Jonathan Chait has a new blog piece up where he goes after this Harper’s cover story by David Bromwich and Bromwich’s assertion that President Obama’s policies toward Russia amount to “the defamation of Vladimir Putin.”
Chait took particular offense to this passage from the Harper’s piece:
When [Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs] appeared in Kiev to hand out cookies to the anti-Russian protesters, it was as if a Russian operative had arrived to cheer a mass of anti-American protesters in Baja California.
Chait wrote in response:
Right, it’s exactly as if Russian operatives had come to greet anti-American protesters in California. Except there aren’t anti-American protesters in California, largely because California is part of the United States of America. Kiev, on the other hand, is not part of Russia. It is part of Ukraine, which is a sovereign state.
You see his error? In his zeal to go after Bromwich, Chait missed that Bromwich was talking about Baja California, which is of course in Mexico and makes his Ukraine analogy defensible.
Oops:
https://twitter.com/eliasisquith/status/601407292362387456
Lmfao: Jonathan Chait doesn't know Baja California is in Mexico, writes a whole snarky article off that flub http://t.co/PJ4v8Qdmvh
— tom mckenna (@tmckenna1) May 21, 2015
Chait has since added an “Update” to the post acknowledging his error:
https://twitter.com/Stefan_BC/status/601412959059857408
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