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We Get Clown Mail
Posted by Clif on 07/30/05 at 11:45 am
Category: Wingnuts, Town Hall Watch
In today’s mailbag we find an email from Michael Fumento, one of the residents of Clown Hall whose column I criticized two days ago. He’s really, really, really mad. It’s not every day that a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Group Think Tank says that I’m lower than a douchebag. Here’s the email from Senior Fellow Fumento:
Nice! You completely avoided discussing the purpose of the column, which was to show the double standard between what you’re allowed to write about if you’ve gone to Iraq versus what you’re allowed to write about if you haven’t. The head of Knight-Ridder’s DC office can rip US war efforts even though he’s never been closer to Iraq than the Washington Monument, but Pioneer-Press is %^%&* and a #@%$^& for speaking well of US war efforts because he’s never been closer than St. Paul. Right.It’s ridiculous to compare you to a douche bag; douche bags serve a purpose. I’m planning to return to Iraq (no, not the safer areas) when the hole in my side finishes healing. I paid for my ticket and all my equipment; you can do likewise. Care to join me?
The email reads like something written and sent after a few snootfuls of gin, then regretted, perhaps even completely forgotten, the following morning. Even so, I thought it deserved a reply:
Dear Mr. Fumento:Thank you for your kind email. This is the very first time that the author of a column I’ve criticized has complained that I did not comment on all the errors in the column. Frankly, I thought that pointing out that you called the Green Zone a “barren section” of Baghdad sufficiently discredited your column that nothing more needed to be said. However, at your thoughtful suggestion, I’m happy to discuss what else was wrong with your column.
Your column’s characterization of the dispute between Yost and his colleagues at Knight Ridder is completely off base. It does not support the double standard that you claim:
Behold a clear double standard for Iraq commentators. If you attack U.S. war efforts, you may do so all you wish from the safety and comfort of American soil. Conversely, don’t even think about writing something positive unless you’ve spent time in Iraq
In fact, the dispute was about a Knight Ridder editor (Yost) who hadn’t been in Iraq and who was accusing reporters who actually were in Iraq of filing misleading reports. And although Clark Hoyt, the head of KR’s DC bureau whom you criticized, hadn’t himself been to Iraq, the majority of his column simply reprinted the critical comments of KR’s Baghdad Bureau Chief regarding Yost’s column.
Additionally, your statement that reporters in Iraq file their dispatches “from the safety and comfort of a cozy hotel behind layers of concrete barriers and concertina wire” is an unimaginably loathsome misrepresentation. Tell that to Yassir Salahee, the KR reporter shot to death in Baghdad on June 24. Tell that to Richard Wild, a cameraman for British network ITN, who was shot to death in Baghdad. Tell that to the 61 journalists who have died in Iraq since the beginning of the war.
Finally, your column leaves the erroneous impression that you were wounded while you were embedded in Iraq:
As it happens, I did go to Iraq. I was embedded with the Marines at Camp Fallujah in hostile Anbar province, nearly lost my life, and returned with a colostomy bag as a souvenir.
Perhaps you should have told your readers what really happened: that you came down with an impacted colon which burst and that less than two weeks after your only dispatch from Iraq, you were back in Arlington, Virginia. No doubt the rough conditions in Iraq contributed to the colon ailment, but it’s not like you were the victim of hostile fire as your ambiguous language may lead readers to think.
Don’t get me wrong. I do admire writers, even those with whom I disagree, who travel to a dangerous place to chase a story. I hope that you have a speedy recovery. And I hope that when you do return to Iraq, you (and as many other Americans as possible) return safely home.
Yours truly,
Clif
