Charles Country and Western Cooke on the case:I sent a few e-mails yesterday inquiring of Gawker’s staff how it felt about working for a company whose Cayman Islands–based finances are, as John Cassidy of The New Yorker put it, “organized like an international money-laundering operation” when they are nonetheless content to run a piece knocking Mitt Romney for tax avoidance. John Cook, who wrote the piece, responded, as did both Cord Jefferson and Hamilton Nolan. Cook informed me that Gawker’s Cayman connection has been common knowledge since 2010 and that I was late to the “scoop.” (A funny accusation, given that I wasn’t claiming a scoop, but Gawker, which touted Bain files that were almost all in the public domain, screamed “exclusive.”)
“I, too, was disappointed when I first learned those details from Reuters’ Felix Salmon and the New Yorker’s John Cassidy back in 2010,” wrote John Cook. Cord Jefferson added: “Way to crack the case on a fact openly linked to in the original story.* My comment is this: Nice job, Woodward.” This came in the midst of a very Gawker-esque barrage of sarcasm, which included descriptions of me as a “dimwit” and “f***ing idiot” and basic instructions as to how I might read pages on the Internet. I’d have been disappointed with anything else, I suppose.
I'm pleased too. EVERYONE should aspire to the
Ben Shapiro level of self-pwnership. Apart from Cooke's desire to show how stupid people think he is, the post boils down to this:
If it is wrong to arrange your finances through the Cayman Islands, it is wrong to do so whether you are Gawker or whether you are Mitt Romney.
I am grateful that my membership in the left-wing groupthink cabal does not permit me to write
I AGREE COMPLETELY THAT BOTH ROMNEY AND GAWKER SUCK FINANCIAL ASS in big bold text on a website for surely the whole socialist house of cards would collapse.
