So there I was, listening to Peter Beinart

on the Liberal "Thom Hartmann Show" (which is all-but-pirate-radio broadcast into my Liberal enclave from my lone, local Liberal radio station) nattering on and on about the horrors of a "new McCarthyism" which uses fear and slander as political weapons...the near-complete ignorance of the American people regarding Islam...and how a basic lack of empathy is the root of all of these evils.

And stuff like that.

So soothing!

And then I started to think that maybe I'd remembered Peter Beinart from somewhere other than his near-continuous presence on every radio and teevee outlet; from a place and time so long ago and far away that memory of its existence has been all but lost to the race of Man.

But where?

Oh yeah, I remember now.

He's this guy:

Peter Beinart As Cautionary Tale In Journalism History

by David Sirota | December 11, 2007 - 8:39pm

Just eight months ago, PBS's Bill Moyers aired perhaps the single most devastating indictment of the Washington press corps that I have ever seen. In his documentary, which looked at how the media cheered on President Bush's push for a war with Iraq, Moyers interviewed one of the key cheerleaders: then-New Republic editor Peter Beinart. Moyers asked Beinart "what made you present yourself as a Middle East expert" in the lead up to war? Beinart said that though he had never been to Iraq, he is "a political journalist." So Moyers naturally asked what kind of "political journalism" and reporting Beinart did to make sure his pro-war cheerleading was sound? Beinart's answer was the stuff of journalism infamy:

"Well, I was doing mostly, for a large part it was reading, reading the statements and the things that people said. I was not a beat reporter. I was editing a magazine and writing a column. So I was not doing a lot of primary reporting. But what I was doing was a lot of reading of other people's reporting and reading of what officials were saying."

He's this guy (From Matthew Yglesias, 12/07:

The War's End?

The juxtaposition of David Brooks and Peter Beinart both opining that nobody cares about Iraq any more right before a New York Times poll came out revealing that "more people cite the Iraq war as the most important issue facing the country than cite any other matter" sure is odd. Equally odd, in many respects, is the logic Beinart used to reach his conclusion:

Last month, Katharine Q. Seelye of the New York Times live-blogged the Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas. As the discussion bounced from subject to subject, she marked the topic and the time, then gave her thoughts. At 8:34 p.m., it was driver’s licenses; 8:55, Pakistan; 9:57, the Supreme Court. By night’s end she had 17 entries totaling almost 1,500 words. And she hadn’t typed “Iraq” once.

Basically, the evidence for Beinart's side is that media elites who control the debate questioning process don't want to talk about the war. Conversely, the public does seem to think the war is very important.
...

There is, in essence, a powerful desire to avoid an "accountability moment" in which the people who played a role in bamboozling a large swathe of the public into backing the war are called onto the carpet.
...

He's this guy:

In place of consistent coverage of the peace movement, some pundits and columnists sounded the alarm about the threat to America from within. New Republic editor Peter Beinart (9/24/01) thought critics of administration plans should either keep quiet or explain their loyalties: "Domestic political dissent is immoral without a prior statement of national solidarity, a choosing of sides."

So Petey Beinart ("PNAC's bitch" as the late Steve Gilliard famously tagged him) has morphed 180 degrees -- from being a dangerously ignorant, war-mongering McCarthyite...to warning against the perils of dangerous ignorance, war-mongering and McCarthyism. -- all without missing a meal or a moment out of the spotlight.

Wow.

You know, its almost like there is some sort of...Club...in which certain people have some sort of...privileged, in-group membership...which shields them from the professional consequences of being complete asshats.

Or, as Krugman says about a different but equally inbred clique:

"Now, we all make mistakes and get things wrong — although it’s striking how often the trolls on this blog feel the need to accuse yours truly of saying things I didn’t. But after this string of errors, wouldn’t you at least begin to suspect that the people you find congenial have a fundamentally wrong-headed view of how the world works?"

You're living the dream, Petey! Living the dream!