1. What Beauchamp did or didn't do, and what he wrote or didn't write, has no effect on the honor of my service. That's just stupid.

2. What does affect my service is any attempt to shut up people who, in your view, fail to "support our troops." I served to keep those voices alive, not crush them. Despite its occasional glowing faults, TNR has served this country well for many years, and you demean all who served when you attempt to silence that voice.

Why are you guys blocking me?

Why can't I find Peters in their list of Members?

I've been exposing these IVAW phonies for a week, and if there is one with his head on straight, I wanted to laud him, and now I go there and can't find anything...

Billings Blog

"Our aim, to swat liars and leeches, hypocrites & humbugs, demagogs & dastards" -- The Yellow Jacket Moravian Falls, N.C., 1919

Just swatting some liars, hypocrites, and demagogs over here; pointing out their lies and hypocrisy to TNR's advertisers. Nobody's trying to shut them up -- that's the problem, TNR is the only one clamming up in this fiasco. It's all about the sunlight.

I'm not sure where he went, TSO. This used to be his page. Perhaps he left the group?

"a no-name liberal magazine "

A no-name liberal magazine that supported the war from the start. Feh. Some liberals.

David, and others with reading comprehension problems:

Beauchamp is not the issue; journalistic malfeasance is. It is right and proper to point it out to management and advertisers, so as to correct the situation. It is regretably necessary to point out the fact that TNR in the persons of Foer and others have lied, mislead, attempted (pathetically) to stonewall, and to blame everyone but themselves for their own mistakes. Having to tell journalists that lying is wrong is not a good thing -- and I say that as someone who can append Kappa Tau Alpha after his name.

No one is trying to shut them down or deprive them of their right of speech -- we are just demanding they live up to the codes of journalism and of basic citizenship.

LW

Despite its occasional glowing faults, TNR has served this country well for many years, and you demean all who served when you attempt to silence that voice.

What on God's Green Earth are you talking about, David?

News outlets should not lie. If their lies don't impact your service, or your view of it, how can debunking them do so?

I call shenanigans.

"a no-name liberal magazine "

Wrong description, TNR is self-described as the official in-flight magazine for Air Force One.

Debunking is fine. Have at it. But suggesting to advertisers that buying space in TNR is somehow disloyal to troops can be nothing other than an attempt to shut the magazine down. Don't try to pretend it is anything else.

David, get a grip and some reading comprehension. It is not an attempt to shut down the magazine no matter how much you want to pretend that it is. It is an effort to correct serious journalistic malfeasance; and, there are others who serve who strongly disagree with you and say that what they have done -- and are doing by accusing the Army of crimes -- does smear them and their service. If you disagree, fine. So state. But to claim that this is all that it is and because you feel that way A has to equal C is logically and factually inaccurate.

So, David, does that mean that MSNBC refusing to accept FreedomWatch's ad equates to MSNBC wishing to shut down FreedomWatch?

Or is it only eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil censorship if it's a lefty organization being targeted, and freedom of speech if it's a conservative organization?

Awaiting your reply eagerly, I say good day, sir.

C-C-G, It isn't censorship in either case. And it has nothing to do with the politics of those involved. The issues would be exactly the same if people were targeting advertisers at National Review. Both magazines provide voices that need to be heard.

I have no idea what's going on with MSNBC and Freedom Watch. It's cowardly and disgraceful for broadcasters to reject ads because of controversial political content. One reason why big companies like that are so gutless is that they are afraid of pressure from advertisers. That is not behavior that should be encouraged.

Laughing Wolf, I do not pretend to speak for other veterans. And I do not want other veterans speaking for me.

demean all who served when you attempt to silence that voice

So now expressing "dissent" against media lies is somehow trying to silence someone eh?

Being nice was tried. It didn't work. The next step is economic pressure. NOBODY is compelled to purchase TNR product, and TNR has no right to EXPECT to be able to continue down this path of lies unimpeded and without backlash. This is a free market country.

All TNR needs to do is "do the right thing" and all will be forgiven.

Basically you believe that someone who lies to the public and doesn't come clean should be afforded license to do so free of consequence. That is a crock.

The 1st amendment offers no guarantees of audience, venue, continued economic prosperity, or freedom from negative consequences if your "speech" is found wanting by the consumers of said "speech". It just says you can say what you want even if its lies.

You need to read your constitution again David.

Isn't it amazing that David, who seems to place such a high value on honor, should have to be told- over and over again- that lying is wrong?
Or that he considers falsehoods as "dissent"?

C-C-G, It isn't censorship in either case. And it has nothing to do with the politics of those involved. The issues would be exactly the same if people were targeting advertisers at National Review. Both magazines provide voices that need to be heard.

David, do you really think that fiction offered as fact needs to be heard?

This is not an attempt to shut TNR down. This is an attempt to make them come clean, again, and to stop printing fairy tales told as fact.

Purple Avenger,
I doubt seriously that I need a lecture from you on what the Constitution says (or from DaveP on the morality of lying). I have not said, and would never say, that you have no right to go after TNR's advertisers. I'm just saying it shows bad judgment.

C-C-G,
Yes, fiction needs to be heard because no one has a monopoly on the truth. One man's gospel is another man's pack of lies. Try to stop lying and we would have shut down the entire political system. The whole point of having a marketplace of ideas is to let truth and error contend. Drive error out of the marketplace and you are just talking to yourself.

TNR printed a story advancing the unremarkable thesis that soldiers in bad situations sometimes do bad things. TNR has been snookered before, and it may have gotten snookered again. How much punishment does that deserve? Ten percent of its business? A hundred percent?

Before you start down this road, you had better think hard about how far you really want to travel. There may be no turning back.

I had a whole screed planned here, on how the "marketplace of ideas" worked and how falsehoods were a way of gaming the system to recieve rewards unearned. But then I looked carefully at Crisp's little manifesto on the total subjectivity of truth and I realized that anyone who could put his name to a phrase like,

"Yes, fiction needs to be heard because no one has a monopoly on the truth"

was far too mentally dishonest to contend with- because to him, lying to support his own position would be the smart thing to do. There is no consensual reality in his world; we each make our own completely subjective one.

In other words, he's mentally ill.

So, David- now that you've announced that there is no truth and falsehoods are completely acceptable in the "marketplace of ideas", why do you expect your point of view to be accepted as anything other than a pack of bull? You've jsut told us all that you are the equivalent of a grocer who gives false weight; no-one here is buying your wares.

From an honorable soldier to a shortchanging shopclerk- what a letdown you are.

David, if there is no monopoly on truth, why are we to believe that what you say is true?

Those sort of statements are self-defeating, once looked at logically.

Wow. I know that what I wrote was written in good faith, and I have to assume that DaveP read it in good faith. But there is so little relationship between what I thought I wrote and what he thinks he read that I am inclined to toss the whole exchange up as evidence for my notion that truth is difficult and slippery.

DaveP thinks that what I wrote was not only wrong but insane, the product of a depraved mind. But he sees things I didn't say; I never said, for example, that truth is totally subjective or that falsehoods are completely acceptable in the marketplace of ideas. I did not use those words, and I did not intend those meanings. Yet he has managed to find those meanings in my post. For him, that passes for the truth.

Look, I say all this as someone who has been a working journalist for 25 years. I don't believe that truth is purely subjective, but I do believe that it can be damned hard to pin down. Lord knows, I have made my share of mistakes, sometimes on facts I thought I had double and triple checked.

The point is that a marketplace of ideas that allows no margin for error is no marketplace at all. People screw up. I have never screwed up as badly as TNR has, but I can assure you that when I watched "Shattered Glass," a chill went up my spine. There but for the grace of God ... .

So C-C-G, there is no reason at all why you should believe anything I say. I said I am a veteran, but I could be lying. I said I am a journalist, and I could be lying about that, too. As the old saying goes, if your mama says she loves you, check it out.

David, I prefer Reagan's dictum: "Trust, but verify."

However, to your main point:

The point is that a marketplace of ideas that allows no margin for error is no marketplace at all. People screw up. I have never screwed up as badly as TNR has, but I can assure you that when I watched "Shattered Glass," a chill went up my spine. There but for the grace of God ... .

Let me point out that there was--as has been revealed here by CY himself more than once--practically no effort made to verify Beauchamp's stories.

Publishing stories without verification is hardly justifiable, unless you know they are fictional. And if you do--as TNR might have--not to describe them as fictional is a deliberate falsehood and quite possibly fraudulent.

I'm sorry you don't seem able to comprehend that simple concept.

nice try, David. I honor you for your service, if, in fact, you served. I also totally disregard anything you said after: "Yes, fiction needs to be heard because no one has a monopoly on the truth"

Is there a phrase for committing "credibility-hara-kiri"?