Reasons to Be Mean to the Washington Post's Fred Hiatt, Part MCCXXXIII

Ezra Klein asks a question:

Ezra Klein: Blogospheric Venom: [Is] the Post op-ed section['s]... acceptance of discredited neocons like Richard Perle... cause enough for bloggers to be mean to Fred Hiatt[?]

And then he turns on the snark:

Because, see, here's the thing: Richard Perle might have helped lead America into a murderous, destructive war, but when you say mean things to Fred Hiatt and his colleague, it really hurts their feelings. And that's just uncalled for!

But it is worse than that. Back in the winter of 2003, when Europeans--serious Europeans--smart Europeans--establishment Europeans--submitted op-eds to the Washington Post saying "let the weapons inspectors in Iraq do their work," Fred Hiatt rejected them. Fred Hiatt rejected them, telling at least one:

We do not need criticism [of the Bush administration]. The decision [to attack Iraq] has been made. We have to get behind it, and deal with the world as it is, and not as we wish it would be.

This is the same Fred Hiatt who today says that he can find only one thing wrong with the Washington Post's coverage during the runup to the attack on Iraq: that although "we [at the Post] raised such issues" as to whether the Bush administration had properly thought its proposed adventure in Iraq through, the Post raised them "with insufficient force."

As I have said before, the Post's failure to have long ago fired Fred Hiatt for cause is one of many reasons that it is unlikely to ever recover its journalistic reputation. Ever.

Comments

[howard]

the cossacks works for the czar, prof! it's not "the post" that failed to fire fred hiatt; it's donald graham, and there's no reason to believe that graham wants anything other than what he's getting from the man.

one of the few things i'll criticize warren buffett for is his failure to oppose nepotism at the post....

[ken melvin]

Fred Hiatt is a Neocon.

[Lewis Carroll]

Is there a meaningful difference in accuracy between Hiatt's judgment that in the runup to the war the Post "raised objections to it, but with insufficient force" and the Japanese Emperor's August 1945 statement that the war situation "has developed not necessarily to our advantage"?

[K]

"We do not need criticism. The decision has been made. We have to get behind it ..."

This really is beyond parody. Needless to say, Hiatt doesn't apply it equally to all Administration decisions; he doesn't always require that op-ed contributors presume the correctness of (announced & unannounced) current policy.

Do he have some some principled rule for determining which decisions we have to get behind?