Ben Domenech: I Am Surprisingly Fair to My Old Bosses
Well, wedohave friends with in vast right-wing conspiracy, it turns out. But they're still unwilling to give us dirt, alas -- they're soloyal, why can't they be like our "unnamed" Democratic friends who so readily trash themselves in print? Our off-the-record sources insist that the Regnery statement on Domenech was totally on-the-level no-funny-stuff, and, speaking very politely on-the-record is Ben Domenech himself, who sends this along:
Actually, Regnery's statement is completely accurate. While the WashPost blog was cleared internally with my superior and colleagues, the higher-ups within Regnery's parent company were not enthused about it. On March 21st, before any allegations (other than racism, homophobia, and incest) had surfaced, they politely told me that the WashPost blog was not going to fly internally, even though I was doing it on my own time and considered it added value to the Regnery brand. I told them that unfortunately I had a contract with WashPost/Newsweek Interactive, and that I intended to honor that contract. It was a cordial meeting, but I ended up resigning at the end of it. While I'm not sure if that resignation would've been reconsidered under any circumstances, I have nothing against Regnery, and believe editor Harry Crocker to be the finest of men - and I certainly wouldn't want to force them to explain to the next author any mistakes I made when I was a teenager.
Ben, we'll go easy on you 'cause you were nice enough to respond to us after what has most certainly been a very bad weekend (access continues to trade pretty strong against integrity) (and yeah, that means no jokes about the email being plagiarized from Jonah Goldberg or something) (except that one, which doesn't count), but:
* We still feel like maybe Regnery saw a black eye coming and got out while the getting was good.
* Dude, the "teenage" line... the NRO bits happened when you were older than one of us.
But despite our natural skepticism about all official stories, we shall believe this until we hear something more interesting.