The culture of public shame got a nice massage this week with the publication of The Smoking Gun’s newest tome, The Dog Dialed 911. How dare the document-driven reporters issue a new book (on shelves in two weeks!). Have they not thought yet to respond to the attack by novelist Rick Moody in the first volume of the journal A Public Space?
The newspapers and cable news networks who have jumped on the Frey story, that is, are not beyond reproach. They are just as hasty as the self-satisfied pirhana at The Smoking Gun. And they’re deluding themselves if they imagine that enumerating Frey’s ethical lapses will cleanse them of their own.
Mr. Moody did not go on to name The Smoking Gun’s uncleansed “ethical lapses.” But hey, Yom Kippur is just around the corner!
