Glenn the Good

My goodness, but Glenn Greenwald is good -- articulate, knowledgeable, reasonable, principled and patient. The last quality is manifested clearly tonight as he deals with the fallout from his excellent post to which I linked last night wherein he exposed the hypocrisy of the right-wingers' moral outrage at the outing of Larry Craig. Glenn, though clearly frustrated, patiently explains:

My post had nothing to do with whether outing is a legitimate tool and I expressed no opinion whatsoever on that topic. I might think that outing is the most evil act in the world, or I might think that it is the greatest good, but either way, it does not impact or have anything whatsoever to do with the argument I made -- that their condemnations of outing are completely inconsistent with the way their political movement operates.

[...]

There is a very basic principle of logical reasoning that is apparently evading the leading lights of the Bush-following punditry world. It is expressed as follows:

Where Group A condemns Behavior X, and Commentator B points out that Group A itself routinely engages in Behavior X and therefore has no standing to condemn it, Commentator B is neither praising nor criticizing Behavior X -- only pointing out that Group A is simultaneously condemning Behavior X and engaging in it.

Is that really such a difficult concept to grasp? It shouldn't be, to anyone. It entails nothing more complicated than taking someone's espoused rationale and applying it to their own conduct and arguments. But it seems that, at least in some circles, this is a concept that cannot be digested, because this is not the first time I've seen swarms of Bush followers incapable of understanding it.