When General Stanley McChrystal was fired this week, it was for disparaging his superiors on the record.
When journalist Helen Thomas retired this month, it was for disparaging the Jews on the record.
When blogger Dave Weigel left the Washington Post today, it was for disparaging conservative figures in an off-the-record conversation with friends and colleagues on a private discussion list.
All are recent casualties of the newly dubbed “culture of exposure” that’s consumed Washington today—one intent on “destroying privacy and exposing impurities, has chased good people from public life, undermined public faith in institutions and elevated the trivial over the important,” as David Brooks writes in his column on McChrystal. (See Ezra for more on this and Julian Sanchez on the DC-as-high-school theory of Beltway culture.)
But McChrystal and Thomas, at least, knowingly exposed themselves and their comments to public scrutiny, if sometimes under the influence of a Bud Lime Light (or five). By contrast, Weigel—a leading reporter on the conservative movement, who I also consider a friend and colleague—never consented to do so, as his comments were cherry-picked from private correspondence and leaked to a journalist/lobbyist tag-team. I can attest to the fact that If his remarks were truly newsworthy—that is, if the failure to expose them would have done real harm to the public good—then exposing them might have been warranted. Instead, they were just an overheated version of personal views that Weigel had already made public in his writing, blogging, and Tweeting, where he made it clear that he was no party-line conservative. And as a member of the now-defunct JounoList, I can vouch for the fact that there was nothing more to Weigel’s remarks than what was published, despite the speculation from some that he must have had a clear ideological agenda. In dredging up his private remarks, FishbowlDC, the Daily Caller, and the email leaker simply facilitated a smear job that spawned the kind of outsized ragefest that’s accompanied all of these so-called exposés.
The anti-Weigel camp has succeeded in its mission. But it’s only a matter of time (days? hours?) before the same scandal-hungry culture of exposure, shaming, and hyperbolic outrage moves on to the next one.
