Topic: NewsBusters
In a Dec. 29 NewsBusters post, Warner Todd Huston calls blogger Steve Benen "young Stevie" and an "Internet gadfly," claims that Benen "wasn't a very attentive intern" when he worked in the Clinton White House and engages in a "childish, low-brow style of writing" and is an "infant tyro" to boot.
What did Benen do to warrant such name-calling? In Huston's words, Benen engaged in "wild-eyed name calling in place of real political discourse."
We kid you not. The champion name-caller himself is offended by name-calling done by others.
On top of that, of course, Huston can't get his facts straight. The Benen post that got Huston's panties in a bunch was a Washington Monthly post about the New York Times' hiring of William Kristol as a columnist, in which, in Huston's words, "Benen calls Kristol a 'cast off from Time magazine,' a writer of 'shallow, predictable tripe,' an embarrassment,' a speaker with 'bitter, sycophantic belligerence," a 'thug,' 'clownish,' and says that The New York Times has 'damned standards and consequences" to have hired him.'"
As Benen hismelf pointed out in a response on his own blog, the Carpetbagger Report:
In this case, Huston removes the context a bit. I quoted Jonathan Chait using the word “thug” in relation to Kristol. Huston apparently thought this context would undermine his criticism of me personally, so he omitted it in order to say use of the word “thug” represents a “childish, low-brow style of writing.”
Huston, meanwhile, took his own response to the response to his own website, Publius' Forum, in which he declared that "Nothing is particularly worth quoting from his reply." Especially not the part about Huston taking Benen out of context. Or all of his own name-calling.
