"You dishonor him by calling him 'liberal media critic.' He did not discriminate in his keen criticism of lazy journalism. Your choice of words to describe him is exactly the kind of thing he decried."

Writes one commenter on the Washington Post article "Liberal media critic Eric Boehlert dies in bicycle collision."

It's strange to put "Liberal" in the headline like that. For one thing, it's ambiguous. It could mean that he was liberal — which is correct — but it could also mean that he was a critic of liberal media. 

But also, it's odd to put someone's political persuasion in the headline, especially when the newsworthy event is so vaguely and confusingly described. Did 2 bicycles collide? No. We learn in the third paragraph that Boehlert was riding a bike, and he was hit by a train.

Condolences to his family.

So now the theory is that we don't accept apologies when we perceive ulterior motives?

Democrats, hoping to keep Rush Limbaugh's Fluke floundering going, reject his apology:

By the time he apologized, online protesters had been organizing for days on social networking Web sites and liberal hubs like Daily Kos. They called on companies like ProFlowers to remove their ads from “The Rush Limbaugh Show” and appeared to be having some success, as companies like Sleep Train said they had suspended advertising....

Mr. Limbaugh’s critics dismissed his apology as having been forced by the advertiser pressure. Reflecting those feelings on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, said, “I know he apologized, but forgive me, I doubt his sincerity, given that he lost at least six advertisers.”

Eric Boehlert of the liberal media monitoring group Media Matters for America predicted on Sunday that the apology would not “stop the pressure that’s being applied to his advertisers.”

“His comments were so egregious, naturally advertisers will have doubts about being associated with Limbaugh’s brand of hate,” Mr. Boehlert said in an e-mail message.

Now, I believe in general principles, and I want to know what the general principle is about accepting apologies. I'd like to nail down people like Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Eric Boehlert, because their candidate, Barack Obama, is one of the greatest purveyors of apologies in the history of the world!

Why did Obama apologize for the burning of Korans in Afghanistan? Should his apology be rejected as insincere because it didn't come from pure recognition that Americans had done wrong? Obviously, the apology was motivated by American self-interest. He wanted to stop the violent reaction.

The tendency in recent years has been to demand apologies. But these demands are bogus unless apologies are accepted. Now, some people criticize our culture of apology. Santorum didn't like Obama's apology for the Koran burning.

And Rush Limbaugh is the furthest thing from an apology guy:

Over at Media Matters, Eric Boehlert is writing about me.

Eric Boehlert. Eric Boehlert? Oh, I know where I read his name recently. He's a character in Iowahawk's brilliant "I'll Take a Cashier's Check, Mr. Breitbart." He's the one handing out the assignments:

EZRA KLEIN: hey boehlert whats the assignment

ERIC BOEHLERT: 3 part essay

ERIC BOEHLERT: 1. Explain why unemployment report shows stimulus is working

ERIC BOEHLERT: 2. link BP oil spill to teabaggers

ERIC BOEHLERT: 3. spin latest Gallups

JOSH MARSHALL: crap crap crap and I have a lab assignment for global warming due

ERIC ALTERMAN: o fack me looks like an all niter...

Ha. But why is he on my case? "Ann Althouse continues to blog about Journolist; appears to have no idea what it was," he says. Well, then, release the archive so I can cure my terrible ignorance. That's all I want.

Althouse continues to post item after item about Journolist, despite the fact that... Althouse has no idea what Journolist was.

Stop me before I blog ignorantly again, Eric. Send me the archive. Or send it to Breitbart and collect $100,000 and I'll get to it that way.

Boehlert goes on to quote me saying that if I were to sue a Journolist member for defamation — something I'm not inkleined to do — I would be able to get discovery into the archive. Eric B. says:

Althouse, a law school prof and very public blogger, was thinking out loud about suing the owner of Journolist to find out if any of the 400 journalists on the listserv ever wrote anything nasty about her in their private emails. (Ego much?)

Eric Boehlert continues to write about me like that even though he has no idea what the thing I wrote that he just quoted says.  I cited a specific item of defamation against me that was published on the web and that remains there. If I were to sue based on that remark, I would be able to get discovery into relevant evidence about that claim. Moreover, I know that there are specific, related remarks about me in the Journolist archive, because that remark was tweeted, in Ezra Klein's own words, "after I was alerted to her thread on Journolist."

Boehlert imagines that one of my commenters nails his argument for him. Here's that comment:

I would think a law professor might have a better grasp of this. But on what grounds would you seek the archives? To borrow a popular argument of the right, where in the Constitution does it say you have the right to know what others are saying about you, especially when you have no proof they are saying anything defamatory about you.

Clue to Boehlert: Not all law is in the Constitution. The tort of defamation is a matter of state law. The extent of discovery is a matter of procedural law. I don't need a constitutional right. (Conceivably, there is a right that would bar my access to the archive, but I don't need a constitutional right to discovery if I bring a defamation claim.)

So, Boehlert, your post is incredibly lame, but, as a law professor, I'll give you a rewrite. I think Media Matters portrays itself as a champion of truth, so... see if you can get a little closer to something that feels a little more truth-y.

***

On a related note: Yesterday, James Taranto, in Best of the Web, opined that a journalist's shield law would prevent discovery into the Journolist archive in a defamation suit:

Seems to us it would depend on the venue. Most states have some sort of shield law protecting reporters from having to disclose confidential sources, but the specifics vary from state to state. In federal court, however, there is no such privilege.

The privilege is about shielding confidential news sources — informants. The Journolist archive contains the statements of journalists talking to each other. I don't see how the privilege could apply.

[Journalists] should, of course, have all the legal protections of the First Amendment, which among other things mean that Althouse almost certainly would not win her defamation suit against Klein. His offending tweet, it seems to us, is a constitutionally protected opinion rather than a false statement of fact.

One reason I have no interest in suing is that I want the broadest First Amendment rights here. I would not want to have to argue that the statement in question — "Ann Althouse sure has a lot of anti-semitic commenters" — is not an opinion but a false statement of fact. But I'm afraid it is, quite plainly, a false statement of fact.