Once More for the Permanent Record

Frontpage Magazine, the fringe rightwing David Horowitz house organ, published a story on the Megan Pappada flap so rife with error, so utterly divorced from any semblance of professional reportage that it would have pulverized the credibility of Horowitz’s enterprise if he had any left himself.

One happy truth about the blogosphere: if I feel a burning need to respond to something and don’t have time (because, for example., I’m prepping a lecture, assembling a sprawling blog carnival and winding the kids down from their first day of school. For example.) someone will pick me up. More than once that someone has been Modern Esquire – long the star of BSB for my money. He did it again, shredding FPM’s main argument that this shows that the ODP now embraces segregation.

OK, if you aren’t going to go read this ridiculous screed, I’m certainly not resetting the argument for you. Trust me, they get there somehow.

Still, for all of M. Esquire’s excellent work, I should try to clear up some of the detritus FPM scattered around trying to pin racial invective on the Democrats.

The story begins with my post. I am a “friend” of Megan’s (true, that) who notes that someone discovered the letter. Then we cut to Matt Naugle who actually digs up the letter. O intrepid and brilliant Matt! However did you find it? Well, maybe he clicked through the link to the Google search I posted. I wasn’t going to add another link to the letter itself and boost its ranking further, but jeebeezus it’s more than a stretch to give credit to Scoop Naugle.

Then they go through the segregated dorm floors stuff. Look. If Megan had just said she didn’t think segregated dorm floors were a good idea, that wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow. That wasn’t it.

After that, things really get surreal. Suddenly, the ODP is behind Megan sending her open letter. They somehow put her up to sending a letter of contrition. Because the ODP is that powerful. No. She sent it to me because she wanted her side aired. The letter hardly puts ODP in a good light. But she doesn’t hold the same views now as she did then, she wanted to say so and she said so.

Then the article claims that Jerid Kurtz did an about-face on the issue. Jerid said that he was wrong to claim ODP was stonewalling me (not my intent to say they had – just acknowledging that I had asked for comment). His take on Megan’s firing remained the same, as he clearly said when he also ran Megan’s letter. But according to FPM, he parroted the party line, “uber-leftist” lackey that he is. Laughable, all of it.

I sat on this story for a few days because I knew that rags like Frontpage were likely to issue just this sort of garbage spin. In the end I think things are better for having aired the controversy, but seeing wingnuts distort the record with their fevered imaginings still stings.