Like many here, I just want it to go away, the whole drational vs. Palast stink (and it does stink to high heaven -- more on this later), but I need to weigh in before I can let it die.
Let's distill this thing: At best, we have a severe misunderstanding which I will attempt to clarify below the fold. At worst, we have an orchestrated Rovian campaign deploying classic divide-and-conquer tactics.
Right off the bat, let me just say that I'm biased toward Greg Palast as a longtime admirer of his work. In my opinion, he is among the finest investigative journalists alive, one of the last great hopes for that dying profession. If we had even one Greg Palast in the American mainstream press, we would have likely avoided the whole mess we're in today.
For that reason, when I read drational's nitpicking diary, my gut instinct was to suspect an orchestrated smear campaign against Palast. When a whole gaggle of relatively new users piled on, my suspicion grew. Where had all these suddenly active users come from, and why were they so siezed on the 500 e-mails? Why were they so obsessed with a graphic that had obviously been created by a graphic artist, not a statistician? To my eye, the whole thing nauseatingly paralleled the Dan Rather affair: Substance was ignored and minor points exacerbated, all to the detriment of a solid journalist's reputation and (possibly) with the intent of killing a critically important story.
Even more suspicious were the disingenuous cries of outrage at Palast using a dKos diary as a means of promoting his book. How many other people have done that? B.F.D.
What did I see at first: A Rovian smear campaign.
Being the analytical sort that I am, I questioned my own conclusion. Was there another possible explanation? Yes: Ignorance.
Why would Palast not release the 500 e-mails for our inspection? To someone who had never taken Journalism 101, it might seem an affront. It might detract from the story's veracity.
Let me educate those who find the omission of the source material offensive: Journalists are honor-bound to protect their sources. It is critical to their craft. Nobody would dish inside dope to a journalist if sources thought journalists would compromise them. A requirement that sources be revealed would terminate an already terminally ill craft. Would Deep Throat have fed so much to Bernstein and Woodward had they not protected his identity? Not on your life. Confidentiality of sources is critical for journalists. Maybe bloggers and the public at large don't get that. But Palast's holding the 500 e-mails close to his chest is nothing new in journalism, nor is it suspect in any way.
So who checks the veracity of confidential sources? Editors and lawyers, that's who. Not bloggers in their jammies. Not Karl Rove.
The issue here is the voter caging. It was a crime. Thank you, Greg Palast, for sussing it out and kudos to you for holding your cards close to your chest, waiting until Monica Goodling to confirm it before blasting us with the news.
Greg Palast spent years doing the legwork on this story: chasing it down, verifying it, pulling it together. I don't blame him one bit for being pissed off at drational's cavalier, misinformed, and lazy smear against his reputation. Palast has been an ally of truth longer than DailyKos has existed. Anyone who attacks him (yes, drational's diary attacked Palast, not his work which drational had obviously not bothered to read) on such specious grounds should be viewed with suspicion. Let's pull together as a community and support real journalism's role in catching the bad guys.
More importantly, let's bust the cagey fuckers.