One thing to remember about the memo fiasco

It may have been a fake — but Bush was AWOL. (Link via TBogg.)

This is how arguments are won in the internet age — focus on trivialities and ignore the larger picture. If there’s a typo in your message board post, then you are clearly a worthless asshat who should be ignored by all reasonable people, blah blah blah. If you got suckered by somebody with forged memos — and god knows what agenda — then your entire career should be deep-sixed.

A few months back, the Times op-ed page asked various bloggers — mostly right wingers — what they thought the most important story of the election was. Some of the give-em-an-inch-and-they-think-they’re-rulers crowd nominated themselves, and their obsession with these memos, as the most important story of the 2004 election cycle. And maybe they were right, in one sense: maybe they’ve helped usher us into a new era. Call it the Age of Obsessive Nitpicking. (Or, more accurately — for the obsessive nitpickers in the audience — the Age of Obsessive and Generally Misinformed Nitpicking.)

But that’s not exactly something to celebrate.

…there’s a good overview of the whole mess here.