I normally don’t write about inside-baseball kinds of stuff, but the little kerfuffle surrounding the Washington Post’s hiring of “homeschooled veal” Ben Domenech to write a “Red America” blog for the Post’s online version has just become way too interesting to ignore.
Young Ben, one of the founders of the racist and sexist Red State blog, was apparently hired by the Post to provide some kind of “balance” to Dan Froomkin. Now, Froomkin is a professional journalist who writes a column about Washington. He may be on balance liberal, but that may just be an impression given by the fact that the people who provide the material — you know, the people who run Washington — are Republicans. A relatively recent attempt to shut Froomkin down was led by a Republican activist, though the Post tried to spin it otherwise.
Ben Domenech is a blogger, a nakedly partisan and outright wingnutty one at that. So this “balances” a professional journalist writing a column in which he strives for objectivity, um, how?
But here’s where things get really fun. Ben’s blog hits the Post site, and he immediately begins the partisan attacks. The fact that there is no blue-state liberal partisan *blogger* on the Post payroll set off a few red flags, and some people got to digging. Here’s some of the dirt they dug up:
The President visits the funeral of a Communist By: Augustine
And phones in a message to the March for Life.
I think we can get a little pissed about this.This story shall the good man teach his son
[ Parent ] (User Info) (#190)
[The Communist he's referring to, BTW, is Coretta Scott King]
[quoted and endorsed, from a First Things post on Freakonomics and abortion]: It just happens that killing black babies has the happy result of reducing crime. I do not question the research or logic of Levitt’s argument. If a specifiable group is inordinately responsible for a social problem, it follows that eliminating a large number of people belonging to that group will reduce the problem.
[His own]: Does Bush still equal Hitler? By: Augustine
What say you?
Actually, Dobson’s soft-pedaling it. The worst black-robed men and women are worse then the KKK, and not just because they have the authority of the state behind them. They don’t even use the vile pretense of skin color – they dismiss the value of all unborn lives, not just the lives of ethnic minorities.This story shall the good man teach his son
(User Info) (#1)
Here’s one of the many things Steve Gilliard had to say about Ben’s hiring:
While I’ll admit my sambo depiction of Michael Steele was mean and blunt, besides the caterwalling of the right, which was easily disposed of, race still wasn’t a massive topic here.
That changed with Katrina.
For some reason, the right blogzombies felt free to attack black people with a vengence. From Jonah Goldberg’s jokes about people drowning in the Superdome to John Derbyshire’s comments that blacks didn’t have ’self-control”. From then on, the racism has ramped up to an incredible level.
Then you have Bill “Slots” Bennett calling for genocide and his loyal negro retainers defending him.
At every turn, black conservatives have defended white racism, no matter how demeaning it gets or how much outrage it causes normal people.
The King funeral seems to have brought the racists out like roaches in the light. Racist Redstate took the lead with its insults on black culture, then Racist Redstate Ben jumped in and called Mrs. King a communist.
Jesus fucking Christ, the only time I heard that was when the segs spoke in the mid-1960’s.
And this is the person they hire to become their first in-house blogger?
Are they kidding? Would they hire someone who said the Bush girls were drunken whores or that white people are blond hair, blue eyed devils? Of course not. So why is the WaPo hiring a man who thinks the Kings were communists?
They don’t give anyone else this opportunity, but he gets it, for what reason? Balance? What balance, is there a left wing blogger who thinks 9/11 was a government plot? Hiring Restate Racist Ben is like hiring one of the Farrakhans to write opinion for the Post.
And that could never happen.
And of course, The General has written a letter.
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I’ve known Ben Domenech personally for 14 years, and he’s a decent, funny, bright kid and a very good writer. The WaPo did a good job in hiring him. I wish him all the best there!
Ooh, look! Another cutlet!
I’m confused by this and the “veal” comments above. Did I miss some joke about people who homeschool?
Do you know how veal is raised? In a box, unable to move, unable to interact with others?
Okay, I know I’m nitpicking here, but the setting of Red Dawn is rather nonspecific (Allmovie.com says it’s “somewhere in the Northwest”, IMDB says “somewhere in the Midwest”), so I don’t think “Wolverines” is a Michigan reference.
Maybe I just don’t want my ancestral state to be affiliated with this movie in any way….
No, they just dismiss the entitlement of said unborn lives to feed off the bodies of unwilling human beings.
Just so we know where you stand:
Noted. You stand firmly behind an apologist for genocide, segregation and racism.
I have no objection to homeschool, and was homeschooled myself for a year. But, suggestion: maybe you guys could teach something about plagiarism.
Oh I think it speaks volumes about what the WaPo thinks about the whiners about ‘balance’. Its a hoot. You want balance? Then they find the biggest jackass possible.
There, now you got your voice. Like the old adage, if the shoe fits..
Woah. I hope WaPo fires him for this plagiarism business, that’s really bad.
I’m confused by this and the “veal” comments above. Did I miss some joke about people who homeschool?
See, unlike homeschoolers, children who attend schools are free, intellectually stimulated and exposed to progressive values. Plus, school administrators place children’s well-being above test scores and bureacratic power games, and kids are never, ever expected to endure harassment or lousy teaching. That’s why only paleocons homeschool, never progressives.
Hey, I was homeschooled by my then hippie mother who ran a chapter of La Leche League and a food co-op. It happens every now and then. =)
Ah, but the fundies homeschool because the Eeeeeevil Liberal Overlords of the Public Schools are secularists (gasp) and of course this means that any innocent, godly fundie child (such as Ben) would have been subject to satanic corrupting worldly influences that could lead to lying and steal…..uh well lets just move along now shall we.
I was homeschooled by my socialist father. I really bristle when people knock homeschooling. There’s nothing wrong with it as long as the parents aren’t teaching, you know, lies.
Homeschooling done right is good for kids, and can open their minds. When their parents use it as an opportunity to control their access to ideas, stifle learning about others and ensure that they only are exposed to the “right” idea, you get veal.
I got nothing against homeschooling as a concept, but when you have people like Andrea Yates and Michelle Duggar doing it, you can be sure the idea isn’t to get the best education possible, but to keep out corrupting influences — which may translate to not exposing the kids to anyone who isn’t white, fundamentalist, conservative, etc.
I sort of feel that the overall problem with homeschooling is that your only real retort is “yeah, well, my parents weren’t like that.” Not exactly the height of rhetorical sophistication.
I loved being homeschooled, even if it was just for early elementary school. I’d do it with my own future kids if I thought I’d have time.
I, for one, and distressed at the way this fellow has disparaged the good names of box turtles everywhere.
It never fails to amaze me how, when we’re talking about homeschooling, progressives suddenly decide that after all, schools are open, free places of education where students of all ages and creeds are encouraged to interact and learn from one another, and where young minds are opened to all possibilities. I guess we put that spiel back in the junk drawer when we’re through with it, so we can to run back to complaining about schools that stifle free speech, try to teach ‘intelligent design’, and push children to conform to a rigid and sexist pecking order.
Of course there are people who abuse homeschooling. There are people who abuse ’special education’ designations to try and get their kids advantages, but I don’t think that says anything about the validity of special-education programs in general.
Yes, I get pissy about this stuff, because I never hear sniping about homeschooling from parents who have ever been on the wrong side of school administrators. I guess if all you care about is that the little brats are warehoused from 8 to 2 on weekdays, homeschooling seems like a dumb idea indeed.
Mythago, we’re talking about a specific person with a specific homeschooling experience that was intended to take him out of the world, not to learn to engage it better. His parents are politically-connected fundies who apparently didn’t teach their kid not to plagiarize.
This is not about homeschooling in general, or as progressives do it, or anything like that. This is about the Washington Post, a once-reputable newspaper, hiring a racist, misogynist, plagiarizing, narrow-minded kid with a politically-connected daddy to write a partisan blog on its website without giving liberals a corresponding presence.
So, if you want to write about homeschooling and how insensitive some people are to how great it is, please do it on your own blog.
And you’re reaching troll levels of projection here. I never said anything of the sort.
The real question: will his letter of resignation be his own work?
So, if you want to write about homeschooling and how insensitive some people are to how great it is
Actually, zuzu, I wanted to write about your going after this clown by talking about homeschooled kids as ‘veal’. Your backpedaling (oh, not ALL homeschoolers, just most, and did you know Andrea Yates homeschooled?) and distraction (who cares if I was stereotyping and broad-brushing, you fools ignore my greater point!) are techniques our esteemed colleagues on the far right pull when they get called on their snarky generalizations.
I’m not sure why your response to anyone saying anything stronger than “Perhaps your post was not 100% perfect, zuzu” is to tell them to shut up, fuck off and take it to their own blog.
Did I call ALL homeschooled kids veal? Did I? No, mythago, I did not. That’s YOUR inference. I called HIM veal.
Must hurt pulling all that out of your ass.
Look, you can criticize what I wrote, you can disagree with it, but if you’re going to start making shit up and then bludgeoning me with it, I will ask you to go do that somewhere else. And you’re making shit up.
And your insistence on attributing arguments to me that I have not made, and inferring meanings that just arent’ there, and insisting on generalizing when a specific statement was made are also such techniques.
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