I popped by the Dail…

I popped by the Daily Kos a couple of days ago to see what they were saying about the CBS fake memo story. It was one of their members back in September that tried to show that the memos written in proportional-spaced type could conceivably have been done on a specific vintage 1970s typewriter, although there was nothing at all suggesting that’s what was used, nor did they answer the myriad of other typeface questions.

Turns out that dKos has been completely silent on the matter of the panel’s report. This big news story, a big black eye for CBS, and nothing at all from this lefty site. Later on I saw that Instapundit had remarked about this, also noting that Atrios and Josh Marshall had been quiet as well, as of 7pm on the 10th. (As a side note, Glenn did mention that the Armstrong Williams story got plenty of play, while on Instapundit, as on most conservative blogs, both stories got covered. Which side is more fair an balanced?)

About an hour and a half later, Atrios had this post up. In it he tries to keep up the “fake but accurate” meme.

One botched news story at CBS, in which the substances was entirely true but the window dressing was not authenticated, and multiple people lose their jobs, and it becomes the biggest media story of the year.

if it’s fake, it ain’t accurate. But at least he acknowledged that something happened.

However, Josh Marshall and the Kossians are still mute, as though nothing happened. Keep this in mind when determining if your favorite blog is blindly partisan. The conservative blogs have been all over Armstrong Williams, most pretty critical of him and some really peeved. (See Glenn Reynolds again, but also Michelle Malkin (here, too), LaShawn Barber, RedState.org and me to name just a very few.) While all Atrios can do is yell “touche”, without even acknowledging the merits of the report, and other lefty blogs just plug their ears and shut their eyes, it’s the conservative blogs that are willing to look at both sides, the good and the bad, on both sides of the aisle.

For a recent history lesson, remember that the conservative blogosphere was just as upset, if not more, over Trent Lott’s remarks at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday. In this post, Glenn even notes that Atrios and Josh Marshall (the same guys who are so quiet now) are right in their hassling of Lott. And see here for a demonstration of how it was conservative bloggers that were among the first to deal with this. You can search for “trent lott thurmond” at Instapundit to find links to still other righty blog coverage and outrage over this.

(Remember this when folks call Fox News biased when noting a conservative tilt. The farther to the left, the less likely to be fair and balanced.)

Do we need to put Atrios and Marshall on blogicide watch, or has the exposure of CBS also exposed these guys as simply blind partisans who have no interest in intellectual honesty? Perhaps they should be relegated to the same virtual location as Democratic Underground; the Moonbat Cave.

UPDATE: Kos has finally posted on the matter, although the vast majority of it is a rehash of a September Salon article, which itself is a rehash of AP reports about a story that’s been trying to get legs since Bush was a governor. As with Atrios, Kos refuses to consider the meat of the panel’s report or even touch on the “myopic zeal” issue. Apparently to him, fake documentation doesn’t matter (as long as it has a Republican in its sights). Yes, those memos were part of a larger body of documentation, but given how poorly the (known) fake ones were vetted, it casts a dim light on their judgement with the rest of it. You can’t trust what comes out of CBS if they won’t question their own evidence. It was a hatchet job thrown together in an attempt to remove Bush from office; that’s the salient point. Instead, Markos wants to re-re-re-dredge up 30-year-old charges. Talk about “myopic zeal”.

And here’s an ironic line from his post:

Congratulations to them [the “Right”] — they successfully defended a deserter who not just failed his duty, but whose actions forced someone else to head to Vietnam in his stead.

I’m sorry, I didn’t realize we were talking about Bill Clinton. >grin<

[Big thanks to Junkyard Blog and Arthur Chrenkoff for the linkage. Scroll on up for the latest update on this.]

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