…versus the reality:

Kagan, according to these critics, engaged in regular “verbal abuse” of staff people, including the liberal use of profanity. On one occasion, I was told, she kicked a door while berating a staff member. “She has a terrible attitude toward what she considers underlings,” one faculty member told me. Apparently Kagan fired at least five members of the school’s administrative staff (none were willing to comment on the matter). Kagan’s alleged poor treatment of subordinates was apparently extended to some faculty members. “A lot of the faculty have been yelled at,” I was told. Another professor told me that “a cloud of fear” descended on the faculty during Kagan’s tenure, and that she was “at heart a mean person.” According to her critics Kagan was markedly hostile to disagreement and robust debate — a trait which was most evident in her management style, which was described to me as “authoritarian.” One dissident claimed Kagan had bulldozed appointment offers through hiring committees hand-picked by her to be reliably pliant, then made extravagant financial deals with many of the prospective hires — deals which had left the school in “disastrous financial shape.” Specifically, according to this person, the school’s new building project is badly undercapitalized, to the point where the interim dean looked into the possibility of suspending it, and major cutbacks have been made in areas such as hiring visiting professors, in order to deal with the consequences of Kagan’s alleged impecunious management of the school’s finances.

“She’s very much like her mentor Larry Summers,” I was told. “She buys people, in every sense of the word.”

A common complaint about Kagan among the faculty members I spoke with was that she had been credited with ending the high level of faculty conflict at the school. “That is simply nonsense,” one senior professor told me. “The real story is the precise opposite of what is being portrayed in the media. Bob Clark (the previous dean) should have gotten all the praise now going to Kagan. The dysfunctional faculty that Kagan is supposed to have fixed is the one he actually inherited. He ended the faculty wars. In fact Kagan changed the faculty atmosphere for the worse, with her authoritarian style and failure to involve the faculty in decision making.”

This is sort of good news, if true. If her style is really that non-collegial, she’ll have problems bringing others around to her fascist viewpoints.

The Daily Caller has more revelations from the JournoList — the coordinated attack on Sarah Palin. Most hilariously stupid email:

“John McCain picked someone to help him politically, Barack Obama picked someone to help him govern,” Yglesias wrote.

Right. Joe Biden was going to help him govern. The pick had nothing to do with a stupid attempt to burnish his non-existent foreign-policy credentials with idiots who didn’t know that Joe Biden was an idiot.

Well, maybe it makes sense. Given how horrible he is at governing himself, even Joe Biden might be an improvement.

[Update a few minutes later]

“I’m a liberal. I hate violence. But sometimes…”

[Update late morning]

Thoughts from Fred “Racist” Barnes:

Until JournoList came along, liberal journalists were rarely part of a team. Neither are conservative journalists today, so far as I know. If there’s a team, no one has asked me to join. As a conservative, I normally write more favorably about Republicans than Democrats and I routinely treat conservative ideas as superior to liberal ones. But I’ve never been part of a discussion with conservative writers about how we could most help the Republican or the conservative team.

My experience with other conservative journalists is that they are loners. One of the most famous conservative columnists of the past half-century, the late Robert Novak, is a good example. I knew him well for 35 years. He didn’t tell me what stories he was working on nor ask what I was planning to write. He never mentioned how we might promote Republicans or aid the conservative cause, nor did I.

What was particularly pathetic about the scheme to smear Mr. Obama’s critics was labeling them as racists. The accusation has been made so frequently in recent years, without evidence to back it up, that it has little effect. It’s now the last refuge of liberal scoundrels.

The first call I got after the Daily Caller unearthed the emails involving me was from Karl Rove. He said he wanted to talk to his “fellow racist.” We laughed about this. But the whole episode was also sad. I didn’t sputter at the thought of being called a racist. But it was sad to see what journalism, or at least a segment of it, had come to.

Actually, I don’t think it’s the last refuge. For many, it seems to be the first one.

That word in the dictionary should have a link to this post of the Journolisters’ responses to the Obamessiah rising. I wonder how loud the Hosannahs are now?

…and a gun. Words of gratitude. But then, I’m a racist.

I (and others) have often noted the tendency of leftists to do psychological projection — that is, to impute to their political enemies their own beliefs, traits and political tactics. Obvious examples: accusing them of lying, accusing them of being willing to do anything to attain/maintain power, being full of “hate,” being “racist.” I’m thinking about starting a web site to track this ubiquitous phenomenon

Anyway, if I had such a site running, here would be another example. They often accuse the right of being violent, but look at these lurid fantasies coming from JournoListers. They don’t just want to kill stories — they luxuriate in thoughts of injuring and killing people with whom they disagree:

Considering Weigel’s talk of setting Matt Drudge on fire, Ezra Klein’s off-color recommendation for Tim Russert, and now Ackerman fantasizing about putting conservatives through plate-glass windows, there is a bizarre addiction to lurid, violent, threatening language — not just among the commenters of liberal blogs, but among the folks who we are told represent their best and brightest. It’s disturbing, and the fact that it doesn’t bother more people is disturbing.

And then we have this, from Sarah Spitz:

If you were in the presence of a man having a heart attack, how would you respond? As he clutched his chest in desperation and pain, would you call 911? Would you try to save him from dying? Of course you would.

But if that man was Rush Limbaugh, and you were Sarah Spitz, a producer for National Public Radio (update: Spitz was a producer for NPR affiliate KCRW for the show Left, Right & Center), that isn’t what you’d do at all.

In a post to the list-serv Journolist, an online meeting place for liberal journalists, Spitz wrote that she would “Laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out” as Limbaugh writhed in torment.

In boasting that she would gleefully watch a man die in front of her eyes, Spitz seemed to shock even herself. “I never knew I had this much hate in me,” she wrote. “But he deserves it.”

Spitz’s hatred for Limbaugh seems intemperate, even imbalanced. On Journolist, where conservatives are regarded not as opponents but as enemies, it barely raised an eyebrow.

I wouldn’t say that no one on the right does this, but I can’t imagine such things being uncommented on were there such a thing as a right-wing JournoList. One occasionally sees such things at Free Republic, but the poster is usually admonished when it occurs. In fact, one thing that I have noted over there is that even when someone with whom the Freepers disagree politically (e.g., Ted Kennedy) actually is dead or dying, the general response is prayers and condolences to the friends and family, not glee. I have certainly never wished death on anyone for their political beliefs or advocacy of them, and like Rush Limbaugh, can’t get my head around the nature of someone who does. I guess that’s one reason I’m not a leftist.

[Update a while later[

Limbaugh responds.

I admit that, in light of the recent revelations from the JournoList and the NAACP, I am proud to be a racist.

[Update a while later]

Ed Driscoll has further thoughts, and this tweet is amusing:

One day, Spencer Ackerman will walk into a bar where Fred Barnes is having a drink. A tumbleweed will roll by outside.

I don’t think he’d have the guts.

They’re not just partisans and vicious. They’re mediocre partisans, and vicious hacks.

Well, yeah.