The rightward drift of the Washington Post continues unabated, as they bring the right-wing blog Volokh Conspiracy under their umbrella, even as Ezra Klein and Dylan Matthews leave out the side door. The Post‘s announcement trumpets the credentials of Eugene Volokh and his Conspiracists, but they don’t seem to be aware that they’re a gang of misfits and cranks who are prone to complaining about the absence of flag-pins and people who have qualms about torture.
The Post seems to think that these clowns will substitute for Klein and Matthews’ ability to explain stuff.
Their expertise covers free speech, religious freedom, guns, criminal procedure, environmental law, business law, national security law, and much more. Some of the contributors also have extensive records in government service, and in high-profile Supreme Court litigation: they include a former federal judge; one of the chief architects of the challenge to the Affordable Care Act individual mandate; a former general counsel for the NSA and former Assistant Secretary for Policy at DHS; and a member of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues…
This must-read source will be a great addition to The Post’s coverage of law, politics and policy.
Yes, now we will be able to gain important insights, like how Sarah Palin’s ignorance proves that she has a first-rate intelligence.
The central nervous system of the Republican Party shut down the day it became necessary to make that argument. And the Volokh Conspiracists led the way.
The only people left at the post worth reading are Greg Sargent and Eugene Robinson. A real shame, and a disappointment in this direction the post is taking after the Bezos Buy.
When does Nate Silver get his new digs up and running, has he produced any writing lately?
Still staffing up.
Fred Hiatt is a typical Conservative.
When he’s criticized, he doubles-down on the “TEH STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPID!!!”
Now, he brings in the Libertarian wing of Conservatism, to go along with the traditional sociopathic Conservative standard-bearers, like Will, Krauthammer, etc.
The question is whether this is Hiatt or Bezos. Some pretty awful changes are coincidentally occurring post-acquisition.
Legitimizing this Volokh shit is very disturbing.
With this kind of maljudgment I’m just happy Klein & Matthews got out now and will have a bit of breathing space to build themselves a new home in time to contribute to the ’14 cycle and the ongoing Rep dramas of the ACA repeals.
Reading the yesterday’s bit on the Vos family and then looking at the Rep herd of misfits it’s likely the 1% money will have their gold plated swords drawn to counteract their Stupids. It’s going to take some great explainers to deflate the conspiracies we’ll hear.
The conservative establishment is circling the wagons in the Village for Hiatt’s Last Stand.
Someone could really make a splash by taking all of that great reportorial talent away from Hiatt and pairing it with well-thought-out, clearly written opinion pieces. There are enough good shoe-leather reporters who are not in the cocktail weinie circuit to make a good publication if they left the WaPo whale carcass.
Sadly this may be more about the state of newspapers than the Post. The good news here might be that few people will actually read them.
From a post on another thread, the state of talk radio isn’t doing well either(conservative radio outlets strangely ran up huge debt — imagine that — and their audience is dying off).
But I have a hard time thinking it will be a good thing when people’s thinking is guided only by what they can read on their phone.
When I last read Volokh it was many years ago and he arguing that the first 13 words of the 27-word 2nd amendment had no meaning. You know, the “A well-regulated Militia being necessary for the security of a Free State” part. And all of conservativdome was hailing him as a genius.
Well, I haven’t clicked on a Washington Post link except for Klein for years – now I won’t have to at all.
Heil Hiatt.
When it has a very clear meaning in context…”You all can keep yo’ slave patrols as well-regulated militia.”
Well, it did turn out that Roberts’ Repubs agreed with Volokh’s “interpretation”. The actual words of the constitution cannot, of course, be allowed to stand in the way of “conservative” desires and policy goals…
Still not a reason to read him, though.
Your Lib’rul Media!
Yet no matter how much a flagship of corporate media becomes ever more obviously a “conservative” monoculture, the “conservative” movement continues to describe the MSM as the Great Lib’rul Media. As for WaPo, can one become even “more” braindead?
Apparently, yes! So a gaggle of conserva-tarian bloggers is now an alternate viewpoint from the usual “conservative” braindead like Will and Krauthammer. Or perhaps this (rightwing) blog is the new WaPo stand-in for leftwing lib’rulism, haha.
The flooding of the citizenry with almost nothing but right-slanted “news” and “opinion” gives the lie to the Enlightenment theory of the First Amendment, which imagined a well-ordered “marketplace of ideas”, wherein truth would somehow “defeat” falsehoods and lies. But when the entire ocean is lies, adding a few shot-glasses of “truth” have about as much effect as you might imagine. An ocean of lies simply cannot be debunked.
That we now have to have specialized “fact-checking” organizations (which are obviously loath even to perform their stated task) pretty much makes clear the absolute breakdown of the well-ordered “marketplace” metaphor. The traditional media has been completely compromised and rendered not just useless, but complicit.
So instead of a competing “marketplace of ideas”, we have a situation more akin to mushroom hunting—if you want some desired morels, you have to go into the forest and hunt them out for yourself, where they will be well hidden. Yet another group of 1%ers—the informed! Not exactly a metaphor which results in an “informed citizenry”, Mr Jefferson….
Also note the comedy of WaPo losing writers like Klein, and responding by adding Volokh and his Conspiratives.
Some “marketplace”. Everything but lib’ruls….
How can you say the Post is a “conservative monoculture”? They have Richard Cohen!
The fatal tilt to the brain-dead right at the WaPo occurred for me when they fired Dan Froomkin for mocking the idiocies of Charles Krauthammer in his lowly “White House Watch” blog there because it “wasn’t working” for the paper. http://washingtonnote.com/dan_froomkin_an/
I was a semi-active commentator on the old Volokh. There was a large cohort of idiots (both commenting and posting…) but also some interesting and reasonably articulate perspectives from that branch of the right wing. Not that it’s saying much, but VC is/was miles better than Instapundit and most of the other RW legal-ish blogs out there.
I say ‘was’ because, since I don’t have anything to do with a paper that keeps Jennifer Rubin employed though, I’ll have to look elsewhere for those perspectives from now on.
Agreed. In the Bushian era they ran about one third decent.
I’m waiting for the day that Breitbart.com becomes part of the Post, and Dead Andrew Breitbart becomes an op-ed columnist when Richard Cohen retires.