Michael Goldfarb

I had sort of thought that the original configuration of The Weekly Standard's "worldwide standard" blog was the worst imaginable magazine blog. Eventually, though, they had a personnel change and Michael Goldfarb took over and the thing actually became considerably worse — lacking that amusing train wreck quality it had previously sustained. Still, he does sometimes have his moments.

Here, for example, he's huffing and puffing that The Los Angeles Times won't correct some alleged errors that range from the trivial ("In the same column, Rutten wrote that Beauchamp had 'described the ridicule of a disfigured Iraqi woman . . .' In fact, the woman has never been described as Iraqi.") to the in-fact-perfectly-accurate ("Rutten also said that Beauchamp 'described . . . attempts to run over stray dogs with Bradley fighting vehicles . . .' In fact, Beauchamp actually described three incidents in which military personnel had killed stray dogs.") meanwhile, he seems to have no intention whatsoever of correcting his straightforwardly false August 6 item "Beauchamp Recants".

There, Goldfarb wrote that Beauchamp had "signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods--fabrications containing only 'a smidgen of truth,' in the words of our source." This never happened.

Meanwhile, we've been noting the shortage of captains and majors afflicting the military and wondering when age-appropriate advocates of an aggressive military posture like Goldfarb are going to step up to the plate to fill some of these absences. Well, he seems to have decided today that he should do his part to cope with growing personnel shortfalls in the State Department's mission in Iraq by . . . calling professional foreign service officers "diplowimps" because, I suppose, they've failed to demonstrate the sort of awe-inspiring courage required to write a blog from 17th Street. Maybe instead of being such wimps, the striped pants boys ought to join Goldfarb in trying to gin up a new war from the front-line cubicles here in Washington.