The Nation's Christopher Hayes has graciously and thoughtfully replied to my piece, "The Shame of Right-Wing 'Journalism'" on his blog. He's absolutely right on one point: I tied him to the suggestion that Obama defenders should call the conservatives hyping the Jeremiah Wright story "racists," when that idea came from Spencer Ackerman, and he didn't endorse it. I apologize, and I've fixed it in the story.
Hayes first composed his piece as an e-mail and then decided (in the spirit of not trying to make us into another left-wing cabal colluding on media coverage!) to publish it. He also took issue with my calling his posts about Wright on Journolist "feverish" -- I stand by that one. But I think his overall point is fair: I was a little feverish in making Hayes the poster boy for the excesses of lefty Obama defenders during the 2008 primaries, and I apologize. My inner Andrew Breitbart came out. We disagreed, and still disagree, on the importance of the Wright mess, but as I said in the post, he was not the most militant Obama avenger of that sad era, and I could have been more judicious in my language.
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