How Easy Will It Be to Steal the News from the Washington Post's Paywall?
Jennifer Rubin hurt another one of her colleague's feelings today, the latest clash in a series of intra-office disputes with her fellow Washington Post co-workers.
Today's flame war pitted the conservative blogger against liberal blogger Jonathan Capehart in a fight over the departure of Romney foreign policy adviser Richard Grenell, who left after attacks on his sexual orientation emerged from the far-right.
Instead of just criticizing conservatives, Rubin also swung at Grenell's liberal critics, who criticized the fact that a gay man would work for Romney, a candidate who doesn't support gay marriage. That included Capehart, according to Rubin, because he wrote an April 24 post criticizing Grenell for choosing power over principal in working for Romney. From Twitter:
That's how it started and it didn't advance much beyond that, as the two kept going back-and-forth over the same argument in a series of increasingly bitter tweets.
Eventually, an ever-flustered Capehart just gave up, saying "Clearly, some don't bother to read carefully," adding: "This is pointless. Have a good day."
Isolated incident? We think not.
Over the last year, Rubin has brawled with an ever-expanding lineup of WaPo colleagues in fights that rarely end well. One of her favorite targets is liberal blogger Greg Sargent, as Fishbowl DC's Eddie Scarry has lovingly documented. In January, the tail end of a Twitter spat went something like this:
The back and forth turned personal when Sargent dismissed Rubin with, “Whatevs. There’s bipartisan agreement that it’s absurd for Romney to claim questioning Bain years is ‘anticapitalist.’”
Rubin replied, “That’s the left’s case .. left ability to convince selves they understand the GOP or rep bipart consensus alwys amuses,” adding in a follow up tweet, “and whatevers is what my 10 year old says, not really smart.”
BURN.
Sargent sent a final condescending tweet, “Are you really incapable of understanding that I’m talking about the general election here, and not the primary?”
A few days later, the two got into it again,arguing over the corporate experience of Mitt Romney. Turning away from Sargent for a moment, she's also gone after liberal blogger Ezra Klein, calling him a member of the "left punditocracy" and "media surrogate" of the Democratic Party, noted The Washingtonian's Harry Jaffe and "schooling" him, as Fishbowl DC puts it, on the Wisconsin recall efforts. (Elsewhere, she's also gone after liberal columnists Richard Cohen and Eugene Robinson.)
We're willing to applaud any blogger willing to swing horizontally at her fellow co-workers (The Atlantic is, after all, famous for hosting heated disputes among its blogging talent), and it's amusing to see the bloggers fighting with Rubin completely lose it in the face of her withering right-wing attacks. “The Post, unlike a lot of journals, encourages dialogue that goes back and forth,” Rubin told Washingtonian's Jaffe. Sure, but we wonder how much her liberal colleagues enjoy that policy.
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John Hudson
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