First of all, the article itself is almost 4,000 words (where is the editor?) Secondly, the nasty newsletter accusations have already been in on wikipedia and in the New York Times for months. And even the New York Times retracted the story after a while because there was so little there. Thirdly, is it too much to ask for some creative muckraking now and again? How many times do expect us to hear "racist!!!" before we fall asleep?
The only new development in Kirchick's article is the fact that he's posted .pdf copies of the newsletters he supposedly dug up. However, given that these newsletter have already been combed over by the most malignant reporters for several years, I don't see the point. They will show, as they have already shown before, that there are no bylines and are not characteristic of Paul's style.
Appropriately, only about 10% of the first 80 or so comments posted on the New Republic's website are impressed with the article. I didn't look much further than that (there are 1285 comments so far). The other 90% call it what it is: stale, hollow propaganda.
PS: The New Republic has already had to post three corrections to misstated fact from the original article. Surprise, surprise.
