Wednesday, May 12, 2010

So now Glenn Greenwald is a hyperbolic jerk

Most people have known that, as well as the fact that he is a sock-puppeteer, for some time, but sometimes you have to smack Huffington Post contributors with a very large clue bat before they can figure things out.

For Lawrence Lessig that smack was Greenwald calling him a liar after Lessig challenged him on some of his statements regarding Elena Kagan.

But Greenwald was not a fan of Kagan. He and I exchanged a number of emails about his views of Kagan. I thought his criticism of her was mistaken. But as I acknowledged to him, and in "print," the source of my judgment is my own private experience. And that private experience is no doubt not evidence for others. So I can well understand skepticism and questions, especially when someone is being appointed for life to such a critical job.

What struck me yesterday as I researched the issue, however, was how hyperbolic Glenn's campaign had become.

So I called Greenwald on that on Rachel Maddow's show last night. I said I had enormous respect for Greenwald's work. But that his hyperbole needed to be "checked." And much of my ten minutes or so was devoted to pointing out the incompleteness in Glenn's raging campaign to discredit the president's nominee to the Supreme Court.

This morning Glenn responded to my challenging his hyperbole by calling me a liar. I had "spew[ed] total falsehoods on TV," he claimed.

Funny, funny stuff.

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