob.

    Whilst breathing through a perfumed hanky.

  201. 201.

    Comrade Mary

    @El Cid: Yep. Lazy, useless fuckers whose only holding of value is the rapidly diminishing power of the Newsweek brand, which appeals only to the olds.

  202. 202.

    jaleh

    I thought Newsweek was bought by Jane Harman’s husband for one dollar? I guess they published this piece of sh…to get some traffic, and they got it.

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