I’m fine with news outlets having stated political standpoints. It makes it easier to see where they are coming from and to weight the writing of different outlets with different points of view. However, having a standpoint in how editorials are written and how news are analysed is not the same thing as holding back information for political reasons. For example, re the Clinton emails, I don’t question the media’s reporting on them, I question the timing of the FBI announcement that they would investigate further when it was in breach of their own ethics regulations to make such announcements close to an election. Once hat announcement was made the media reported appropriately on a newsworthy case.
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Agree. An agent would be smarter and find ways to stay in place. This is a man acting like a fool.
Very profoundly damaged.
I’d say “mentally ill,” but that’s too vague and charged, so let’s just say broken. He rage-quits from a job that pays half a million a year for maybe a month’s honest work, and why? Because some goddamn jumped-up mudbrain, AKA his editor, keeps trying to edit him. He’s not annoyed because Maas was wrong, he’s aghast at the indignity of the implication that he’s wrong, or even just not expressing himself well. He is the smartest, so much smarter than you that you can’t even begin to understand how wrong you are for daring to get in his way, and fuck you forever for even trying.
It’s the same deal with ideological stuff. You might perceive a bit of a disconnect in a supposed leftist cozying up under the wing of a right-wing totalitarian dictator. But all he hears is you being too fucking stupid to understand that he IS the left, he DEFINES it, and if that means defending Vladimir Putin on Fox News then fuck anyone fake-ass pseudo-liberal who has a problem with it.
There is no such thing as enough attention for him, no such thing as praise worshipful enough, and no such thing as a conflict that can end in anything other than your utter annihilation, and he will fucking tell you when you’re annihilated enough.
The thing is, this particular form of brokenness isn’t really all that uncommon. I know half a dozen guys (seems like it’s always guys) who might have succumbed to it. Well, some of them did to some extent, and others kind of pulled themselves out of the spiral (or had help doing it). But if the extent of your ability to inflict this on others is limited to your tiny corner of the world, then really you just end up That One Asshole. It takes the kind of attention Greenwald was able to gin up for himself, and then parlay that into genuine fame and influence, for it to really go ultra-toxic. I mean, fame is rarely good for people’s emotional stability, but it just consumes and mutates people like him.
He’s not the only person like this on the public stage, of course. Just a very pure example of it.
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Those are all very good and very true points, but I would counter that the kind of person you are describing is exactly the kind of person that Russian intelligence knows just how to (and loves to) manipulate into serving their interests (see: Julian Assange). Perhaps Russia is not paying him with money; perhaps the ego boost that they give him is payment enough.
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Greenwald was disgusted that civil rights organisations were using lawsuits to bankrupt hate groups. He believed it to be an abuse of the legal system. David Neiwart counters that the groups that he defended were themselves depriving people of their free speech rights by means of violence and intimidation (see the Twitter thread linked below).
Another thread I saw, which I can’t find right now, was about how Greenwald has been working for years to build an alliance between the “anti-imperialist” far left and the isolationist far right.
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Um, I like the guy, and think he’ll be a good president. Same for Harris: sure, she has human faults, and some may not like the compromises she made to get good things through, but for me that’s a good sign.
I like pragmatic, slightly boring politicians best. For the record. Even if they cannot always see the fnords.
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the ridiculous open letter titled “on justice and open debate” published first on the harper’s website and then in the october print edition is signed by any number of these types of people and their enablers. i don’t know if she’s sui generis but bari weiss is a signatory and she seems very much the type you describe.
to me, greenwald has done maybe two really useful things–thinking here of snowden and brazilian corruption, and in a perfect world (ha ha ha) that would be enough for him and for us. sadly, he’s determined that it will never be enough for him and he’ll make everyone else regret he ever did anything. and it is sad.
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Oh sure. Russian agents are as Russian agents do. I’m sure if anything he thinks Putin is his useful idiot.
I wasn’t going to say Assange out loud, but yeah, Assange to a T.
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I genuinely think that situation in 2016 was a series of good intentions (that I agreed, but as intentions) that all went horribly wrong. Someone in the FBI found the laptop with the emails, and freaked out, thinking the rest of the FBI was hiding something, which they weren’t. When this brought up to Comey, he realized that, if he didn’t address it publicly, it would get out to the public anyway. He assumed that Hillary Clinton was going to win the election, and realized how bad it would look (like that stupid tarmac meeting) if she won and they had kept the new information secret.
Of course, the other assumption was that those emails would be new. They didn’t have time to analyze them, so Comey made a bad decision … which turned out to be even worse, because the emails were a non-issue, because they were all duplicates.
I don’t say this to defend Comey by any stretch. I think he’s a pompous buffoon, who always genuinely thinks he’s doing the morally righteous thing, with no regard for the precedent his actions set, in case anyone in the FBI is not a stalwart hero like him (which, well, history…).
I do think that a lot of the initial response to the Hunter Biden emails were a direct over-corrective response to that multi-pronged Clinton email bluster. Everyone ran with the Clinton email story — FBI, and media — even though it was nothing. The Biden emails are similarly nothing, and so deliberately timed with obvious insidious intention to trigger that exact same response. So media people tried to learn their lesson from that … but it also blew up in their faces, because it shifted into this narrative about “censorship” instead.
I think Greenwald makes an interesting point (though I don’t necessarily agree) that the it is the duty of a journalist to report the news regardless of its consequences. IF the Hunter Biden emails actually revealed anything, and the media sat on them while they tried to verify things, it could absolutely be seen as an irresponsible conspiracy to suppress information, in order to ensure a Biden victory. While Trump sucks, there is definitely a complicated moral question there, and it certainly shifts the role of journalism far beyond its lofty aspirations of “objectivism.”
However, I would counter that by pointing out that a large part of journalism is in fact in deciding what to cover — both in topics, and in the finer details. A journalist has to curate, in a certain way, on every level of reporting. You just put out every unconfirmed rumor as a front page headline, ya know? And that’s where Greenwald’s argument fell apart. NY Post was irresponsible in deliberately spreading a propaganda piece (which, like any good propaganda piece, was a mixture of deceptively curated truths and half-truths — a tactic that Greenwald should understand and appreciate, given his hatred of the CIA). The Post’s decision was the first domino, from which every other news outlet tried to respond.
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I think you just got to the heart of GG right there
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This is also Greenwald putting lipstick on a pig, because his sole interest in the Hunter Biden emails is to continue his prolific work of complaining about the DNC regardless of what’s going on around him. But Greenwald frames everything as a moral choice that is black and white, and if you bring up the existence of nuance he will make it his mission to “provide a forum for healthy discussion” by making fun of you on Twitter with like-minded assholes. He has also become an extremely wealthy man as the consequences of his proudly partisan reporting, but then levies the accusation that anyone else making a lot of money on their reporting is not to be trusted. It’s just the things he says to justify being an asshole all the time.
But setting it aside, Greenwald’s morality is based on things he decided decades ago were absolute truths in the world. But he never shows any “weakness” in this “moral fiber” by asking simple questions like why is there is rise in white nationalism with the rise of independent publication (and if he was pressed it would dismiss it as either being falsely reports by the MSM or a class issue citing no sources). It’s why a lot of people here used to be avid readers and didn’t turn away when he started disagreeing with him, but when he skewed deeper and deeper into the mentalities of Simpson memes.
From what I know his reporting in Brazil is excellent, and he has thrown himself into amazing causes along with his husband. He is just part of the problem in American politics, going so far as regularly trying to prove horseshoe theory true by saying left wing populists and right wing populists should unite and all be really cool with Tucker Carlson, famous white supremacist.
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I recall the general opinion being that the NY office of the FBI was home to some really rabid Clinton haters, and Comey was tossing them a bone to keep them from rioting (in their own way, of course). Comey was also one of those who thought Clinton would win, but making it close would keep her humble.
Oops.
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If you don’t think Bernie would have beaten Clinton without the entire weight of the Democratic establishment in her pocket, AND you don’t realize that Bernie would have easily beaten Trump (how many Trump votes were simply anti-establishment votes?) then you weren’t paying attention.
Please don’t tell me that Clinton “winning” that primary was about the popular sentiment of the voters.
Bernie would have won.
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I don’t think Bernie would have beaten Clinton- he didn’t.
I don’t think Bernie would have beaten Biden - he didn’t
I don’t know if he would have beaten Trump - but I suspect he wouldn’t have done as well as Biden is doing - which is surprising a lot of people.
What did you say about Biden vs Trump in the primary?
My candidates were Castro or Warren. They lost. I moved on.
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I’d like to think that Bernie would have beaten Trump, but there isn’t anyway to know that for sure. But how about we get over 2016 and move forward with what we have in front of us. The world is never going to be exactly like you want it to be, and we’re just going to have to accept that and work to make it as good as it can be.
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Glenn Greenwald called my spouse a Nazi on Twitter. 
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While I would agree that the media generally acts in good faith, the “IF the Hunter Biden emails actually revealed anything…” line of thinking is exactly how people acting in bad faith manipulate the media (i.e. make the media their bitch). It’s not about the consequences of reporting or not reporting; the reporting of propaganda IS the consequence. These people on the right do not care if the truth prevails because their goal is to get people to question the truth. Period.
First it’s something like the Hunter Biden emails (which, to the best of my understanding, do not even amount to some kind of accusation…the insinuation that they might contain something damning is the message in its entirety…I mean, has anyone even read them? It’s been over a week and the reporting on them still seems to be that they might contain a smoking gun depending on who “the big guy” or “the Chairman” is referring to…WTF? If that’s still the headline that they’re running with, if that’s the biggest scandal that they’ve come up with from these emails, then the emails could be 100% genuine and still not contain anything even approaching the level of Don Jr’s corrupt “I love it!” email. But I digress.)
First, it’s the emails. Then it’s global pedophile rings. Then it’s chemtrails. Then it’s whether or not the Holocaust really happened. These people will never stop pushing for more and more extreme far-right content and the media will continue to give in and print, “Is the world run by a cabal of pedophiles? Who knows for sure…” articles to hedge their bets in case it turns out to be true (Narrator: It never does.). Objectivity and bothsides-ism are weaponized to push the narrative further and further to the right. It’s a panel of scientists saying, “The sky is blue,” and then some asshole saying, “No, the sky is red!” And then the media starts hedging until you see articles that say, “Maybe the sky is actually purple.” And this is playing out over and over again (remember the “Death Panels” during the Obamacare debates) because the media is desperate to appear unbiased and objective and people in bad faith know how to manipulate that.
The media has a duty to report, sure, but this duty is secondary to their duty to verify the truth. Otherwise, there’s no difference between the New York Times and the National Enquirer.
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How many pieces has Greenwald published in the last four years re: Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric Trump’s business dealings? I’m honestly asking here, because I’m not interested in giving him clicks and finding out.
Leaving 2016 aside (because…it’s 2016), that’s just horseshit. Biden won this primary because more Democratic voters wanted him as their candidate. A lot more. This notion that Biden got “forced down our throats” depends on devaluing the voters who chose Biden, which carries with it some rather odious undertones that we’d be better off throwing in the trash.
Biden was not my first choice, but he’s run a hell of a smart, disciplined campaign to this point that has him on the verge of a pretty sweeping victory, along with other Democrats to control Congress. Anything can happen tomorrow, but if worse comes to worse and Trump wins, I don’t think any reasonable person can argue that it was because Biden made mistakes or wasn’t a good enough candidate.
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it wasn’t one primary. it was 26 out of 50, most by bigger margins for more delegates than bernie’s 24.
so did hilary, by 3 million votes, but look who won the electoral college.
i went for bernie in 2016 primary season and worked for hilary once she won.
i went for warren in the primary this time and i’ve worked for biden once he won.
look, you can sit on your hands and pout if you want to but don’t claim you’re doing something special for the country if you do that. that dog won’t hunt.
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