Torquemada Goldfarb and the Fatwa Against Beauchamp

The freelance McCarthys and Torquemadas of the Rightie blogosphere are literally in a feeding frenzy. From the roiling of the waters, you'd think someone was dumping chum into a tank of piranhas that hadn't eaten in a week.

Except that I have far too much repect for piranhas to humiliate them with a comparison to the Rightie blogs, led by Michael Goldfarb (of Murdoch's Weekly Standard) and Michelle Malkin (a regular and paid contributor on Murdoch's FAUX Nooz). Piranhas deserve some scintilla of respect. They do not do what they do from malice, evil, or the delight in killing. They kill to eat, in contrast to Goldfarb, Malkin and their (usually anonymous) ilk, who eat to kill. Character assassination builds a powerful appetite, one is forced to conclude.

Check this archived page from Memeorandum. You would think that the THIRD MOST IMPORTANT STORY IN AMERICA* was the Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp affair, and that the very future of the republic was at stake. This is less important than the near-breakdown of the House, and a ginned up "scandal"about John Edwards, but FAR MORE important than the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Priorities? What priorities? It's all about the hate, you know.)

[* UPDATE: 4PM PDT 7PM EDT: It is now the NUMBER ONE STORY, the MOST IMPORTANT story in the blogosphere. Er, the Rightie blogosphere.]

The Righties have issued an unstated Fatwa against Private Beauchamp, except, were this Salman Rushdie, he'd be working in the Ayatollah Khomeni's circle, in Tehran, with no possibility of escaping or hiding. How long do you think Rushdie would have lasted in that environment with Khomeni's call for his death hanging over his head?

And how long can Beauchamp survive in a war zone, after the Rightie bloggers -- who screamed for a week with UTTER CONVICTION that Beauchamp DID NOT EXIST, that he was a liberal back here in the states ginning up a completely fictional story -- after Rightie bloggers have turned their entire attention to him. I've been watching Memeorandum for some time, and I've rarely seen ANY story get the kind of coverage this one has. Hungry demons in a feeding frenzy couldn't be worse to watch than these.

Except it's all from the Right. There are virtually no leftie blogs or journals defending our potentially doomed soldier. At best, there's the "objective" "What's all this then?" from Howie Kurtz, and other MSM'ers. However, the (very) brave blogger Libby Spencer has injected some of the only sense in this nonsense and is well worth reading on the subject, as she addresses that sleazy, cowardly Bob Owens who calls himself The Confederate Yankee:

from Newshoggers, Spencer writes:

... We've had this conversation before. You won't take the word of a publication that has largely been on your side about the occupation and has no known history of outright fabrications but you're willing to take as gospel, the spokespeople of the military brass? As if the military has never lied to us? Are you forgetting something as recent as Tillman?

Sorry, but you guys were wrong when you said Beauchamp wasn't a soldier and you made a huge deal out of something that doesn't even matter -- one can only think to avoid talking about the things that really do matter. Like how badly this surge is failing. Nobody would have read the stupid piece if you folks hadn't made a federal case out of it.

I'm even willing to believe the guy made the whole thing up, out of thin air. So effing what? What have you accomplished here except making trouble for one soldier who is fighting in the sandpit, no matter what his political views are?

And the stunning clarity of Libby's argument will be IGNORED. Why? Because she is stolidly clear-eyed sane. And, as sad experience dictates, sanity is not welcome in this rhetorical dog pit. Only blood is.

Alas, a breath of sanity in this auto-da-fé is a mere fart in a windstorm. As per usual, the malicious Michael Goldfarb is head cheerleader for the lynching frenzy he seems to delight in having whipped up. (Goldfarb had better pray that karma is a complete fiction. Because in any just Universe, he would have a price to pay for this sheer malevolence that few would be willing to pay. I note that Goldfarb doesn't face death every day from his enemies -- let alone from his friends. How 'brave' you are, Goldfarb. What an example you set for all writers, everywhere!)

Listen to his WEEKLY STANDARD blog:

We now know that, at the very least, the New Republic's Scott Beauchamp lied about the timing and location of the ridiculing of a disfigured woman in a U.S. mess hall--the incident, if it happened, took place in Kuwait, Beauchamp now says, before he had the opportunity to experience the "morally distorting" effects of war. But the New Republic, for some reason, finds Beauchamp's new story just as credible as the old one. We continue to have our doubts.

The Righties are out to smash The New Republic magazine (a magazine that NONE of them read, have read, or EVER WILL read) over a supposedly fictional author who turns out to NOT be fictional, and, having made MORE factual errors in their attack than they can claim in the story, their hypocrisy yet knows no bounds. As they know no shame.

Because we have to be PERFECT, or else they, whose errors are so manifest that no one can even KEEP UP with them, they, moral pricks will CRUCIFY us if we make the slightest error, or, worse, say anthing that can be MISCONSTRUED.

Right, Ted Nugent? Mere weeks before implicitly accusing me of terrifying his family and explicitly:

COLMES: ... you said, for your own purpose (ph), it makes you feel important that some guy wants to assassinate you. He doesn't want to assassinate you. You don't really believe that, do you?

NUGENT: Yes, I do. My family takes it very seriously. They're very concerned about it. And I think just the use of the word assassination. And the hate speech that this guy spews is of great concern.

Nugent was saying in an interview that he was in favor of dog fighting. He waves a rifle over his head at an NRA convention and screams forget the police! Shoot crooks! Shoot child molesters! Shoot Shoot Shoot!

HE gets to parse me?

It's their technique, and now Private Beauchamp is in extraordinary physical danger. He is under a complete communications blackout, while his command's Public Relations Officer -- a National Guard Lt. Col. from Colorado -- gets to say whatever he's told to say by Pentagon/Administration brass.

Do you get it? Do you understand why these little Joe McCarthys MUST be opposed? Do you understand the danger that Michael Goldfarb and his self-appointed inquisitors have placed Scott Thomas Beauchamp for having SPOKEN? For telling us about a war whose COFFINS are shrouded less in flags than secrecy, because this "government" doesn't want us to see the children, the sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers that are being killed an a relentless fashion by the inhabitants of a country that we invaded to suppposedly return to them, after removing Saddam Hussein.

So why in hell are we STILL there? And what is our moral justification for anger at THEM for killing their occupiers. Were the situation reversed, I'd be killing occupying troops, too. No matter whether their propaganda machine called me an "insurgent," a "rebel," a "guerilla," a "terrorist," a "christianist" or whatever. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but IUDs are really tough to stop.

Sorry if that's too real for some.

THEIR outrageous errors don't faze them: the errors of their chickenhawks, of their pathetic arm-chair quarterbacks, and, worst of all, their military morons who think that merely because they've worn the uniform, they and THEY ALONE, know anything at all about a war that they've BEEN COMPLETELY AND CONSISTENTLY WRONG ABOUT FROM DAY ONE, and continue to be wrong about ... but ...

Hey, it was the liberals who sold us good conservatives out on Vietnam.

One admission of error in a relatively inconsequential story in a small circulation liberal magazine -- sorry TNR -- is their wedge to crucify THE NEW REPUBLIC and Private Beauchamp. TNR will survive. But if one hair of Beauchamp's head is harmed, it will be upon their heads. Still, TNR thinks it's a Christian in the Coloseum, and refuses to defend itself in any meaningful ways against the trained jackals of the arena.

What is this, Zardoz?

And you still think that we can COEXIST with these barbarians?

On a humorous note, the depth of these buffoons' hypocrisy can be seen in the defense of Matt Sanchez*, whose credibility some misguided idiots from the Left have attacked for Sanchez' having been a GAY PORN STAR, prior to becoming another Jeff Gannon/Guckert darling of the Rightie blogosmear. "Morality" and "truth" and "credibility" only matter, one concludes, when they can be used as offensive weapons. But if the kettle notes that the pot is FAR BLACKER, the mangy hackles rise on their leprous spines, and they screech like banshees that they are not demons, but angels.

[* see the UPDATE]

YOU are the demon, for having innocently noted that leather wings and claws dripping with blood are NOT standard angelic issue. (Shame on you!)

It would seem that many of the same folk who tried to raise the ad hominem that my writing couldn't be trusted because I worked for HUSTLER 28 years ago, NOW are defending Sanchez (who is working for Murdoch's THE WEEKLY STANDARD and is a face for Murdoch's FAUX NOOZ), even though they "hate" pornography and gayness. But, to paraphrase scripture, "With Fanaticism, all things are possible."

Were I not actually watching this, I'd not believe it. And where is the "liberal" press as a U.S. serviceman serving in combat is being fed to the blogosmear dogs? Where is the liberal blogosphere?

Somewhere West of Altoona and East of Betelgeuse, I'd imagine. Second star to the left and straight on 'til morning.

Courage. ESPECIALLY Beauchamp.

UPDATE 5:45PM PDT: There are excellent counterpoint essays relating to this madness by Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns & Money, and Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo