Read This Essay

Agree or disagree with this essay from The New Republic but please read it. It's a bit of a slow start but fascinating and not terribly long.

Here's how TNR describes it:

John B. Judis's eye-opening cover story draws on a wealth of psychological research, showing how voters are susceptible to politicians who can manipulate their fear of death. Obviously, we all want leaders who can defend us, but only recently have social scientists begun to understand how a fear of our own mortality guides many of our political choices without our ever realizing it--and how politicians like George W. Bush can, and have, tapped it to further their own policies.

Beauchamp, Again.

David Fiderer takes on the Scott Beauchamp story again at the Huffington Post.

Proof that the "Debunking" of the Scott Thomas Beauchamp Story was a Conspiracy to Defraud

We've seen this scam before. Suddenly, from different, seemingly independent sources, new "evidence" emerges to force a "whom-do-you-believe" debate about something that was on nobody else's radar screen.

Earlier here

and here

More on TNR and Beauchamp

The New Republic fires back on the Scott Beauchamp story. Earlier.

This isn't just a matter of whether Beauchamp's story is accurate. It's also a matter of whether a publication with an agenda will be able to take down an established magazine--whatever its political leanings, and I've not been fond of TNR in recent years--using innuendo and one-source, anonymous claims.

Paul McLeary at Columbia Journalism Review steps into the fray.