Washington Post blogger Dave Weigel resigned today after a host of offensive e-mails surfaced revealing his disdain for much of the right – the beat he was charged with covering. Fishbowl DC, which published a number of those emails yesterday, confirmed the resignation with the Post just after noon. Yesterday I reported on leaked emails from Weigel to a listserve of liberal journalists bashing conservatives and conservatism – you know, the people Weigel is supposed to be covering. As bad as those email were, a plethora of messages from Weigel published in the Daily Caller take the conservative-bashing to a whole new level. The new emails also demonstrated that yesterday’s quasi-apology from Weigel was really not as sincere as he claimed. He said that he made some of his most offensive remarks at the end of a bad day. But these new emails show that there was really nothing unique about them, and that offensive remarks about conservatives really were nothing new or uncommon. Many of the misguided statements were clearly made in jest – “I hope he fails,” Weigel said of Rush Limbaugh after the radio host was hospitalized with chest pains, a reference to Limbaugh’s hope that Obama’s agenda would fail. But other bouts of name calling – ragging on the “outbursts of racism” from “amoral blowhard” Newt Gingrich, for instance – were obviously not jokes. The Daily Caller revealed some quite stunning statements from the JournoList in its piece today: “Honestly, it’s been tough to find fresh angles sometimes–how many times can I report that these [tea party] activists are joyfully signing up with the agenda of discredited right-winger X and discredited right-wing group Y?” Weigel lamented in one February email. In other posts, Weigel describes conservatives as using the media to “violently, angrily divide America.” According to Weigel, their motives include “racism” and protecting “white privilege,” and for some of the top conservatives in D.C., a nihilistic thirst for power. “There’s also the fact that neither the pundits, nor possibly the Republicans, will be punished for their crazy outbursts of racism. Newt Gingrich is an amoral blowhard who resigned in disgrace, and Pat Buchanan is an anti-Semite who was drummed out of the movement by William F. Buckley. Both are now polluting my inbox and TV with their bellowing and minority-bashing. They’re never going to go away or be deprived of their soapboxes,” Weigel wrote. Of Matt Drudge, Weigel remarked, “It’s really a disgrace that an amoral shut-in like Drudge maintains the influence he does on the news cycle while gay-baiting, lying, and flubbing facts to this degree.”… Republicans? “Ratf–king [Obama] on every bill.” Palin? Tried to “ratf–k” a moderate Republican in a contentious primary in New York. Limbaugh? Used “ratf–king tactics” in urging Republican activists to vote for Hillary Clinton in open primaries after Obama had all but beat her for the Democratic nomination. Weigel continued to defend these outbursts, as he did when contacted by the Daily Caller. “My reporting, I think, stands for itself,” he said. “I’ve always been of the belief that you could have opinions and could report anyway… people aren’t usually asked to stand or fall on everything they’ve said in private.” First, there’s the issue of whether anything said on a 400-member email list can really be considered “private.” “There’s no such thing as off-the-record with 400 people,” Nation columnist Eric Alterman told Politico . But the real issues are, first, whether such mean-spirited jabs demonstrate a disdain for many conservatives that precludes Weigel from covering them fairly (he did label gay marriage opponents “bigots,” after all), and second, whether the Post feels it is appropriate to have someone hostile to the right covering conservatism, while a through-and-through liberal in Ezra Klein covers the left. The Post signaled that it did not consider Weigel’s comments to be a serious problem. It seems that attitude has changed. Managing Editor Raju Narisetti told Politico that “Dave’s apology to readers reflects he understands, in calmer hindsight, the need to exercise good judgment at all times and of not throwing stones, especially when operating from inside an echo-filled glass house that is modern-day digital journalism.” He added that it was “time to move on.”
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Breaking: WaPo’s David Weigel Resigns After More Conservative-bashing Emails Disclosed
