Some wonder why I bother with Easterbrook. There are two objections - 1) Who the hell is this Easterbrook guy anyway? and 2) Well, it wasn't really that big of a deal on the "anti-Semitism" meter.
As for the first objection, Easterbrook is a "media favorite," having established his right-leaning centrist creds which is the road to such things. You know, he cares about the environment but environnmentalists are all wrong, etc... He writes for TNR regularly, has written for every major publication you can think of, and has started popping up on Howie the Whore's weekly show. So, he isn't a nobody.
As for the second one - yes, there's some truth to that, but the incident provides a perfect example of how some people can get away with saying dumbass things that other people can't. In particular, the media's favorite sons can get away with far more than anyone else.
Easterbrook wrote a dumb thing, then wrote an equally dumb apology, then maybe wrote a dumb email saying that the evil Eisner was going to ruin his life so pity him, then maybe lied to certain people about that, then maybe had a bunch of people he sent the email to cover for him.
As with my interest in the story the first time around it's more about members of the media's desire to protect those who are full members of the club. I thought this story had gone away, but if Easterbrook lied to certain bloggers about that email, I consider that a major violation of trust by a member of the media. Sure, they're all full of shit to some degree sometimes, but this is potentially a very simple documentable lie said by someone in the middle of doing a bit of crisis management. Frankly, if true it's pretty disgusting.
