More Devil's Advocate: Ace responds...(UPDATE)
...not to me so much as to J-Pod, which makes me all sad and mopey because I at least linked to Ace and JPod was a no-linkydink.
...the main issue is whether the stories are true, but given the fact that TNR is taking its sweet old time confirming what ought to have been confirmed before, it's worth noting that 1) this guy was chosen not for any obvious credentials, but because he was the easiest guy to find, and 2) further was chosen, likely, because his previous wannabe-Hemmingway blogfarts demonstrate his strong partisan commitment against the war and anyone who supports it. "Chickenhawks," he calls all war supporters, apparently including actual war veterans in the "chickenhawks" category.It does, as but longtime readers of the JYB will know...the dirty secret is that no magazine fact checks...except maybe Penthouse. The reasons are economic and ideological.So, let's recap:
1) No obvious experience of credentials to recommend him above anyone else
2) Except the ease of recruiting him
3) A strong, previously-known record of strong partisan and anti-war animus
4) A passionate supporter of Howard Dean, who was anti-war before anti-war was cool.
None of these actually prove his reportage is false. They do, however, suggest that Foer was very sloppy in assigning this guy to be the Baghdad Diarist, seems to have hired him out of expediency rather than as the result of a long, careful candidate search, and deliberately picked a strong partisan who could be expected to reliably churn out anti-military pieces.
All of which, incidentally, suggests that Foer was especially derelict in not fact-checking this guy's ass.
Back in the day, Reader's Digest actually would pay to send reporters--and presumably editors--around the world to get the facts straight. But what was TNR to do? Send an assistant editor to Baghdad to count dead dogs with Hum-vee tracks in their heads? They don't have RD's budget. Are they simply not supposed to publish reports from abroad if they can't send a second person to scope out everything their reporter writes--especially into the middle of a war?
As for the lack of long hiring process: Foer hired someone whose gut told him he could trust and who was more of a known quantity. He appears to have miscalculated badly. He may also have chosen him for ideological sympathies. I can't really fault Foer for that, either: If I were to send someone to report where I couldn't I would probably want to send someone whose biases I understood and shared--especially if I were writing a political magazine.
Duh, they're liberals at TNR. They wanted a liberal. Their readers wanted a liberal. Big surprise they picked a Deaniac.
I'm not defending Foer here, since he willingly abetted the slander of our troops. But I think his main error comes in failing to take credibly the informed criticism that started coming in once Beauchamp's reports came through. Dismissing it as partisan and ignoring it presumed too much, and that presumption is what I see as Foer's most grievous sin, one that may well derail his career.
UPDATE: Chris in the comments on the entry below:
There is a huge “so what?” issue.I sincerely doubt that someone who intimately knew the actual “Scott Thomas” wouldn’t have immediately recognized that a tale such as the one of “Scott” insulting the woman at the “chow hall” as being completely out of character. Thus, the fiancee/wife should have immediately flagged the piece as BS. “Scott” wasn’t attributing his behavior to someone else and his blog screed certainly leads on to conclude he is a creature of the PC culture.
That's a good point. Did Miss TNR Liberal really marry someone who writes gleefully and without remorse about laughing at burn victims and squashing puppies? Was she reading all this and thinking, "that's my hubby!" Or maybe "My God, I've married a sociopath!"
Or maybe "Wow, Scott's really laying it on thick, isn't he?"
Was she complicit in these stories? Did she think they seemed a little out of character? Did she say anything to Foer? (Probably not--do most people go tell their boss that their spouse needs to be fired, or try to correct the problem through persuasion?)
Fair questions; probably not ones we'll ever see answered.
UPDATE: And now that I'm thinking about it: if the weird transformation of Beauchamp from PC liberal into soulless, puppy-squashing killbot bothered Elspeth Reeves, it probably also didn't escape the notice of Franklin Foer who hired him and was therefore presumably familiar with his former work. I mean some vetting went on, right?