Monday October 20, 2003

CITIZEN RUTHLESS. Apparently Gregg Easterbrook got fired for a post to which I alluded unfavorably here. (I hadn't referred, though, to his seemingly anti-Semitic coda; I was too disgusted to read down that far. The thing was stupid from top to, apparently, bottom.) And now the blogosphere, including many who were angry about Easterbrook's post, is up in arms.

Professor Reynolds and several of his conventionally-wise men now suggest that Easterbrook was fired, not for writing "Does that make it right for Jewish executives to worship money above all else, by promoting for profit the adulation of violence?" per se, but for dissing executives of a Disney company. Easterbrook has made rude comments about the Mouse before (here's one called "Most Embarrassing Disney Senior Management Moment"), but by this scenario, Michael Eisner waited till Easterbrook made himself vulnerable before dispatching this anti-Mouseketeer.

I don't think Easterbrook should have been axed either, but I note with interest that Reynolds et alia have rushed to make this an issue of Independent Blogger vs. Big Media, one of the Professor's preferred punching bags. It strikes me as a typical political trick: take a straight-up free-speech issue and stick it, with no evidence whatsoever, to a largely Democratic interest group. Easterbrook's progress from an accursed vendor of "racist garbage" to a victim of the moguls is just a little too quick and convenient to convince.

If they can get him a gig at Slate or Fox News, all well and good. Otherwise he can labor without pay like the rest of us.