He can’t call our troops ungrateful mercenaries without people getting all hot and bothered.
Howard Kurtz writes about Arkin’s misadventure here.
Arkin, who apologized on the blog for his “blasphemy,” says in an interview: “Mercenary is a very strong term. If all this has been precipitated by one word, there’s not a question in my mind I could have avoided this by not using that word.” He says he was trying to be “sarcastic” and “iconoclastic” and to make the point that a professional fighting force cannot dismiss public sentiment on how wars should be fought.
Jim Brady, executive editor of washingtonpost.com, says the use of the word mercenary “was a mistake. It made it through the editing process, which is unfortunate. We certainly apologize for using it on the site . . . I know it offended a lot of people, but I don’t think it’s something he should be fired for.”
“Editing process”? “It made it through the editing process”? If the “editing process” at his blog is anything like this one here, let me tell you what kind of editing process blog posts go through.
There. Want to see it again?
Blogging is WYSIWYG communication. If you read it, it’s because the blogger wrote it. You don’t have an editor messing with your deathless prose. (There may be some level of over-the-top offensiveness that would get me edited, but I don’t wander in those directions.)
If the word “mercenaries” appeared in Arkin’s blog, it’s because he put it there, and posted it for all the world to read.
And now:
Arkin is now trying to shift the debate to his detractors in what he calls a “polarized and hate-filled America.” Arkin says he has received thousands of e-mail protests from people who have not read his words but were reacting to critics who “said I spat on the troops . . . The number of death threats and over-the-top vile crap is a little bit daunting.”
Poor baby.
I wonder, though. Is Arkin advocating that people not be held responsible for what they say, write, or otherwise communicate? Consider also, what he wrote, he wrote in a blog intended for broadcast to the masses. This was not a private communication that happened to be overheard. This was after he did any editing and self-censorship he was inclined to do.
If this is what he writes for publication, what does he say behind closed doors?
I’m glad he wrote what he did, and I think the entire world needs to read it. The more people realize what sort of ideas our “news” gets filtered through, the better they can correct for its ideological tilt.
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Patriot said,
He has spent the last 30 years being bitter about his failure. Nothing more.
This isn’t about one word. It is about his continuous disdain for some of our finest citizens that is at the heart of all this. Liberals just hate it when they are held accountable for their actions and they want it to “go away”.
February 13, 2007 at 10:49 am
melissaTX said,
February 14, 2007 at 12:37 pm