In which I stop digging.

by John Schwenkler

Both Reihan Salam and James's DTO co-blogger Sonny Bunch have reacted strongly against anti-Goldfarb diatribes like these ones, and I appreciate the remonstrations. For one thing, it is good to be reminded now and then that someone who to you is only an annoying Web personality with a lot of badly mistaken views on matters of great importance is also a flesh-and-blood person with flesh-and-blood friends. (This is the sort of thing that it is also worth bearing in mind before calling someone a weasel, no matter how apt that appellation may seem.) But they are also right that Goldfarb's hiring was far less revealing than I was trying to make it out to be: he will not, of course, be a policy adviser, and any official communications he will be responsible for helping to direct will no doubt conform to the guidelines of standard political boilerplate. Making hay over trivial associations that really have nothing to do with anything at all is of course a centerpiece of the sort of politics I was accusing Goldfarb of engaging in, and I oughtn't have been sucked into it, which just goes to show you. I oppose John McCain's presidential campaign for a great number of reasons, none of which have anything to do with the identity of his Deputy Communications Director.