Foer-Mapes Or Wilson-Plame?

Hugh Hewitt this morning draws a parallel between New Republic poobah Franklin Foer and his "Scott Thomas diaries" smearing of American troops in Iraq and Mary Mapes' (and Dan Rather's) Texas Air National Guard smear of President Bush during the 2004 campaign. Heaven knows Foer's journalistic malpractice and stubborn, arrogant fingerpointing at his publication's well-justified critics and denouncers in lieu of fessing up to his reprehensible sins in which TNR has been caught red-handed is more than eerily reminiscent of that CBS caper that did more than anything else to make the blogosphere into an arm of the new mainstream media.

But now Ace of Spades throws in an even more fascinating wrinkle - Scott Thomas Beuchamp is married (or at least engaged) to a New Republic staffer:

Source: TNR Is A Lot More Worried Than They're Letting On; Scott Thomas Got His Job For Plame-ish Reasons: "Frankln Foer Doesn't Want To Tell TNR Staffer
Elspeth Reeve Her Husband Is A Liar"

The actual quote was "Frank doesn't want to tell ___ her husband is a liar," offered up not by my source but by someone else. The blank has now been confirmed as TNR staffer Elspeth Reeve, and even though the quote was "husband," there's some question about that: weddingchannel.com says their wedding is coming in October. Though perhaps they had a quickie civil ceremony before his last deployment or something, with the formal ceremony to occur later.

Look, husband/fiancee, not sure it matters. It certainly seems that everyone in the TNR offices were under the impression they'd already been married.

Hmmm. Leftist wife (or fiancee) a fairly high-level employee of a relevent, influential organization....uses her position to send her leftist husband (or fiance) on an overseas anti-war junket....leftist husband reports back with a pack of despicable lies....it all seems familiar, somehow.

Oh, yes, now I remember:

It's all so Plame-ish. As Gracie wrote to me, of all the embeds and milbloggers and real journalists they could have picked for the job, they instead chose to go with a very partisan, very inexperienced blogger just out of "laziness." Just because they knew him. Just because it was easy.

I actually think part of the reason was that they knew Beauchamp's politics - he having put them on display on his goofy blog - and so, just like with Valerie Plame, they knew the report was going to come back the way they wanted it when they sent him.

There's even a leaker of Beauchamp's connection to Elspeth (Elspeth? What the hell kind of given name is Elspeth?) Reeve - a fellow TNR staffer whose ass was summarily fired yesterday. At least he won't be subjected to a three-year "special" prosecution and punitive criminal penalties. Though his former employers seem to have put all the investigatory zeal into finding out who let the Beauchamp identity cat out of the bag that they did not in fact-checking this pussy-boy asshole's serial mass libel.

Really shows where the Enemy Media's priorities are at, doesn't it?