COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

You can read all about it here

Kind of a weird take. And describing "Countercolumn" as "The Countercolumn" sort of reminds me of the old cartoon when Wiley E. Coyote dressed up as "The Batman."

I sort of wish the reporter had also pointed out that I also defended the right of retired officers to speak out freely, and defended the value of their dialogue. Indeed, I don't believe you can be a Hackworth fan while still be critical of the fact that these generals are speaking out. Hackworth went on "Issues and Answers" while still on active duty, and was publicly critical of the U.S. Viet Nam policy - and continued his criticism throughout the remainder of his life,

The actions of this group of generals is far less problematic than Hackworth's, yet there's been a couple of generations of young soldiers who grew up as great Hackworth admirers.

It is legitimate for all of us to examine the CONTENT of these generals' public statements for soundness and reasoning, and compare them with what they have said previously. It's also appropriate to fact-check what they say, when the media fails to do so, as I did with MG Batiste's false claim that Shinseki was retired early.

I also object to the practice of attributing a verifiable assertion with the weak "asserts" or "claims," when four minutes of looking would bear out that I was, in fact, correct. That's an old journalism pet peeve of mine, and it comes straight out of the AP Guide to Newswriting. After all, to print my assertion without bothering to check it out does no justice to General Batiste. I could have written that he microwaves puppies between performing scientific experiments on neighbors' children, which would have been a contemptible lie, and the reporter still would have left it up to the reader to check out the claim.

It's also strange to me that the reporter doesn't credit Gateway Pundit with the research I linked to on the timeline, but maybe he felt that since Gateway is not a military blog, it's beyond the scope of his article.

I also don't "serve as a portal" for anybody else, really, beyond the hopelessly out-of-date blogroll on the right side of the screen.

But I'm glad the Boston Globe is still trying to wrap its brain around the blogosphere.

The Globe's piece would have benefited from somone who understands that there is a legal distinction between active duty service members and reservists, under Article 88 of the UCMJ, but the reporter did well to understand that Article 88 does not prohibit criticism of public officials in the furtherance of a political discussion, "even if emphatically stated."

So this reporter demonstrates an awareness of the article's provisions well beyond the norm for his profession.

Splash, out

Jason