Jonah Goldberg, A God-Awful Media Critic

Even for Goldberg, who makes his living casually smearing liberals as fascists, his recent media critique in USA Today was an embarrassment. (For the paper as well as the writer.) It only highlighted what a mockery writers like him have made of the conservative media criticism genre. Poorly sourced and constructed around lazy, cliched writing -- and in a couple of cases, outright falsehoods -- Goldberg's piece simply illustrated how, rather than illuminating shortfalls of the press, conservatives often just create more work for the rest of us. Because now I have to critique Goldberg's god-awful critique.

The headline for the piece claimed Obama was enjoying a media honeymoon. Immediately, I wondered how Goldberg would prop up his argument when there's already been so much Beltway chatter suggesting the opposite -- that Obama's press honeymoon has already been cut historically short. What evidence did Goldberg see that others ignored or had failed to detect? Because as a media critic myself, I understand that it's paramount to provide proof to back up your claims. And that if you don't, then you're simply peddling propaganda for political purposes. You're not making serious arguments, you're just clowning around.

Enter Goldberg.

in a column supposedly brimming with "examples" of Obama's press honeymoon, I couldn't find a single one that withstood the slightest amount of scrutiny.

Read the full Media Matters column here.