Joe Klein and neo-liberal journalism were one of the main reasons that liberalism was silenced during the initial debate over the Iraq invasion. As pundits for newspapers, news magazines, and "liberal" outlets like The New Republic, NPR, and Slate, neo-liberal commentators amplified all of Dick Cheney's and Colin Powell's claims about Iraq while undercutting anti-war arguments about an invasion working in favor of al-Qaeda and fomenting sectarian conflict. Because neo-liberals also served as the semi-official voices of "liberalism" on Sunday interview shows and debate shows, liberal and anti-war voices were largely excluded from the debate over invading Iraq.
However, because of the disaster in Iraq and the general failure of the Bush administration, neo-liberals are now on the endangered species list. Joe Klein in particular is being whipsawed between declining interest in the neo-liberal point of view and rising competition from a "new" liberal media. Because of the rising tide of disgust with Bush and the right-wing, the liberal readers of magazines like Time are losing interest in neo-liberal views. Where neo-liberals who justified the right were once considered "independent," now they're just thought of as Bush apologists. At the same time, any favorable comment about Bush that Klein makes is subject to derision and insult from the new breed of liberal bloggers, comics, and commentators. There used to be a time when being able to talk with important people was a measure of a journalist's own importance. However, now that the Bush administration is ridiculed as absurd and incompetent, the journalists who talk with the important people in the Bush administration now risk being tarred with the same brush.
Greenwald on Klein. All of this is a long set-up for a discussion of liberal blogger Glenn Greenwald's evisceration of Joe Klein in his Salon blog today. Using "senior military officials" as sources, Klein claimed in a "fair and balanced" kind of way that there was good news as well as bad news from Iraq. The "good news" was that Sunni tribal leaders had come over to the American side in Anbar province and were now serving as an effective fighting force against al-Qaeda. This is where Greenwald cuts Klein down to weenie boy status. Klein was a tool of the Bush administration for repeating their one "good news" talking point about Iraq. Klein was also ignorant about Iraq because the "Sunni tribal leaders" story has been known for months. In other words, Joe Klein was not just a tool of the administration but a poorly informed tool. At the same time, Greenwald points out that Klein was using anonymous sources to get out everyday Bush administration talking points. Instead of protecting his sources from retaliation, Klein was apparently using anonymity as a cheap way of make an old story seem like it still was important.
Again, what conceivable journalistic justification is there for granting anonymity to government sources to recite the Government Line? It has no value other than to lend the government position enhanced though unmerited credibility
For Greenwald, Klein's balancing "bad news" that Iraqi Shiites had little interest in conceding anything to the Sunni minority is much more of a ritual gesture than anything like real objectivity. Actually, Greenwald could have gone further here. Klein's advice to Iraqi Shiite leaders is that they need to get over the "battered child syndrome" that makes them wary of the Sunnis and grow up. That's also the advice that neo-liberals like Klein give to the left when they criticize American government. Klein wants the Shiites to "grow up" and be a man like Joe Klein so they can do the bidding of the "senior military officials" and other really important people that Joe Klein talks to because he's a grown-up.
Finally, Greenwald tears off Klein's last fig leaf when he argues that Klein is merely repeating the standard "Beltway script" that war that the progress of the surge can't be fully evaluated until September when General Petraeus makes his report. In other words, Greenwald is revealing that Joe Klein, "important Washington journalist" working for a "prestigious news organization," isn't even writing his own material. It's more accurate to say that Klein is working up yet another simulation of the same Beltway script used by David Broder, Cokie Roberts, and other Establishment journalists.
Joe Klein's Inner Weenie Boy--What Glenn Greenwald reveals what Joe Klein means by "growing up." He means giving up his own voice--intellectually castrating yourself-- so that he can serve as a mouthpiece for the Beltway point of view. For guys like Joe Klein, manliness is defined as talking, socializing, and agreeing with "the really important people" (or the "big swinging dicks" of the world) on the significant issues of the day. It's identifying his manhood with the phallus of their power rather than his own insignificant penis.
This makes Klein a weenie boy in my book. Conservative figures like the president, Alberto Gonzales, and Rush Limbaugh are weenie boys in the sense that they compensate for their sense of male inadequacy by being especially aggressive in their politics. Working the weenie- boy symbolic magic in a slightly different way, Joe Klein compensates for his own sense of male inadequacy by identifying with "important people" like George Bush and Dick Cheney. In my opinion, this is the bottom of the identification of Joe Klein and the Bush administration. It's all about compensating for what you don't think you have. In this case, the weenie boy in Joe Klein recognizes himself in the weeniness of the Bush White House and loves what he sees despite the failure of the war and the overall incompetence of the administration.
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Joe Klein is as big a sellout as Joe Lieberman has proven to be. Since when is it anti-American to believe that American foreign policy ought to be consistent with international law, that the use of military force should be limited to legitimate self-defense or sanctioned by international organizations, that American foreign policy should be democratically accountable and guided by American principles, that the United States should not only oppose empires but eschew imperial policies, that wherever possible the United States should act like a good neighbor in trying to work with other nations to solve common problems, and that the United States should promote the advancement of human rights, shared prosperity, and ecological sustainability? Many writers who are/were supporive if Mr. Bush's war opposed the Iraq war not because they hate America but because they understood (and still do) that Iraq posed no threat to the United States or to regional security and that a crusade to remake the Middle East would be resisted by the great majority of people in the Middle East and would more likely create chaos and more terrorism that it would advance the cause of democracy. Klein seems to be trying to score cheap political points by dismissing the left so as to establish his own hawkish centrist credentials. Or perhaps he understands America less than he would like his readers to believe because he is uncomfortable with the American tradition of principled dissent. But Mr. Klein is wrong. As Thomas Jefferson said, "...dissent is the highest form of patriotism." Get with the program or get out of the game Mr. Klein.
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