No response to my TTD piece so far from Jamie Kirchick, author of The New Republic‘s failed attempt to smear Ron Paul, but one of his “libertarian” enablers at the Cato Institute has responded. Or, rather, non-responded. Here’s the money quote:

“I, for my part, don’t feel much need to talk about the bulk of Raimondo’s piece. I don’t think it’s my job to defend Kirchick’s article: It was a hit piece, it did sometimes stretch to put things in their worst light, and it did make a fuss about some passages that weren’t really offensive at all.”

This is why the Reasonoids didn’t bother examining and analyzing what was written, and certainly not in context: as Sanchez himself admits, Kirchick did “stretch” the truth. But the only truth Kirchick and his pals at Reason and Cato were and are interested in is who wrote the material in question, not if (and why) it was “racist.” With that, Senor Sanchez can’t be bothered: truth doesn’t matter, context doesn’t matter, and he doesn’t “feel much need” to go into it. Of course he doesn’t: let Fox News take it from here, right Julie?

Sanchez says I “ignored” the material that is “beyond defending”—and then links to this description of a weird incident in which none other than Al Sharpton leads a demonstration demanding that New York City be re-named in honor of Martin Luther King. The newsletter then suggests alternative names: “Welfaria,” “Dirtburg,” etc. I have to say that I “ignored” this one because it is so self-evidently harmless: a joke, really. Where is the racial animus? Is disliking New York City now a “hate crime”?

The idea that we should re-name New York City opens us up to such a wide variety of jokes that it boggles the mind—but to the humorless Torquemadas of the PC crowd, any criticism of the Reverend Sharpton is in itself a “hate crime.” “Beyond defending”? Puh-leeze.

I should also make a correction to my original piece, now that I’m on the subject: I stated that Reason writer Brian Doherty was “threatened” with losing his job because he’s “too pro-Paul.” This is incorrect: my source tells me that Doherty felt threatened in terms of his job security because he refused to add material about the newsletter smear to his cover piece in the curent issue of Reason on the Paul campaign. My apologies for any confusion this has caused.