Sam Seder Loves It!

I encourage you to watch the following segment (15:30-19:00):

Seder, setting himself apart from other Sanders supporters here and on twitter (more on them later), doesn’t believe the twitter user HoarseWhisperer was paid to tweet his anti-Bernie message. No, he believes something much more idiotic:

I'm not suggesting that Aetna or Citibank or Exxon or any other of these major corporations told the HoarseWhisperer to tweet like that, because this dynamic and this relationship is really important. I don't believe that Aetna, AT&T, Exxon, Bristol-Myers, Eli Lilly, whatever other drug companies he worked for—you know the ones he's not mentioning because he thinks those might be problematic (the military). Whatever. I'm not suggesting that any of those companies told him to tweet that. What I am suggesting is that the reason why they hire a guy like that is because he's a guy who would tweet like that.

(Note how Seder relishes speculating about what’s not on the doxxed LinkedIn info. Has HoarseWhisperer worked for the military? According to Seder and his co-hosts, probably, almost certainly maybe.)

Seder thinks these companies, each with thousands or tens of thousands of employees, screen people by ideology. Potential hires must be willing to toe the company/industry line in their every public utterance before they are brought on. How companies determine this, he leaves as an exercise to the listener. This is...problematic, given Seder’s paid MSNBC gig. How many Comcast/NBCUniversal stories has Seder buried, minimized, or spun? Assuming he’s not a hypocrite who holds others to a standard he doesn’t apply to himself, it would be irresponsible not to presume the answer is greater than zero.

Seder is a comedian and media personality, not a journalist, so it is surprising that so many of Sanders’s journalist fans are willing to go even further in their excuses.

Here’s Washington Monthly’s David Atkins:

Not only does he justify it (“Hoarse is one of the most vicious assholes on the internet”), he resorts to the well-worn technique of pretending pedantry is a counter-argument (e.g., NRA defenders: “AR doesn’t stand for assault rifle”): this doxxing hasn’t resulted in HoarseWhisperer’s address or phone number being publicized yet, just his name, photograph, home town, LinkedIn page, and his wife’s employer. “It wasnt doxxing”. Nothing to see here, folks.

Here are The Intercept’s Ryan Grim and Walker Bragman:

How do they know he’s “possibly astroturfed” and a “corporate hack” ? Who cares! Working for The Intercept means never having to cite a source when you attack Bernie critics. Hand waving and innuendo suffice.

Here’s some Intercept (Ryan Grim), Washington Post (Dave Weigel, Aaron Freedman), and former Buzzfeed (Chris Geidner, john r stanton) reporters having a laugh about doxxing. Sources should definitely trust these reporters to keep their identities confidential (unless, of course, those sources write something mean about Bernie Sanders).

EDIT:

For the backstory on this, here’s my previous diary.