I don't normally get involved in media inside baseball, because 1) it's even more boring to readers than it is to me and 2) "old" media is so last season's Prada shoes, you know?

But since we're on a roll here today, what with Amato wondering why the media never bothered to cover Gen. McChrystal's cover-up of Pat Tillman's death and me writing about the self-censoring media, this fits right in.

Far too often, Beltway journalism resembles nothing so much as a high-school lunchroom. That's why, when Washington Post blogger Dave Weigel turned in his resignation yesterday, the Post eagerly accepted. (Morons.)

Weigel is a really good journalist who, although he's a libertarian, doesn't let ideology get in the way of his work. (Sorry, Dave. You have to know you're unusual, right?)

The Post brought him on to cover the Tea Party movement, and he's done an excellent job. So why is he being shown the door? Did he regurgitate false information and start a war? Plagarize? Make racist or anti-Semitic comments? Heck, no. Those things get you your own cable show!

He did the worst thing of all: He made the conservatives cry.

Remember what I said about high school? Like, omigod!

"Okay, like, there's this email list? Called Journolist? And like, this one girl named Betsy Rothstein, who is like, slaving away in a basement and probably really a little J-E-L of Dave Weigel, pumped up her hit count by posting a bunch of emails where Dave trashed some famous conservatives, including that perv Rush Limbaugh. Which got her a link from that icky Matt Drudge, and got Dave a bunch of hate mail from the right-wing whatevers.

"Okay, so Dave's ticked off and tweets something about how Matt Drudge should handle his personal issues by being more responsible, like maybe by publicly setting himself on fire. I mean, a joke, right? Funny! But okay, Dave apologizes to Drudge and Drudge responds by sending the flying monkeys after him again!

"Tucker Carlson, that smarmy little frat boy who used to wear the bowties? Yeah, I know, right? Short! Anyway, he got mad because that guy Ezra wouldn't let him on JournoList and so he decided to publish Dave's emails on his site. You'd think a grown man would have something better to do. I mean, he reproduced and all, maybe he should be home nurturing his clones, or something.

"Okay, okay, okay. Anyway! So Dave turns in his letter of resignation, and that Poindexter over at the Atlantic, Jeff Goldberg - I think he's that guy who picks his nose and eats it, or was that the kid from The Simpsons? Anyway, he, like, totally disses him.

"How could we destroy our standards by hiring a guy stupid enough to write about people that way in a public forum?" one of my friends at the Post asked me when we spoke earlier today. "I'm not suggesting that many people on the paper don't lean left, but there's leaning left, and then there's behaving like an idiot."

I gave my friend the answer he already knew: The sad truth is that the Washington Post, in its general desperation for page views, now hires people who came up in journalism without much adult supervision, and without the proper amount of toilet-training. This little episode today is proof of this. But it is also proof that some people at the Post (where I worked, briefly, 20 years ago) still know the difference between acceptable behavior and unacceptable behavior, and that maybe this episode will lead to the reimposition of some level of standards.

"And like, clearly what the Carlton Banks-wannabe means is, oh, Mr. Washington Post, sir, I would never disrespect my elders or color outside the lines. Why would you hire him instead of rehiring MEEEEE???

"Um, everyone knows Jeff's, like, a total tool? Who's more of a stenographer than a journalist, and like, a lot of Iraqi civilians are dead because of his total d-baggery. Like, dead babies and stuff.

"Which you might think would bother him, but apparently not.

"But omigod, they keep wondering why we don't want to read them! Duh!

"Oh hey, what are you wearing to the party tonight?"

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John Krakauer wrote a book detailing the investigation and exposes the truth about General McChrystal, explaining it to Jon Stewart:

Krakauer: Friendly fire happens and it's sad how that happened to him but what's worse is what happened to him after he was killed. The way he was used by the last administration to advance their political ends and that's upsetting to me.

The Tillman family warned President Obama not to put the General in charge of the Afghanistan mission.

The parents of slain Army Ranger and NFL star Pat Tillman voiced concerns Tuesday that the general who played a role in mischaracterizing his death could be put in charge of military operations in Afghanistan. In a brief interview with The Associated Press, Pat Tillman Sr. accused Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal of covering up the circumstances of the 2004 slaying. "I do believe that guy participated in a falsified homicide investigation," Pat Tillman Sr. said.

He later apologized for his role in the cover up.

I bet his apology made the Tillmans forget about all their troubles. The President should have listened to their warning.

There are parts of the Rolling Stone article that nobody is talking about, but should. It was primarily the center left wing blogs that screamed about the way the military high command lied and then covered up the true events that led to the death of Pat Tillman and General McChrystal played a pivotal role.

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Amato wrote earlier today that he wondered why the media didn't report on McChrystal's coverup of Pat Tillman's death. Well, every once in a while, Howard Kurtz actually reveals something useful about the media Village mindset:

One journalistic question to emerge from Rolling Stone's takedown of Stanley McChrystal is whether a military beat reporter could have -- or would have -- done it. Michael Hastings was on a one-time assignment; he didn't need to deal with the general and his people again. This, by the way, is no different than the tension faced by every city hall and statehouse reporter versus someone coming in for a one-shot piece.

Hastings himself addressed the question in a 2008 GQ piece, talking about being embedded as a presidential campaign reporter:

"The dance with staffers is a perilous one. You're probably not going to get much, if any, one-on-one time with the candidate, which means your sources of information are the people who work for him. So you pretend to be friendly and nonthreatening, and over time you 'build trust,' which everybody involved knows is an illusion. If the time comes, if your editor calls for it, you're supposed to [expletive] them over."

Pretend? Not a pretty picture.

NYU journalism professor and blogger Jay Rosen pivots toward Politico's coverage of the McChrystal affair:

"In one of the many articles The Politico ran about the episode, the following observation was made by reporters Gordon Lubold and Carol E. Lee:

"McChrystal, an expert on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, has long been thought to be uniquely qualified to lead in Afghanistan. But he is not known for being media savvy. Hastings, who has covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for two years, according to the magazine, is not well-known within the Defense Department. And as a freelance reporter, Hastings would be considered a bigger risk to be given unfettered access, compared with a beat reporter, who would not risk burning bridges by publishing many of McChrystal's remarks.

"Now this seemed to several observers -- and I was one -- a reveal. Think about what the Politico is saying: an experienced beat reporter is less of a risk for a powerful figure like McChrystal because an experienced beat reporter would probably not want to 'burn bridges' with key sources by telling the world what happens when those sources let their guard down. . .

"And then, the next day... the reveal disappears. The Politico erased it, as if the thing had never happened. Down the memory hole, like in Orwell's 1984."

This is frustratingly true; I saw it all the time when I was a reporter, and yes, the temptation to soften stories is real. After all, most public figures are interesting, charismatic people and mostly, they're fun to be around.

But your loyalty has to be to your readers. I'm sorry to say, I was in a distinct minority. That's why politicians were always shocked when I had the audacity to actually report what they said. I was supposed to know what to censor.

"I thought we were friends!" one local official said to me.

I looked at him. "I stood there and asked you a question. You responded, and you watched me write down your answer. What did you think was going to happen?" I said.

That's why I'm a big believer in rotating beats. You just don't want reporters getting too familiar with their sources - and it doesn't serve the public interest. If that still exists, I mean.

We've posted a ton of information about the Pat Tillman saga on C&L as heartbreaking as it is and I wanted to remind everyone that the man who is going public with his views on how to handle Afghanistan was deeply involved with torture and Pat Tillman's cover up.

The parents of slain Army Ranger and NFL star Pat Tillman voiced concerns Tuesday that the general who played a role in mischaracterizing his death could be put in charge of military operations in Afghanistan. In a brief interview with The Associated Press, Pat Tillman Sr. accused Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal of covering up the circumstances of the 2004 slaying. "I do believe that guy participated in a falsified homicide investigation," Pat Tillman Sr. said.

He later apologized for his role in the cover up.

The Daily News:

The general taking over the Afghan war said Tuesday he was sorry for the coverup of ex-NFL star Pat Tillman's friendly fire death.

"I was a part of that, and I apologize for it," Army Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal told a Senate hearing.

Tillman was killed by fellow GIs in 2004 as his Ranger unit operated in eastern Afghanistan on the Pakistan border.

McChrystal signed off on a posthumous Silver Star medal for Tillman - who gave up a fortune as a pro football player to join the Army after 9/11 - though he knew it might be fratricide and not a firefight.

It took six probes before his family learned the truth: other troops mistook him for the enemy and shot him as he screamed, "I'm Pat F---ing Tillman!"

"There is nothing we can do to automatically restore the trust which was the second casualty," McChrystal said.

But the general, who commanded the supersecret Joint Special Operations Command then, denied the phony narrative of a raging firefight was anything more sinister than "mistakes" made to honor the famous GI.

And then there is his role in our torture policies.

The Nation:

When an anonymous Army interrogator "at great personal risk" blew the whistle to Esquire in August 2006 on an extensive torture enterprise at Camp Nama, he described the then unknown McChrystal as being an overseer who knew the ugly truth. Torture at Camp Nama included using ice water to induce hypothermia. It was not a rogue operation unless we consider Generals like McChrystal "rogues." As Esquire reported:

Once, somebody brought it up with the colonel. "Will [the Red Cross] ever be allowed in here?" And he said absolutely not. He had this directly from General McChrystal and the Pentagon that there's no way that the Red Cross could get in--they won't have access and they never will. This facility was completely closed off to anybody investigating, even Army investigators.

Later in the piece, when asked where the colonel was getting his orders from the interrogator said, "I believe it was a two-star general. I believe his name was General McChrystal. I saw him there a couple of times."

I was watching MSNBC and on Andrea Mitchell's show, pundits wondered if McChrystal would quit if he didn't get the troops he requested. You know, I always thought that soldiers were supposed to follow orders. The president is in charge of the military and serve him. What would happen to a soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan who refused a direct order? I understand that he's past that pay grade, but he's way out of line. Hey, I don't mind leaks to the media, that's going to happen, but he's not acting like a high ranking General should, but with his past, are you surprised?

TPM picks up on this revealing gem from the House Oversight Committee's report (.pdf) on Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman:

Karl Rove exchanged e-mails about Pat Tillman with Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier, under the subject line "H-E-R-O." In response to Mr. Fournier's e-mail, Mr. Rove asked, "How does our country continue to produce men and women like this," to which Mr. Fournier replied, "The Lord creates men and women like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight."

Although immediate requests for comment from Fournier, who is now the AP's acting Washington D.C. bureau chief, were not returned, a later AP article on the matter gets him on the record:

"I was an AP political reporter at the time of the 2004 e-mail exchange, and was interacting with a source, a top aide to the president, in the course of following an important and compelling story. I regret the breezy nature of the correspondence."

It would be interesting to go back to the time this email was written to see just how (un)critically Fournier's reporting of the Iraq War was. If anyone comes across something, by all means feel free to leave comments.

YahooNews: (h/t NonnyMouse)

The Army on Tuesday censured a retired three-star general for a "perfect storm of mistakes, misjudgments and a failure of leadership" after the 2004 friendly-fire death in Afghanistan of Army Ranger Pat Tillman.

Army Secretary Pete Geren asked an Army review panel to decide whether Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger should also have his rank reduced.

Geren told a Pentagon news conference that, while Kensinger was "guilty of deception" in misleading investigators, there was no intentional Pentagon cover-up of circumstances surrounding the former pro football player's death - at first categorized by the military as being from enemy fire.

"He failed to provide proper leadership to the soldiers under his administrative control. ... He let his soldiers down," Geren said. "General Kensinger was the captain of that ship, and his ship ran aground."

At least six other officers received lesser reprimands.

Geren said he considered recommending a court-martial for Kensinger but ruled it out.

What an insult to the Tillmans. What an insult to the intelligence of all of us. NO evidence of a cover-up? Please.

Jane at FDL recounts another failure of memory/failure to appear in the Tillman case, although it appears he's had a change of heart.  VoteVets has an open letter to Bush and a petition you can sign.

Discourse.net:

I know that GW Bush says all kinds of strange stuff, but is this the strangest (I don't mean most mendacious, that's different) remark of his current term in office?

Bush said (he is) sympathetic to Tillman family. President Bush hopes someone is held responsible for the U.S. military's mishandling of information about the death of former football star Pat Tillman in Afghanistan, the White House said Wednesday.

That sound you hear is brains leaking out all over America. See, the Tillman case involves many high-ranking people in the Army - Colonels and Generals and perhaps even high-ranking civilian officials - engaged in a knowing and willful conspiracy to cover up and then lie to the public about the circumstances of Pat Tillman's death. There is a chain of command here, and someone is a the top of it, either someone in a uniform or someone in a Pentagon. And either way, they report to one GW Bush.

Read on...

Ann Coulter on Pat Tillman: "I don't believe it"

Ann just couldn't accept the fact that Pat Tillman was against the Iraq war and enjoyed Noam Chomsky. As if it tarnished his tour of duty or his sacrifice.

Download | play -WMP

Download | play -QT

None of this should matter to anyone at all except of course if you write a book that denounces those types of beliefs and labels them as Un-American. After she praised Pat in the past; (and rightly so) what was her witty retort to the contradiction she was now faced with?

Ann: ..I don't believe it." Sean Hannity joined in: "I don't believe it either."

Disgraceful.