In an amusing and thoughtful piece, Jonah Goldberg looks at the supreme condescension behind the hiring of Dave Weigel to "cover" conservatism. Here's the subtext -- lurking inside what Goldberg calls "the ballad of David Weigel, a blogger for The Washington Post, briefly assigned to cover the 'conservative beat'":

What is the conservative beat?

According to many of the nation's leading editors, it's that shadowy world where carbon-based life forms of a generally humanoid appearance say and do things relating to conservative causes and the Republican Party. These strange creatures have been observed using complex tools, nurturing their young and even participating in complex social rituals. Most worship an unseen sky god that traces its roots back to the ancient Middle East. These creatures are having a noticeable impact on American politics.

Except things didn't work out. While Weigel might have been basically loyal to his progressive masters, he crossed a few lines that he should never have crossed. One was that he violated a major taboo by being the only Post reporter to cover the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation scandal (this bordered on what they call "going native"), which revealed too much about the rottenness which lies at the core of the Justice Department and the Obama administration.

Bad as that is, Goldberg identifies another, far more grievous sin.

To be sure, I know that Goldberg doesn't think it should be a sin, and I realize it wasn't especially relevant to his central point, but Goldberg touched on what I think might be a major reason for the decision to fire Weigel:

Weigel's actual work product was far more balanced and seemingly open-minded than what you'd expect knowing his private views.

Think about it. Being balanced and open-minded despite your own personal views is completely contrary to what drives the modern mainstream media. Worse, it reflects a time in the distant past when journalists were supposed to be that way.

So, by being balanced and objective in his journalism despite his personal liberal bias, Weigel was a far worse threat than he would have been had he simply decided to become an unabashed, dyed in the wool conservative.

Such a situation was intolerable, and something had to be done.

MORE: Via Glenn Reynolds,
Michael Walsh explains the new abandonment of objectivity.

"We here at the dying Washington Post, in order to assure our survival as we migrate to the Internet, have got to become more like our blogging competitors, so we're going to chuck more than half a century of policy and openly embrace partisanship, just as long as we afford our warriors the fig leaf of 'transparency'. Hope this clears everything up."

They'll have to try harder.