bringing new meaning to 'pravda on the potomac'

so the washinton post.


(oh, the washington post.)

on the same day the washington post fired eighty newsroom employees, many of them Actual Journalists, they saw fit to hire a man named Ben Domenech. ben's role at the post will be to provide some much needed Balance to the flaming liberal agenda that is the post's editorial section. laying aside the puzzlement that is one's initial reaction - i mean, seriously, what 'liberal' would a conservative blogger be balancing? krauthammer? - let us look at young benjamin's credentials.'young' is the operative word: ben domenech is twentyfour years old. his qualifications include having a website at www.bendomenech.com , co-blogging on the retardedly racist www.redstate.com , and being the son of a republican party operative who is presently implicated as a player in the jack abramoff scandal.

and those are the extent of his qualifications.
you will note a lack of any journalistic experience at all ever. that is because he has none. he did apparently work as a speechwriter for congressman tom 'gay marriage leads to people fucking turtles' cornyn, and he also has worked for notoriously conservative regenry press, meaning that he helped to edit michelle malkin's pro-japanese-internment screed. oh, he also has experience lying on his resume, which is very helpful for all aspiring journalists - he claims to have been awarded the Ruben J. Salazar award by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
there is not actually any such thing as the Ruben J. Salazar award.
it is possible he did at some point recieve financial aid or a scholarship from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, but rather unlikely, considering that such a scholarship requires, uh, being hispanic, and also financial need, and *also* showing 'awareness of the hispanic community.'

here is an example of domenech's 'awareness', lifted from his blog:

[I posted this in past years on May 5th - it's a Bendomenech.com tradition honoring Latino heritage. The basic point is this: Cinco de Mayo ought to be properly historically renamed, "Beat Up a Frenchman" day.]....So think about that tonight while you're chowing down on tortilla chips and salsa. And if you get the urge, go beat up a Frenchman. Hey, I'm not even Chicano, but I can understand.

other pearls of wisdom, blogged in the past by ben, can be found here - apparently, telling al gore to 'suck it' is 'raising the level of discourse'.

he also blogs under the nick 'augustine' on redstate.com, where he recently called coretta scott king a 'communist'. but really, here is the best bit of all, lifted from the reader complaints on the WaPo site:

Ben Domenech on soldiers dying in the Iraq war (March 10, 2003):

This aversion to any sort of bodybag in the context of war is
something my brother Ellis and I have mocked before, at length: we
like to call it the "Contra 3 Syndrome." In Contra, one of the most
popular arcade games ever (unrelated to the South American
resistance), you play a soldier blasting away at baddies (in the 3rd
installment, for the SNES, it's alien baddies) with oversized weaponry
in a side-scrolling firefight. It's an entertaining game, but
extremely short--Contra 3 is only 6 levels long. Besides, you really
need all three of your lives to deal with the last boss--so a lot of
people who play the game will restart the minute they lose their first
life. Ellis and I are more likely to make it to the end with only one
life left, but hey, that's the point of the game, not
erasing/restarting every time anyone dies. Modern War isn't exactly
like Contra, and it's a good deal longer than any 6-level game.

[from here - goarmy.com, indeed!]

curiously, though he is of prime enlistment age, he has yet to enlist
in any branch of military service.

i can work up several theories to explain the logic behind his hiring. it is possible the post does not understand how google works, and just did not do any research whatsoever. it is possible he's parody - really, it's hard to read him as anything besides parody, and he claims to have written for mcsweeney's, though i have not found any articles by him. it is possible he has been hired to deflect attention from the rest of the wretchedness that is the online post section, to give the frothing liberal intarnet moonbats something to froth about besides the rank incompetence of the post ombudsman. it is possible they want to pick up the marketshare of those who find the moonie-owned Washington Times just a bit too liberal for their taste. it is possible that they really and truly believe the great lie of the Liberal Media Bias, and believe that the fact that froomkin has written a few articles critical of the bush administration means that they must restore Balance, and be quick smart about it, too. their intentions i cannot know, but they have managed to piss off quite a few people, really.

his post blog: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/redamerica/

if you want to leave comments, though, you must go to the Editors'Blog, because ben is afraid of people being mean to him, and will not allow comments. not even heavily edited, filtered and scrubbed comments of the sort you can leave on the editors' blog. (note: according to the comment filters on the editors' blog, words like 'despicable' are too mean.) but if you wish, here it is.