01/13/2011
Jennifer Rubin, whose hopelessly inadequate Commentary magazine discussion of California’s decline I critiqued in Who killed California? The Neocons (2) and also here, was subsequently rewarded last November by being given the plum job of "conservative"( blogger at The Washington Post. Here she has somewhat redeemed herself by annoying the ADL
Yesterday afternoon I received an irate phone call from Anti-Defamation League spokesman Todd Gutnick. He was incensed that I had written such a critical piece on the ADL.
ADL incensed at criticism Posted at 9:36 AM ET, 01/12/2011
Rubin had complained that in response the Giffords shootings the ADL
sends out an appalling press release that reads: "ADL EXPERTS AVAILABLE ON RIGHT WING EXTREMISTS AND ANTI-GOVERNMENT GROUPS." Have we established that this is the root of the problem? Are they uninterested in left-wing groups?
The ADL’s defense, as they post in a comment in to Rubin’s piece, is essentially the liquor/gun store owner line: the (media) market wanted Right Wing Extremist material, so that is what they offered.
It speaks volumes of the ADL’s confidence that their spokesman felt able to be angry with an MSM writer making a perfectly reasonable point. And of course the ADL is being dishonest. As Rubin says
it is obvious what is going on here. By tying the shooting to its own expertise in combating rightwing extremism, the ADL is promoting the view — and certainly feeding the left’s storyline — that conservatives are to blame for the tragedy.
I noted myself yesterday in ADL Loughner Analysis Revealing — About ADL As Well that while their analysis completely exonerated the Right — and Christians — from any role in motivating this man it saw as clearly deranged, the ADL press release about it was structured to preserve that possibility.
About the ADL apparently cracking Loughner’s Above Top Secret online pseudonym, which I raised in my post yesterday: Reader JP points out that there was a great deal of industrious googling done over the weekend and by the day the report was published the hypothesis that Erad3 on Above Top Secret was Loughner had been acknowledged (not confirmed) by the website.
I am not completely convinced. The ADL report, which is in fact a model of judicious scholarship, asserts the connection with absolute confidence — and must have been formulated by mid Monday at the latest. All other unproven assertions are scrupulously qualified. I am afraid reader PO may be correct:
The simplest explanation is most likely the real one: The FBI gave the information to the ADL, they have an official working alliance and the ADL also teaches Federal, State, and Local LEO about the dangers of Whitey.
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