Dickhead of the Week - Thomas F. Hogan

hogan
Originally uploaded by dangunderman.

I accept that there are often nuances to the law that I don't completely understand, aided by the fact that I didn't go to law school and have little interest in studying the law as a hobby. But that's not gonna stop me from naming the Honorable Thomas F. Hogan this week's Dickhead. There's also a gaggle of supporting Dickheads.

Thomas "Hero" Hogan jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller last week for refusing to name her sources for a story she, uh, never wrote.

Time magazine editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstein, in a total Dickhead move, served up Matt Cooper's notes to the judge, against the wishes of his reporter also facing jail time. (Cooper's source allowed him to testify at the last moment.)

Meanwhile, Jon Stewart's favorite Douchbag, Robert Novak, who wrote the article that started all this mess, roams free. His revealing the identity of a CIA agent (particularly when it looks like it was some sort of retribution to her outspoken husband) was certainly more illegal than protecting a source.

Can you imagine what would've happened if Woodstein had been forced to name Deep Throat in the 70s? We'd probably never have had Gerald Ford as a president, for a start.

And lest we think Judith Miller is herself a saint, keep in mind that she was one of the reporters whose coverage of the evidence leading us into the war in Iraq was irresponsible at best and criminally negligent at worst. But that doesn't mean she should be jailed for trying to do a better job.

But Hogan the Hero gets the points that put him over the Dickhead edge this week, not only for making a crappy ruling in terms of the free press in this country (which needs all the help it can get these days). But he also managed to compare her to a child stealing cookies, which is not only mean, but also a bad metaphor.

Frank Rich over at the Times has summed this rather complicated story up better than I have. Frankly, I don't have the patience to go into more detail. Plus he's smarter than I am and gets paid to write about this kind of crap. So read his thing for more details.