Blogs Show Little Perspective on Newsweek Story

The Blogosphere went way overboard on the story of Newsweek’s reporting error. And David Brooks is here to slap all involved upside the head. Brooks criticizes the left, right and even the administration as he reminds everyone of who the real enemy is in this conflict:

The rioters are the real enemy, not Newsweek and not the American soldiers serving as prison guards. Just to restore some proper perspective, let me quote a snippet from a sermon delivered by Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris, which ran last weekend on the Palestinian Authority's official TV station:

"The day will come when we will rule America. The day will come when we will rule Britain and the entire world - except for the Jews. The Jews will not enjoy a life of tranquility under our rule because they are treacherous by nature, as they have been throughout history. The day will come when everything will be relieved of the Jews - even the stones and trees which were harmed by them. Listen to the Prophet Muhammad, who tells you about the evil end that awaits Jews. The stones and trees will want the Muslims to finish off every Jew."

These are the extremists, the real enemy. Let's keep our eye on the ball.

Brooks is right. The blogosphere way overreacted to this story. Sometimes I think many bloggers main goal is to be more outrageous than the next guy. As we noted, most partisan blogs used this story as a chance to advance their own narrow views of the world.

That’s not to say us middle-of-the road types were faultless Here and here you can read The Yellow Line getting a little too worked-up over Newsweek’s errors. In retrospect, we should have left it at our first post on the issue.

Newsweek has learned a very serious lesson in all of this. Hopefully many of the blogs have too.