I guess I could also call this “The Saga of Jennie” because it’s genesis, so to speak, and center is WashPost pseudo-“Right Turn” gal Jennifer Rubin, about whom I recently wrote in the post “Jennie made her mind up”, noting, with pleasure, that Jennie’s political outlook had made not a right turn but a 180, turning a right-wing apparatchik to a shrewd and passionate defender of civil liberties and, really, intelligence—her noble response to the advent of the that monstrously uncivil ignoramus who currently occupies the White House. In the post, I stated that I spent so much time making fun of the old Jennie’s nonsense that eventually I gave it up as “too easy”. What’s the point of remarking that a stopped clock isn’t telling the correct time?
Well, a couple of days later I was reading a totally sensible column in New York by Ed Kilgore, “Can a #NeverTrump Republican Win in 2020? Don’t Bet on It.”. Ed also praised Jennie’s switcheroo, linking, as he did so, to an old piece by Conor Friedersdorf, circa 2012, making fun of the old Jennie, “The Right’s Jennifer Rubin Problem: A Case Study in Info Disadvantage”, delivering a lengthy litany of old Jennie’s howlers regarding the certainty of one Mitt Romney’s ascent to the presidency.
It was fun to be reminded of how wrong Jennie could be, and with what frequency, but what really engaged me was Conor’s (lengthy) back story on, basically, the origin of Jennie. If you’re normal, you have no recollection of the WashPost’s earnest search, way back in 2006, for a “conservative voice” to add to its stable of overpaid windbags, but I’m not normal, so I did have some recall of what Conor was talking about, how the first two “voices” chosen by the Post were subjected to vociferous ridicule, for differing reasons, before Fred Hiatt, editorial page honcho at the Post, hired Jennie away from Commentary magazine. But what was funny rather than fun was that Conor, despite the length and detail of his piece, resolutely ignored the following points:
That, as anyone who read the “old Jennie” knows, her single and overriding concern in life back then was not the election of Mitt Romney but rather the health of Israel. Israel was the sun around which all of Jennie’s columns, tweets, and other ephemera revolved, like so many planets, moons, asteroids, and comets, the key that explained everything she said.
That the same thing could be said of Fred Hiatt.
That the same thing could be said of Commentary.
That, when the Post went out in search of a “conservative”, it came back with a Likudist (and a right-wing one at that) who would parrot the same line already enunciated by both Fred Hiatt and long-time Postie Charles Krauthammer.
It’s almost as if Conor didn’t want us to know that all of these things are true.
