BuzzMachine

Bloggers are human, too

: Pretty much took the day off from blogging. See, I am human. Went to the miniature golf course and drove go-karts with the kids. Going to a barbecue. Plan to drink wine. Happy Labor Day, all.

Call a terrorist a terrorist

: Terry Heaton’s had it with handwringing over whether to call terrorists terrorists. Amen. I’ve been there for so long: Not calling terrorists terrorists is the worst sort of appeasement and bias.

What’s what

: Glenn Reynolds calls a story in Richard Mellon Scaife‘s Pittsburgh Tribune-Review “major media attention.” Well, I’d be more inclinded to call it major right-wing crackpot attention.

: UPDATE: Glenn responds to this here. I’m simply saying that a story in Scaife’s paper doesn’t qualify to me as major media attention, that’s all. I said what I meant.

Glenn, to his credit, says he doesn’t necessarily buy the story; he already said that. If I’d wanted to get into a discussion of the merits of this particular story, I would have made that clear. Perhaps I should have anyway. But, again, I wan’t trying to discuss the particulars of this story, only the characterization of a Scaife enterprise as major media.

Of course, Glenn uses it to flog his Cambodia angle. And that’s fine. He is proud of the world he has done on that story. I still consider in a nonstory (just as I considered Bush’s military record — with its hanging questions — a nonstory; I always repeat that for the record).

I’ll repeat for the record, too, that I think Glenn’s the greatest; I have the utmost respect for him. But from the beginning, I’ve disagreed with him about the importance and significance and value of the Swiftie and Cambodia stories (and I have some standing to be able to do that since I have also attacked Michael Moore’s attacks against the man I now assume is Glenn’s candidate and because I equally pooh-poohed the attacks on Bush’s military record). So we disagree. Friends disagree. Bloggers disagree. If we didn’t, this would be as dull as, oh, I dunno, a blogging panel?

So I send virtual air-kisses to Glenn and a big e-hug.

But I still say that Scaife is a fringe-dweller and conspiracy-addict and troublemaker who delights in trying to destroy politicians he hates. Citing his enterprises is like citing, well, Michael Moore’s or Al Franken’s.