Domenech's Downfall

By Jane Hamsher, AlterNet. Posted March 30, 2006.

The brutal three-day career of Ben Domenech, the WashingtonPost.com's newest ex-blogger, was characterized by Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell as "a f****n' disaster." Nobody is quite sure how it came to pass.

When WashingtonPost.com announced on March 21 that its new blogger would be Regnery Publishing's Ben Domenech, editor of such high-profile conservatives as Ramesh Ponnuru, Michelle Malkin and Hugh Hewitt, the decision surprised few regular readers of the Post. Editor-in-chief Len Downie said late last year that the White House was critical of the coverage it was getting from the Post.com's Dan Froomkin. Howell subsequently declared Froomkin "a highly opinionated liberal" and announced that Jim Brady, editor-in-chief of the WashingtonPost.com, would probably be supplementing their ranks with a conservative blogger -- in the interest of balance.

It was somewhat surprising that Froomkin, whose popular column, "White House Briefing," should be considered a "liberal" at all, as he habitually calls on both liberal and conservative sources. More and more, however, applying a critical eye and appropriate skepticism to a troubled administration results in a journalist being tagged (and dismissed) as partisan.

More surprising was the fact that Domenech could be considered a corrective to Froomkin in terms of experience. As an 18-year veteran journalist, a graduate of Yale and the editor of Harvard University's Nieman Watchdog, Froomkin had little in common with the 24-year-old Domenech who had neither finished college nor worked as a journalist.

Domenech is the son of a Bush administration official and Jack Abramoff associate, Doug Domenech. In addition to working for Regnery, he has written speeches for John Cornyn, co-founded the conservative website RedState.com and boasted that he is "the youngest member of the Bush administration." He is a self-professed, hardline GOP loyalist.

In his debut post on March 21, Domenech devoted his new column -- entitled "Red America" -- to bashing liberals and chiding his fellow Post.com employees for their ignorance about the Reagan-era Patrick Swayze vehicle, "Red Dawn." By the time Post.com opinion editor Hal Straus declared him "an internet pioneer, an accomplished writer and someone who is willing to challenge sloppy thinking even if, occasionally, he finds it on the GOP side of the aisle," the battle lines had been drawn.

Liberal bloggers like Digby and Brad DeLong announced, "This is going to be fun."

By 6 p.m, that evening Atrios had unearthed a story from June of 2002 in which Domenech attributed a quote to George Bush that Bush never made and sourced it to an AP article he was never able to produce. He later retracted the story, but online curiosity about his history was now piqued. Intrepid researchers like James from Your Logo Here began looking into Domenech, and it soon became apparent that either Jim Brady was not fully aware of the person he had hired, or his judgment in doing so was questionable.

It was quickly revealed that Domenech's RedState alter ego was Augustine, who had said on the day of Coretta Scott King's funeral that she was a communist, and that it was inappropriate for the president to be in attendance. This echoed the racist critics of the civil rights movement who had used the attack to discredit the Kings around the time of the Montgomery bus boycott. Domenech was forced to make a half-hearted apology, expressing his regret that the situation was "overblown." Jim Brady declared himself "satisfied."

Others were not. Brady had already set himself at odds with liberal bloggers in January of this year. When Deborah Howell published a column writing that Jack Abramoff gave money to Democrats as well as Republicans, the liberal blogging community quickly alerted them to the fact that he hadn't. But rather than print a correction, the Washington Post adopted a "hang tough" position.

Jane Hamsher is an author, producer and political blogger who writes for both firedoglake.com and the Huffington Post.

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