JournoListers Rejoice in Their Evil

I've said previously that I have mixed emotions on reading through the JournoList files being dribbled out at Daily Caller. Like everyone else, I'm pissed that reporters who hold a public trust are not just so blatantly left-wing (which we know), but that they feel so empowered by what's clearly an unchecked demonism among this body of supposed professionals. One reporter, Sarah Spitz of NPR affiliate KCRW, reveled in her ability to watch and standby cheering as Rush Limbaugh (hypothetically) died of a heart attack.

And while I've long known that Spencer Ackerman is pure evil (something I've chronicled at this blog), I'm increasingly astounded at the depths of depravity he reaches. Here's Ackerman at "Obama wins! And Journolisters rejoice" (via Memeorandum):

Let’s just throw Ledeen against a wall. Or, pace Dr. Alterman, throw him through a plate glass window. I’ll bet a little spot of violence would shut him right the fuck up, as with most bullies.

"Ledeen" refers to Michael Ledeen, a Iraq regime change proponent and neoconservative writer on the Middle East. A "little spot of violence" ought to take care of him for some obviously implied "war crimes" on top of the alleged "bullying."

Also quoted on JournoList is Henry Farrell, a GWU political scientist and blogger at Crooked Timber and The Monkey Cage. Farrell's a soft-and-squishy leftist, apparently:

I had to close my office door yesterday because I was watching YouTube videos of elderly African Americans saying what this meant to them and tearing up.

Yeah. Jeez.

That was pretty moving, I know, but what gets me is that while MSM journalists are prone to tilting their news stories as part of an inherently unscientific endeavor, political scientists genuinely aspire to scholarly objectivity --- they're supposed to be "scientific." Farrell, for example, co-authored "Self-Segregation or Deliberation? Blog Readership, Participation, and Polarization in American Politics" in the March issue of the American Political Science Association's Perspectives on Politics. Now more than ever, it's hard to take this research seriously --- research on "blog polarization". It's hard to expect even a modicum of impartiality in the discussion when the very subjects of the analysis are identified by JournoList members as political enemies who should STFU and be hurled through plate glass windows. Note too that there are a number of other university professors on JournoList as well. All the participants seem so energized in their ribald excoriations. And it's not so much that they shouldn't feel the way they do, but that both journalists and scholars are writing and producing in expectation of even-handedness. Thus, we're seeing the veil pulled back on an intellectual violence perpetrated against citizens and fellow scholars consuming "professional" works in the hope of enlightened understanding. As such, there's a totalitarianism that's fundamental here, which taps into the larger STFU culture we've endured since "The One's" ascension.

I'll have more later. Meanwhile, folks can read more along these lines at John Guardiano essay, "JournoList Equals Liberal Fascism." He notes:

We always knew that most liberal journalists were biased. Now we know that many of them are dishonest -- and that, like their leftist forbearers in the Soviet Union, they reserve unto themselves the right to lie and to cheat to further their political ends.

Well, liberal journalists AND the political scientists and professors.