Poor Joe
Sheesh. I go away for one day and a theological debate erupts on the blog. Well, that's what I love about you folks. There's no predicting what you'll say...
Meantime, I completely forgot to ask if anyone else read the Times piece on Joe Lieberman that ran over the weekend?
The article says....
...These are down days for Mr. Lieberman, the onetime Democratic nominee for vice president who, six years later, finds himself fighting to save his career amid a strenuous effort by antiwar activists in his own party to dislodge him. Friends say his predicament has left Mr. Lieberman nervous, dispirited and angry, a portrait of a politician stunned to face opponents as passionate in their loathing of his principles as he is proud of them.
Oh, please. The tragic Joe Lieberman? I'm not buying it; it's another example of how old media really doesn't get the blogosphere. My gosh, a senator who's consistently abandoned his party when personal ambition tempted him—remember all that talk about how Lieberman might become a cabinet official in the Bush administration?—facing a primary challenge. I'm shocked.
And I'm bemused by that line, "a politician stunned to face opponents as passionate in their loathing of his principles as he is proud of them." The implication—unintentional, I think—is that Lieberman's opponents are unprincipled. Hmmm. Lieberman's opponents dislike his overweening ambition and they oppose his support for the war. It is, perhaps, Lieberman's lack of principles they dislike.
Then there's this:
Mr. Lieberman, who seemed slow to recognize the seriousness of Mr. Lamont’s challenge, also appears taken aback by the ferocity of the onslaught, particularly from liberal blogs. To Mr. Lieberman’s camp, the bloggers embody what his longtime friend Lanny Davis calls “the demonizing, hating, virulent, character-assassinating left of the Democratic Party.”
Mr. Lieberman began, “Some of the vituperations, some of the extremity of the language and anger,” before his voice trailed off. He paused for a second and started again: “They’re describing a person who is not me.” Colleagues have approached him on the Senate floor to console him, asking how he is holding up, as if he is sick or experiencing some trauma.
You see a lot in the MSM about the "ferocity" of the bloggers' attacks on Joe Lieberman. The funny thing is that you don't actually see any examples of that ferocity. It's as if the language is so horrible, it's unprintable. But later in the piece, some of it is printed. At a parade, Lieberman is called a "warmonger," a "Bush lover," and a "turncoat."
Gasp!
Joe Lieberman has been one of the most passionate, not to mention earliest, supporters of the war in Iraq, and he phrases his support for the war in a very high-minded way. But the war is an obscenity, and it's no surprise that people feel strongly about it. A senator who vigorously promotes war ought to be able to handle being called a warmonger.
Let us not forget, either, that Lieberman got into politics as an anti-Vietnam activist, and that in politics he has never hesitated to play dirty when he felt it necessary. Remember Lieberman's 1988 attack ads against incumbent senator Lowell Weicker? As the New Haven Independent puts it,
Lieberman's commercials "inaugurated a new era in Connecticut of low-grade personal TV attack ads that belittle opponents, make fun of their appearance or magnify minor or out-of-context portions of their record." So when Lieberman says that "they're describing a person who is not me," he's either acting on a selective memory, or he's come to believe his own press.
By the way, this piece was written by a guy named Mark Leibovich, who's been doing a lot of political profiles lately. (His takedown of Nancy Pelosi was brutal.) Leibovich writes with a lot of color and flair, and even though I think he got this piece wrong, he's clearly a reporter to keep your eye on.
