Slate's John Dickerson ought to include examples next time
Written by Eric Boehlert
Published
It just helps.
The writer's most recent piece revolves around the idea that people online were way too mean and too judgmental toward Mark Sanford as the Republican governor announced his recent extra-marital affair.
Wrote Dickerson:
In the e-mails and Twitter entries and blog posts I read in the aftermath, Sanford's human ruin was greeted with what felt like antiseptic glee. The pain he's caused, the hypocrisies he's engaged in, seemed like license to deny him any humanity at all.
The weird part was that Dickerson never bothered to, y'know, quote any emails, Twitter entries or blog posts to back up his claim that people were reacting to the Sanford news with disturbing delight.
Actually, that's not true. Dickerson did quote a single, anonymous email:
"[I]s there any Republican not sleeping around?"
And from that mundane observation he devoted an entire column to the idea that people were taking a “strange, heartless glee” in Sanford's woes? Seems like pretty thin evidence.
Dickerson never quite comes out and says it directly but the between-the-lines implication seems to be that those angry, heartless (liberal) bloggers flew off the handle and unfairly unloaded on Sanford. Problem is, Dickerson offered up zero proof to support the claim.