Just_A_Mom
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From the (read it anyway!) Washington Post on Rolling Stone Magazine:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/23/AR2010062305371.html?hpid=topnewsThis week, the magazine that endorsed Obama plunged his administration into crisis mode, publishing sharply disparaging comments by Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his aides about the president and other White House officials. Beyond costing McChrystal his job on Wednesday, the article highlighted the grinding frustration among those prosecuting America's seemingly intractable war.
"I'm stunned," Wenner said, an hour after Obama announced the firing. "That is pretty major stuff." But he said the New York-based magazine's role should come as no surprise: "Our specialty for years has been long-form journalism, deep reporting and politics. I've had a strong passion about having a say in national policy."
Eric Bates, Rolling Stone's editor, concedes that "there's still this lingering sense that you're a music magazine and what are you doing over in Afghanistan? I call it the 'of all places' syndrome." But he said that view is changing after the biweekly magazine's stinging stories on such topics as the BP oil spill and the Wall Street bailout.
There has been grumbling that McChrystal must have assumed he was off the record with reporter Michael Hastings, a former correspondent for Newsweek and freelancer for The Washington Post, and that in one case an aide to the general was quoted while drinking.
But Bates says that "this isn't an instance where someone makes an off-the-cuff remark and the reporters put down their tape recorders. This took place over the course of weeks. They were working, they were in their war room."
Hastings said from Afghanistan that he has the remarks -- ranging from McChrystal's distaste at receiving an e-mail from envoy Richard Holbrooke to an aide's reference to Vice President Biden as "bite me" -- on tape or in detailed notes....................