Alterman: Politicians should be congratulated for uncomfortable truths.

[madfloridian]

Alterman calls out Weisberg at Slate for his very nasty article on some Democrats, especially Dean. (BTW what has happened to Slate...it is not Democrat friendly.)

Glad to see him do this. It is deserved.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870 /

I keep reading this statement by Jake Weisberg in Slate where he is picking on Howard Dean and I can’t believe it: “His injudicious comment about the GOP being the party of white Christians was followed by his statement that "the idea that we're going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong." Such gaffes lead to endless debate about how Howard Dean is screwing up, rather than about how Bush is screwing up.”

How in the world is possible for Michael Kinsley’s appointed successor to write the word “gaffe” in this context in the magazine Kinsley founded without pointing out Kinsley’s most famous observation: that “gaffe” is what Washington calls a statement by a politician that happens to be true? Would Weisberg argue that White Christians do not dominate the Republican Party? Would he argue that we are “winning” the Iraq war, or are likely to in the foreseeable future?

Clearly both Dean statements constitute Kinsley “gaffes” in the respect that both are true. And it’s the job of intellectuals to congratulate politicians for speaking uncomfortable truths… at least I thought it was. I know my memory is going, but I don’t recall any cases in which when Kinsley wrote about such things, he was attacking the truth-tellers. But Weisberg seems to think Dean is deserving of contempt for exactly this reason. Am I missing something or is this as depressing as it looks?

Yep, Eric, it is a whole lot more depressing than that.