Will they fire E.J. Dionne next?That's my reaction to the decision of the Washington Post to lay off online columnist Dan Froomkin. During the darkest years of the Bush-Cheney administration, Froomkin's White House Watch was one of the few beacons of light willing to question the blind charge into Iraq and the introduction of torture -- all while the editorial page of the Post was doing everything it could to cheerlead short of dressing Fred Hiatt in a dress & pom-poms.
Steve Benen at Washington Monthly points out the tough reporting didn't stop on January 20th:
Froomkin has spent months scrutinizing the Obama White House, cutting the Democratic president no slack at all. Just over the past couple of days, Froomkin offered critical takes on the president's proposed regulations of the financial industry, follow-through on gay rights, and foot-dragging on Bush-era torture revelations.Andrew Sullivan reacts:
A simply astounding move by the paper - getting rid of the one blogger, Dan Froomkin, who kept it real and kept it interesting. Dan's work on torture may be one reason he is now gone. The way in which the WaPo has been coopted by the neocon right, especially in its editorial pages, is getting more and more disturbing. This purge will prompt a real revolt in the blogosphere. And it should.Glenn Greenwald of Salon sums it up simply: "The Post's inability to articulate a coherent, credible explanation for what it did speaks volumes."
Just look at the roster of opinion writers at the Post. True-blue liberals? Dionne, Michael Kinsley, Eugene Robinson, the up-and-coming Jonathan Capehart and that's about it. But now look at the hardcore conservatives -- Michael Gerson, Robert Kagan, Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, Kathleen Parker, George Will, the list goes on.
And this is supposed to be the heart of the "liberal" media? If this isn't conservative media, what would conservative media look like? Do we need Newt Gingrich as editorial page editor before people will wake up to the truth?
