Tear Foer away from that soccer blog...
Truth be told, I'm usually on Zengerle's side in these New Republic vs. Daily Kos feuds. But frankly, at this point, both sides should stop writing about each other completely. Zengerle's recent attempt to incriminate Kos on the grounds that he asked his blogger friends in an email not to weigh in on the "Kosola" scandal is, for all the reasons Ezra gives, somwhere west of dumb. It's so dumb that Zengerle's editor should have torn himself away from the football match and stepped in to stop it. And, of course, it's provoked another one of those obnoxious hyperbolic anti-TNR screeds over at DKos.
Problem is, Kos is right to scream this time. To begin with, the email Zengerle obtained has nothing to do with furthering the allegation that Jerome Armstrong was once paid to promote a dodgy stock or the (I don't quite understand how) related issue that politicians can "purchase" Armstrong and get Kos' support. Beyond that, there's nothing in Kos' missive that even smells coersive of other bloggers or dodgy in any way -- unless we assume bloggers can't reasonably communicate with or ask favours of one another. (Hilariously, Mickey Kaus admits that he once "pursued the identical strategy myself, in analogous circumstances, though with a far less powerful and centralized institutional apparatus" right before jumping all over the "scandal". The ethical difference, I guess, lies in that "powerful apparatus" -- i.e. Kos is more popular and influential than Mickey.)
I'm perfectly willing to believe that Armstrong, and maybe Kos too, is a mercenary asshole, or (more accurately) sometimes behaves like one. But there's no additional evidence of it on The Plank. If you're too blinded by mutual antipathy to wait for and pick out the good arguments, you should just back slowly away...
Problem is, Kos is right to scream this time. To begin with, the email Zengerle obtained has nothing to do with furthering the allegation that Jerome Armstrong was once paid to promote a dodgy stock or the (I don't quite understand how) related issue that politicians can "purchase" Armstrong and get Kos' support. Beyond that, there's nothing in Kos' missive that even smells coersive of other bloggers or dodgy in any way -- unless we assume bloggers can't reasonably communicate with or ask favours of one another. (Hilariously, Mickey Kaus admits that he once "pursued the identical strategy myself, in analogous circumstances, though with a far less powerful and centralized institutional apparatus" right before jumping all over the "scandal". The ethical difference, I guess, lies in that "powerful apparatus" -- i.e. Kos is more popular and influential than Mickey.)
I'm perfectly willing to believe that Armstrong, and maybe Kos too, is a mercenary asshole, or (more accurately) sometimes behaves like one. But there's no additional evidence of it on The Plank. If you're too blinded by mutual antipathy to wait for and pick out the good arguments, you should just back slowly away...
2 Comments:
When I first heard about this, on this post, I didn't have a clue why it was a big deal. Now I have a little more of a clue, but now I think Zengerle was being ridiculous. Kos is sharing advice with colleagues about how to deal with an issue that affects all of them, and his advice is perfectly ethical and legal. If he were trying to SUPPRESS or HIDE the news, that would be different, but playing the "if we ignore it, it will go away" idea sounds like a solid way to deal with this kind of thing.
Having said that, the fact that Jerome settled with the SEC about touting a stock does give me pause. Not something that ruins his credibility, but it does give me pause.
Yeah; Kos did nothing wrong with that email. But the situation gets worse and worse. Lee Siegal's two posts on the subject were just indefensible. I mean, it wasn't enough that they made him edit the first one. If I were his editor, I'd remove his blogging rights (particularly after his imbecile swipe at Ezra Klein for pointing out it's ironic for Siegal, a blogger, to call other bloggers "fascists". That's the sort of yelping I'd expect for Marshall Wittman, not from Siegal.) And now, various blogs are accusing Zengerle of printing a fabricated email. True or not, the fact he's been printing emails from a private list willy-nilly means he's probably dug himself into a hole he can't get out of.
This is why people have editors. Where was Foer?
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