tom moody
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I've been looking at Joshua Micah Marshall's Talking Points Memo a fair amount lately. While he's good on his facts and scholarly in his argumentative approach, he still comes off as another Washington wannabe hanging out with the same tired government types, chasing the same types of leads, and reaching the same namby-pamby "consensus" as everyone else. He favors invading Iraq to install leadership more to the US's liking, for example, only disagreeing with Bush et al over the timing and the methodology--a viewpoint not likely to get doors slammed in anyone's face. (Karl Rove wants the media talking about Iraq to get their minds off Bush ties to corporate mal-fee-ance: who is Josh to buck the trend?) Folks constantly change hats in DC, from government to lobbying to media to think tanks, in an endless (lucrative) circulating flow, and if you're a pundit you inevitably pull your punches, since the person you're criticizing today might be working in the same office with you tomorrow. That's the suckup trail Marshall appears to be on. By contrast, a lot of what the west coast pundits (Counterpunch.org, Antiwar.com) print is paranoid speculation, but at least they call'em like they see'em and don't have to worry about "offending a potential source." The granddaddy of unimpeachable commentators, of course, was I. F. Stone, who worked solo, burrowing through government records, drawing intelligent conclusions, and printing the documented dirt. That's what Talking Points Memo should be like--instead of "I called Jane So-and-so in Senator Such-and-Such's office and I'm still waiting for her to get back to me..." or "I'm appearing on MSNBC tomorrow so be sure to tune in..."
Update, January '06: Marshall was wrong to support the war--got sucked in like a lot of other centrists by the disgraced Kenneth Pollack's BS--but most of the rest of this post was unfounded fretting. Marshall has done terrific work tracking government shenanigans--particularly during the Bush push to destroy Social Security. And he recently moved to New York.