How liberals respond to White House official story on Sestak affair

There is an item at the Vanity Fair website entitled, “We Can All Stop Talking About L’Affaire Sestak Now, Right?”, by Juli Weiner. After a brief summary of the issue, Weiner writes:

And so finally, today, White House counsel Robert Bauer publicly announced that there was no improper conduct and that “there have been numerous, reported instances in the past when prior administrations—both Democratic and Republican, and motivated by the same goals—discussed alternative paths to service for qualified individuals also considering campaigns for public office.”

Bauer’s delayed disclosure has prompted a spate of editorials today rallying for increased transparency. “Okay, if all the facts are out, then we would agree: Nothing inappropriate happened,” wrote The Washington Post. Although, as DailyKos notes, the existence of certain facts—or lack thereof—has rarely convinced anyone on the Internet to write or think anything that he or she wasn’t already writing or thinking before.

That’s it. In Weiner’s mind, a memo by the White House counsel declaring that there was no wrongdoing by the White House, plus an editorial by the Washington Post stating that nothing inappropriate happened, means that there was no wrongdoing and that nothing inappropriate happened. The subject is closed. Weiner then informs us, appealing to the authority of Daily Kos, that anyone who thinks otherwise is a person who is hopelessly impervious to the facts and is simply indulging his own prejudices. Finally, just as Weiner echoes the White House, the Washington Post, and Daily Kos, Weiner’s readers echo her.

To be members of the same political society, people must be able to communicate with each other, which in turn requires that they share, more or less, a common apprehension of reality. But what apprehension of reality do we share with the likes of Juli Weiner and Daily Kos?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 30, 2010 07:27 PM | Send