A Hack by Any Other Name Would Still be a Hack
By 
Speaking of perhaps the most mendacious living recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, it appears no one at LGM has blogged about his most recent self-immolation. It blazed brighter than a thousand suns.
It begins, as so many of these things do, with a Tweet. Glem, it seems, has been working on a piece arguing that the January 6th investigation is unconstitutional, because “something something McCarthy!!”
Josh Chafetz quote-tweeted Glem after the first tranche of the thread:
Glem responded, and Josh replied:
And then Glem did a classic Glem:
At this point we should pause for a moment. Perhaps we might take a look at Chafetz’s faculty page, which he conveniently links to from his Twitter profile? Glem sure didn’t.
Glem, of course, runs away. A few hours later, he adds another tranche to the thread.
The Wikipedia entry for “political hack” reads
“Political hack”, also called partisan hack, is a pejorative term describing a person who is part of the political party apparatus, but whose intentions are more aligned with victory than personal conviction. The term “hired gun” is often used in tandem to further describe the moral bankruptcy of the “hack.”
Glem isn’t a political hack in the conventional sense of the word. He seems driven overwhelmingly by negative partisanship. He doesn’t so much love the GOP as hate the Democrats. It’s no wonder, then, that Glem is often aligned with the narrow – but extremely loud – subset of the American left that has updated the concept of “social fascism” for the 21st century. (His atypically conciliatory gestures toward shills for authoritarian governments – or at least those aligned against the United States – may or may not be another matter).
So even Glem’s a negative-partisan hack, he’s still a hack.
Disclosure: Josh Chafetz is technically a colleague, as he has a courtesy affiliation with the Georgetown University Department of Government. I’ve never, to my knowledge, actually met him.
