So the Tempest in a Teapot about Jerome's alleged touting and Kos's email shows that Washington is out of touch with how people value integrity. I can buy that.
But Isn't that mainly because Washington is a place where people are so under a microscope that they get used to appearing to have no integrity?
And isn't that problem really just a feature of public life?
No man is a hero to his valet; and in this day and age every valet is posting their guy or gal's dirty laundry on the internets.
So isn't a further lesson we should learn from this, in a way, that we should not be so quick ourselves to question the integrity of say a Hillary Clinton or a Mark Warner or (to pick someone on the left accused of not having enough) a Ralph Nader?
Maybe now seeing what's happening to Kos as he becomes a major player, we can all have some more sympathy for other major players, too, at least the ones who have some integrity, as opposed to the Tom Delays et al who have none.
They all suffer from the gotcha game. And we all like to play it with all but our own personal favorites.
Some say defending yourself in the game is not a vice, but a virtue. Of course that's true to some extent.
But who has time to defend themselves to the point of getting caught up in it to the exclusion of all else?
Really. Look at the greatest example--Bill Clinton--who rightly realized that if he began wasting time defending himself against the haters he'd waste his presidency entirely.
If one gets goaded into making a big show of defending oneself, then things just get worse.
Kos's self-defense, while perfectly understandable and in many ways admirable, was also a wee bit vicious, in a two-wrongs-don't-make-a-right kind of way, no? Why gloat about TNR's circulation like that--it is awful how the magazine got managed into the ground by Peretz after the Kinsley era but kind of a tragedy, I think.
Bottom line is it is sad what is happening, and being all righteous about the situation doesn't help make it less sad and more conducive to political change which is the ultimate goal that Kos and the TNR writers share.