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P.S. We Effed Up

Fourteen pages in, after bashing his critics and going to pains to show how responsible he was, Foer informs us he has been irresponsible and bails on Beauchamp:   

In retrospect, we never should have put Beauchamp in this situation. He was a young soldier in a war zone, an untried writer without journalistic training. We published his accounts of sensitive events while granting him the shield of anonymity–which, in the wrong hands, can become license to exaggerate, if not fabricate.

When I last spoke with Beauchamp in early November, he continued to stand by his stories. Unfortunately, the standards of this magazine require more than that. And, in light of the evidence available to us, after months of intensive re-reporting, we cannot be confident that the events in his pieces occurred in exactly the manner that he described them. Without that essential confidence, we cannot stand by these stories.

I’m not sure exactly what Foer means about the standards of the magazine of Stephen Glass, now in stiff competition with the Boston Globe for high-profile fabulism. He’s just, rather longwindedly, got finished pointing out how he gave a 24-year-old baghead the keys to the bus, with his wife as bus monitor.  Foer calls his meandering mea culpa “Fog of War,” which sounds dramatic and like an excuse for everything, though all the mistakes he describes occurred in the home office in DC.

Everybody in the news business gets taken sooner or later. It’s happened to me and a lot of people I know, in one way or another.  Who knows.  Maybe Beauchamp and his buddies did some version of everything he wrote.  Young soldiers can be a lot like some of their contemporaries in college.  Irresponsible and immature, sometimes with sick senses of humor.  They even make stuff up sometimes, and exaggerate. So the question becomes, what are you accomplishing when you give them a major national venue in which to anonymously display their irresponsible immaturity? Demonstrating that war is hell and dehumanizes people, I guess. Very popular theme these days. Though it sounds like TNR has done more to demonstrate that young soldiers can be immature and editors of national magazines can be gullible. Foer, by the way, is not that far removed from college himself, having graduated from Columbia in 1996. He’s has written a book about soccer and globalization and articles for places like NYT, WSJ, New Yorker, WaPo, Atlantic. Nothing I saw to indicate that in his brief career he’s been anywhere near a war zone or soldiers, or common folk for that matter, which may be a problem. Unclear how much actual reporting experience he has. After 10 years in the intensity of daily reporting in the newspaper business, people have basically been around the block once and might be just beginning to figure out how much they don’t know.  No substitute for being knocked around a few times. This could actually be a growth experience for him. 

Topics: BS, media

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:06 pm on Saturday, December 1, 2007

10 Responses to “P.S. We Effed Up”

1. bloc Says:
   December 1st, 2007 at 8:54 pm

   “In retrospect, we never should have put Beauchamp in this situation.”

   Translation: it’s TNR’s fault that Beauchamp is a pathological di**head and a liar. But we’re noble because not only do we humbly admit our failings, we also take responsibility for his pathology as well!

   Think about it . . . how much more PC could they be? It’s how they see the US: the Islamist’s actions are our fault. And we on the left are noble because we look deep within ourselves and confess our failures, which are not really ours, because ultimately they are those of western civilization . . .

   Right.

2. American Power Says:
   December 2nd, 2007 at 1:32 am

   The New Republic Recants Libelous Beauchamp Story

   Conservatives know that Beauchamp invented lurid stories of American troop behavior in Iraq…

3. saltydog Says:
   December 2nd, 2007 at 2:09 am

   I’m not sure how much Foer has learned. This is full of just as many weasel words as all that went before.

4. Dave Surls Says:
   December 2nd, 2007 at 2:29 am

   If I was running the country the media wouldn’t be allowed to print one word that didn’t serve the war effort, and everything that came out of Iraq and Afghanistan would be censored…same as they did in WWII.

   The rule would be simple:

   If it doesn’t contribute to victory then it doesn’t get printed.

5. JM Hanes Says:
   December 2nd, 2007 at 5:14 am

   Biggest revelation:

   “Naturally we wanted to learn more about the dog-hunting and the skull–although, in hindsight, the genesis of these anecdotes in such a nonchalant aside should have provoked greater suspicion. Beauchamp revised the piece, and we sanded down the prose. A month after he submitted the first draft, after several revisions, it entered into galleys.”

   The first sentence here was just too revealing to leave out, but I’m surprised noone has really highlighted the second admission.. Sounds like “the editors” had a much more substantial role in actually shaping the story that finally set off the fire alarms than “they” have previously let on, doesn’t it? So, “it entered into galleys” did it? Weaseling con brio.

   The fact that they found it “disorienting” to discover they had critics on the right as well as the left was just funny — in a sad-clown, irony-laden, sophomoric, blame-shifting, who me? kind of way — as is the entire concept of “re-reporting” which covers Foer’s ass about as well as new imperial duds traditionally do.

6. » Beauchamp’s Fictions and The New Republic’s New Fictions Says:
   December 2nd, 2007 at 12:20 pm

   [...] Hot Air. Rightwing Nuthouse. Blue Crab Boulevard rounds up a ton of links. A Blog For All. Jules Crittenden. Gina [...]

7. tanstaafl Says:
   December 2nd, 2007 at 5:11 pm

   In the spirit of compounding the felony, Foer’s lengthy (non) mea culpa, Fog of War, doesn’t even have an original title.

   The Fog of War being the title of Vietnam/McNamara documentary film (2003).

   (linked above) The Fog of Foer is definitely a better title !

8. Private Beauchamp, the Flying Monkeys and the New Republic « his vorpal sword Says:
   December 3rd, 2007 at 8:43 am

   [...] wisdom, the Van der Galiën Gazette, The Captain’s Quarters, Blue Crab Boulevard, Powerline, Jules Crittenden and the other yowling hate monkeys of the Reich Wing Blogosmear™. The New Hampshire Hillary [...]

9. LUKE FORD » The New Republic Retracts Says:
   December 3rd, 2007 at 9:26 pm

   [...] some of the best reactions from TNR’s own readers. Jules Crittenden hopes that something good might come from all this for the editors at TNR, and Powerline offers an excellent response in just under 80 [...]

10. TNR finally bails on Beauchamp, and rightblogs bash the Army « docweaselblog Says:
    December 4th, 2007 at 4:04 am

    [...] AOSHQ and Jules Crittenden TNR has at long last admitted the Beauchamping of its series of war diaries, in a long-winded, [...]

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