This Stuff Bugs Me

On The New Republic's blog, The Plank, Jonathan Cohn attacks those attacking President Obama's health insurance reform proposals. He doesn't like the dishonesty nor the arguments of those on the other side of the debate. He writes, in part:

Writing in the New York Post, Betsy McCaughey suggested that Emanuel wanted to ration care so that a "grandmother with Parkinson's or a child with cerebral palsy" couldn't get care. Soon Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and right-wing websites were piling on, calling Emanuel "Doctor Death." All of this about a man who, rather than using his considerable talents to get rich, has devoted his life to healing individuals--and improving the human condition. Oh, and did I mention his sister has cerebral palsy?

Notice anything about that paragraph, in which he quotes one writer, attributes actions to two others and pulls out the bogeyman of "right-wing websites"? Yup, that's right, no links. There's no easy way of checking Cohn's references or reading through the source material yourself.

Don't worry though, he does add some links in his post. Of course, they're only for people and sites that agree with him.

This sort of thing really bugs me on blogs (and other types of websites); if you can, you should provide links. Granted, I know my posts are sometimes pretty link-heavy, and sometimes the links seem pretty random, focusing too much on pop culture references, but come on, it's not that difficult to site one or two people whom you are confronting. Otherwise, it kinda looks like you're trying to hide something.

I'd also address the continued mis-use of the term, Swiftboating, but Ramesh Ponnuru does that better than I could.

(By the way, I agree that there is a lot of misinformation out there regarding health insurance reform, but I don't happen to think that one side is much more of an offender than the other.)