Opinion: Rippling through the blogosphere

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Here’s a look at the blogosphere’s reactions to the work of the Times’ Opinion Manufacturing Division this week:

The Real Clear World blog responds to Andrew Bacevich’s op-ed on the White House’s overlooking of strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq in favor of tactics:

These commitments, and the expectations they produce both at home and abroad, have successfully bound three post Cold War administrations and look to be binding a fourth. They inherit a grand strategy by default.

Musings, a blog discussing culture, politics, and education, took offense at the Opinion L.A piece about Amnesty International’s recent report that accused Israel of ‘wanton destruction’ and Hamas of ‘war crimes’ in the December conflict in the Gaza Strip. The writer disagreed with the post’s assertion that both sides were blamed, saying that the report’s full text put much more blame on Israel for the war.

The Oy Vay blog, featuring the voice of a self-proclaimed Jewish conservative on various issues, liked Patt Morrison’s post on her disgust with the cash-strapped city of Los Angeles’ commitment to using taxpayer money to pay for the security detail for Michael Jackson’s funeral.

And the Opinion L.A. poll urging fans to boo Manny’s return to Dodger Stadium on July 16 made it onto the Major League Baseball’s Fanhouse blog:

As for Manny, I’m sure there will be some Dodger fans who boo him when he comes back to Los Angeles, but I’m pretty sure the vast majority of them will welcome him with open arms. The fact of the matter is that steroids and performance-enhancing drugs are just a part of what baseball has become these days, and with all the players who have been outed as ‘cheaters’ in recent years, nobody is very shocked by it.

Pamela Geller’s Atlas Shrugged blog praised John Bolton’s op-ed piece that stated the only way to fix Iran is to institute regime change in the country:

Back when sanity was in order, fine, decent men governed. Today they stand on the sidelines, hoping against hope that free men will wake up and heed their words of caution, much like Churchill when he too was cast into the wilderness. John Bolton wrote such words yesterday in the LA Times in his exceptional op-ed: The only answer for Iran is regime change.

The War Victims Monitor blog re-posted, sans comment, Ahmed Rashid’s op-ed on Pakistan’s more serious commitment to getting rid of the Taliban and its influences, and the need for strong international support to complete a successful campaign against the militants.

Ron Radosh of Pajamas Media was not a fan of the L.A. Times’ coverage of I.F. Stone, both in the op-ed section and the book reviews, implying that the paper overlooked the unsavory parts of the journalist and radical’s past.

The Los Angeles Times proved to be the most sycophantic. First, it ran an op-ed by Guttenplan himself heralding Stone as one of America’s greatest journalists and radicals. Guttenplan charges that the news that Stone was a Soviet agent between 1936 and 1939 was based “on the flimsiest of evidence” and that he has been a “hate figure to the far right.” To those who understand the past, Guttenplan writes, “he remains a hero.”

The Guardian UK‘s Haroon Siddique included Michael Carey’s op-ed on the beginning of Sarah Palin’s end in a wrap-up of skeptical articles regarding the Alaska governor’s motives for resigning abruptly.

Finally, a few blogs picked up on Jonah Goldberg’s column about the Washington Post salon, which charged $25,000 a ticket for dinner at publisher Katharine Weymouth’s home and promised networking with top Obama administration officials and the Post reporters who cover them.

The Open Secrets blog linked to Goldberg’s piece in their rehashing of the Post’s response that claimed they would amend any business practices that weren’t clear.

And Chicago Boyz, a blog composed of many different voices, said the following about WaPo after linking to the column:

This sort of thing is done all the time by newspapers with their foot in the White House press room door. But this time around it was just a bit too blatant to pass the smell test. The wage slaves in the WaPo’s very own bullpen, the ink stained wretches that are never invited to any of the best shindigs because they are “gray people”, screamed bloody murder. No one had asked them, they claimed. HA! Like anyone who spends their days in a newspaper’s board room on the top floor would ask what a reporter thought when bucks were on the line!