Two Letters to Lawrence O'Donnell

These are two emails I sent to Lawrence O'Donnell -- thelastword@msnbc.com -- regarding this incident.

Reason and the Police

August 3, 2011

Dear Mr. O'Donnell:

Before you called the Reason staff "right-wing Republicans" and asserted they never criticized the police, perhaps you should have Googled "site:reason.com police" or "site:reason.com 'radley balko'" to see what they've actually written about the police.

Well, better late than never. Now you should do the above-mentioned searches -- followed up by a retraction and an apology.

This is the sort of canard that, if anyone else had done it, you would have used as fodder for a rewrite and demanded a public apology for. If you fail to do so in this instance, you should be ashamed.

Sincerely,
Kevin Carson

Tu Quoque

August 6, 2011

Dear Mr. O'Donnell:

Remember earlier this year when you aired footage of Gov. Christie telling an ordinary woman in his audience that his schooling choices were "none of her business," followed by footage of him politely explaining the reasons for his schooling choices to a Fox News host? You said the difference was that the talking head show host was entitled to courtesy because he was somebody; the ordinary woman wasn't because she was nobody.

Fast forward to your remarks about Reason magazine's coverage of the police. Now, I know you're a smart man. There's no doubt in my mind you've found out by now that Reason does -- and more specifically Radley Balko -- does, in fact, do very extensive coverage of police abuses. In fact, as I'm sure you've found out, Balko has the best claim to being the Internet go-to guy on the subject. And I have no doubt you've realized that you screwed up enormously, and that there's a somewhat embarrassing kerfluffle about it in the libertarian blogosphere.

So what to do about it? If you'd made the erroneous accusation against Somebody, you'd have already apologized -- as you've done many times before under similar circumstances when the target had a high enough profile. But since the target was Nobody -- a commentator from a comparatively marginal political movement most of your audience is familiar with only second-hand -- you can afford to just stonewall and wait for the issue to go away.

Does that about sum it up?

Sincerely,
Kevin Carson