The lesson of Journolist*.

Ace of AoSHQ notes something that I’ve noticed myself:

You know, for the left’s constant blather about “The Other” (an idea with merit, I think), they sure the hell are oblivious to their constant Otherizing of others, aren’t they? You’d think that people who never shut the f[*]ck up about Otherizing the Otherish Others would once in a while realize, “Hey, you know what? I think I’m indulging in a little Class-A Otherification here myself.”

But I digress.

It’s in response to the latest round Journolist leaks**, which are going to be hurting people’s careers for a long, long time to come.  Oh, maybe not the people who want to work in places like The Nation and/or Mother Jones; hating conservatives openly is perfectly fine there.  But the arguably more mainstream media organizations expect a bit more discretion in their workers… which is the hidden reason for Journolist.  Ezra Klein was providing a service to his Lefty colleagues in the media, you see: a place where they could safely go and yell about all the things that they had to keep silent about in public because the average American just wasn’t ready to understand the truth, yet.  Think of him as a… well, as a rather specialized bawd***.

And it looks like somebody else now owns Ezra’s client list.  Worse: it looks like somebody else bought Ezra’s client list.  The distinction is perhaps minor to people who are now worrying if the next revelation is going to make either their professional or personal lives more awkward, but it’s real.  After all: if they have a traitor in their midst, how can they be certain that he or she won’t follow them along to Journolist v2.0?

Moe Lane

*”Stay alert! Trust no-one…” and we’ll leave off the rest of the quote, in order to not confuse non-geeks.

**For those who somehow missed it: email list for Lefty media types; tenor of commentary about what you’d expect; contents of same apparently acquired by Daily Caller; hi-jinks ensue.

***There isn’t really a good gender-neutral term, sorry.  But, hey, we use male terms to include women all the time; surely it’s all right to use a female term to include males, then.

Crossposted to RedState.