Jeffrey Goldberg: Look Who's Blogging
The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg—who joined the magazine from The New Yorker last year—has started a blog.
His first entry, which features an endearingly retro Public Enemy reference as its title, begins with the self-effacing words, "This is almost certainly a mistake." Well, it can't be as big a mistake as championing the invasion of Iraq relying (according to Harper's Ken Silverstein), "heavily on administration sources and war hawks (and in at least one crucial case, a fabricator)."
In March, Goldberg offered a mea culpa on Slate:
I wanted very much for the liberation of Iraq to succeed, for many reasons. I wasn't sure there was an alternative to Saddam's removal, in part because the sanctions regime was collapsing. I believed that Saddam's nuclear ambitions posed an almost immediate threat to national security. I believed that Saddam was a supporter of terrorism.
For the most part, his inaugural post is long on jokes ("I joined the Atlantic last year, from the New Yorker. Before writing for the New Yorker, I wrote for the New York Times Magazine, and before that, for New York Magazine. I have nearly run out of magazines. I will undoubtedly be ending my career at Cat Fancy...") and backslaps to colleagues like Andrew Sullivan ("himself, responsible for twenty-seven percent of all blog entries ever posted on the Worldwide Web") and James Fallows ("my clear role model... He also seems to be blessedly free of the urge to over-post").
His Atlantic blog is not Mr. Goldberg's first foray into the Web. He has long participated in Slate's TV Club discussions of The Sopranos and The Wire and he is a co-founder of Jews Rock, a Web site devoted to Jewish rock stars from The Beastie Boys to Yo La Tengo.
Update, April 30, 2008: Brothers Gonna Work It Out: Jeffrey Goldberg's latest.
Pubic Enemy, is that the group that gave the world Professor Queef?
The sanctions regime was collapsing? There was some pushback, especially, iirc, from Russia, but we were talking about getting more sanctions put in place in a realistic tone of voice.
In addition, one of the ways Saddam had been skimming money, related to setting the price at a different time than the actual sale, had been stopped by the United Nations, something the congressional nitwits like Coleman never mentioned in their endless UN bashing hearings.
And Saddam's nukes? If he believed they were real it was because he wanted to believe they were real. You know how I know? Because there was no evidence they were real. It's like a deity. I read Scott Ritter's book which debunks the possibility of Saddam having had a nuclear weapons program.
His mea culpa is weak.
It happens as people get older, or lazy, they make a bad choice and a million people die and they blame wishes or horses or, well, the one real thing in his mea culpa is that Saddam was sending 25K to the families of suicide bombers in Israel.
So Goldberg is saying that this piece is unfair? Why? Did he not famously report all sorts of untruths about WMD in the runup to the Iraq war? Does he simply deny this?
Well, Anonymous: The whole point is that if Haber had actually called Goldberg and written about it we might know what Goldberg's argument is. But Haber was too damn lazy to do that. It was a whole lot easier just to regurgitate stuff he read somewhere else and slap an opinion on it.
Did Goldberg call Saddam Hussein for comment on his pre-war pieces about Iraq?
It would appear that Goldberg himself is simply "too damn lazy" as he has of yet not produced (with verifiable evidence) any such clarification. Until then all we have is Goldberg's own series of articles, and they clearly support Haber's critique.
But then, it's a lot easier for Goldberg to play the cry-baby than to try setting HIS record straight.
Oh dear, looks like this Matt Haber guy doesn't care a bit whether it's a "Pubic" or a "Public" Enemy.
"The whole point is that if Haber had actually called Goldberg and written about it we might know what Goldberg's argument is. But Haber was too damn lazy to do that. It was a whole lot easier just to regurgitate stuff he read somewhere else and slap an opinion on it"
What a load. Haber linked to Goldberg's post and reprinted verbatim at least the nut of Goldberg's arguments in support of the war. If Goldberg feels he's been "mugged (and what thin skin he must have if he considers Haber's remarks a "mugging" by online standards - sheesh!) he can always offer his own links to support his position. He hasn't, Instead he has whined, a tactic that Iraq War supporters seem to find most effective when called upon to defend their position. If Goldberg had a reasonable position to defend, one would think he would have done so by now.
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