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03/23/2005 Archived Entry: "Stephen Schwartz Lawsuit Watch Week 119"

Antiwar.com has initiated a Stephen Schwartz Lawsuit Watch and this is Week 119. Matt Barganier writes [Please click on preceding link for his embedded URLs], "With apologies to Slate, I now inaugurate Antiwar.com's Stephen Schwartz Lawsuit Watch. As you probably already know, Schwartz threatened to sue us last week for hyperlinking to a photograph of him on The Atlantic Web site....

After being laughed out of town for that by various commentators, including Instapundit, Schwartz now informs me, via e-mail, that If you knew anything at all about anything you would know that legal actions don't take place in a week. and Legal action will have to do with libel, not links, and will be undertaken at the time and place of my choosing.

Margainier again, "A time and place of his choosing, eh? Well, Schwartz first threatened to sue us (over a link to an article about him) in December 2002. As for a suitable jurisdiction for his complaint, may I suggest Uzbekistan? I know it's out of the way, but at least Schwartz has some credibility there."

Me: Emails have been flying fast and furious on this topic but I hesitate to reproduce them without the consent of numerous authors. But the Schwartz matter -- or, more broadly, the attack against all things or even affiliated things antiwar.com -- seems to be heating up. On today's antiwar.com blog Matt posts Fact-Free Frontpagemag. In today's centersmear at Frontpagemag, a Steven Plaut writes: In a New York Times editorial, [Juan] Cole said that he saw the elections in Syria as a model for other Arab countries to follow: “The last thing the Arab people need is a red herring like ‘free and open elections’ to distract them from the international Zionist/Neo-Con conspiracy to take their oil.” Professor Cole then added that President Assad’s ability to gain such a high percentage of the vote “all the while maintaining an oligarchic cult of personality oppressive regime mired in nepotism and corruption” was “truly impressive” and a positive sign of “Arab solidarity.”

Matt: Wow. What a jerk that Cole is! One slight problem: Cole never wrote, and the New York Times never published, any such thing. It's a lame attempt at satire from an Iraqi blog. I didn't bother reading any further. If David Horowitz can't use some of his massive cash to hire a goddamn editor, then I assume he wants his writers to lie. Which they do, constantly. [Again, please click on preceding link for Matt's embedded URLs.]