Wouldn’t you know it? In my recent exchanges with Joe Klein, I made the point that blogging was harming Klein because it allowed his unfiltered rage to make its way into print (so to speak), thereby embarrassing him and Time magazine. Klein responded with a blog post offering... more unfiltered rage.

I sense a pattern developing.

		Steyn: The Superbower Blase: A Medicaid Buy-Off Sanders: Blanche Lincoln’s Balancing Act Costa: Saturday Night Fever Miller: The Man Who Would Kill Lincoln Hibbs: Just Bite Her Already Goldberg: We Need Your Help Spruiell: Welcome to the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy Editors: End It, Don’t Amend It Goldberg: Palinophobes Hate First, Ask Questions Later Murdock: Medicare: A Glimpse of the Future? Krauthammer: Travesty in New York Charen: Holder’s True Motive Lowry: Barack Obama’s Chump Diplomacy Spakovsky: Criminalizing Health-Care Freedom Anderson: Roadmap to Victory

In this latest posting, Klein accuses me of being “Karl Rove’s intellectual hatchet man in the White House.” (Rove, Klein helpfully informs us, “had an eye for talented misleaders.”) It turns out that my point-by-point rebuttal to Klein’s interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic is not only wrong; according to Klein, my “intellectual dishonesty is simply breath-taking.” We also learn that one of my “pet agit-prop projects” in the White House was the president’s Freedom Agenda.

Klein even dusts off some oldies but some goodies. He reminds readers that he once suggested that I “spend some time emptying bedpans at Walter Reed in penance for [my] horrific performance in the White House.” I need to “get a whiff of the reality of [my] ideology as it is lived by those who’ve been maimed by [my] policies.” And thanks to Joe, I found out that I will spend the rest of my life trying to “Lady Macbeth” my role in the Iraq “catastrophe.” Alas, “the blood won’t wash.”

My goodness; where to begin, other than with the observation that Time magazine must be enormously proud of the civil tone and the rigorous quality of arguments advanced by one of its most prominent figures.

The first thing to note is that Klein appears to have backed away from his charge that Jewish neoconservatives have “divided loyalties” — a charge which was what triggered my response to Klein in the first place. If that’s the case, it’s a good development.

Beyond that, he leaves unchallenged almost every substantive point I made; he tries to simply dismiss them as “dishonest fulminations.” I’m perfectly content to let people read our exchanges and decide who is engaging in “dishonest fulminations” and who is not. But let’s just say that if Klein could offer an intellectually serious response to the specific argument I made, I rather suspect he’d do so.


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