There’s Competence and Then There’s “Competence”

I’m com­ing a bit late to this because of server prob­lems, but it’s some­thing that’s been bug­ging me about the whole Reid-Pace “com­pe­tence” imbroglio. The ques­tion nag­ging at me is not who called whom incom­pe­tent or whether Reid was wrong or right to do so. I mean, Pace had just been fired, so Reid’s not that far off call­ing the for­mer chair of the joint chief’s abil­i­ties into ques­tion.
No, what I won­der is why Reid’s com­ments didn’t get picked up by the blog­gers in the con­fer­ence call.
Why did the almost all of the lib­eral blog­gers deny he said that Pace was incom­pe­tent when from the tran­script posted on Talk­ing Points Memo, he did, and it appears pretty clear he’s talk­ing about Pace? Did they screw up or are they try­ing to cover Reid’s ass, since he’s “on their team,” so to speak?
Now, I say this as a blog­ger with both indy cred — you’re read­ing it — and strong ties to the so-called MSM. But if blog­gers are sup­posed to be an alternative/side dish or even an anti­dote to the excesses and fail­ings of the main­stream press, why did they miss this? It’s a gen­uinely Big Deal, so was it a miss or a will­ful omis­sion?
If it was a will­ful omis­sion, it’s a hor­ri­ble one. And it would prove that most lib­eral blogs — or con­ser­v­a­tive ones — shouldn’t be con­sid­ered cred­i­ble alter­na­tives to any­thing if they can’t step up to their respon­si­bil­ity and report on news­wor­thy items even if it might get “their guy” in hot water. The right-wing blo­gos­phere has had this prob­lem for years now. Has it infected the left side as well?
On the other hand, if it’s a mis­take, it’s a doozy. Any reporter who missed that would be tarred and feath­ered by edi­tors. (And it’s sig­nif­i­cant that main­stream reporters in were the ones who broke this story, even though blog­gers had every oppor­tu­nity to break it.) So, why are the blog­gers given a free pass on this lapse?
Indeed, it was Talk­ing Points Memo itself that in 2002 was instru­men­tal in bring­ing down another Sen­ate major­ity leader. The main­stream press was heck­led and crit­i­cized for miss­ing Lott’s nox­ious com­ments. (And rightly so, in my opin­ion.)
But shouldn’t blog­gers — in a frig­gin’ con­fer­ence call with the cur­rent Sen­ate major­ity Leader, for crissakes — need to be held to the same stan­dards of account­abil­ity and, dare I say it, com­pe­tence, that they hold the MSM to? Why the dou­ble standard?

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