Michael Hastings is a porn-loving, leftist agitator

This post is from JedEckert.com about Michael Hastings, freelance writer, who wrote the story of General McChrystal that eventually got the General fired.  There is more detail in this story about Michael Hastings and his political leanings along with his flaws and personal taste.

I guess you could say it cuts both ways.

The General and his close staff made some serious vocal mistakes so this is not to take away or blame the responsibility of what McChrystal and his staff did on Michael Hastings.  What it does show is how a left wing writer can be devious and disingenous in order to get a story.

Thanks again to JedEckert.com

“The dance with staffers is a perilous one. You’re probably not going to get much, if any, one-on-one time with the candidate, which means your sources of information are the people who work for him. So you pretend to be friendly and nonthreatening, and over time you “build trust,” which everybody involved knows is an illusion. If the time comes, if your editor calls for it, you’re supposed to fuck them over”- Michael Hastings, GQ 2008  on covering presidential candidates.

If only Gen. McChrystal had read those words before granting access…

I am not going to do too much editorializing on this one. I am just going to give you Hastings in his own words or quote from official bios and mainstream book reviews. I just had a feeling there was more to this guy than simple earnest journalist. And that is not to say that anything in his Rolling Stone story isn’t legit, but sometimes, it does help to know where an an author is coming from.

Michael Hastings spent two years reporting in Iraq as Newsweek’s war correspondent, but he has also been published on some pretty far-left websites:

• Slate
• Salon
• Gawker

Relationships

He wrote a book “I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story,” that describes his experiences in Iraq and the death of his girlfriend, Andi Parhamovich, who moved to Baghdad to be with him. Parhamovich was an activist who was killed in an ambush in one of Baghdad’s most dangerous neighborhoods. She was helping Iraqi political parties do outreach to voters.

A New York Times review of the book gives us some more details of the relationship.

He writes of their first meeting, at a party for Jerry Springer that she attended as a publicist with Air America Radio and he as a pseudonymous correspondent for a gossip Web site.

Hastings has also been rumored to have been involved with Rachel Sklar- formerly of the Huffington Post, now with Mediaite.

Politics

“Joining us now from Kandahar is Michael Hastings, an accomplished and experienced freelance journalist who has reported from a number of war zones. Full disclosure: Mr. Hastings is also a friend of mine” – Rachel Maddow, 6/23

We get the best sense of Hastings beliefs from a piece he wrote for GQ in October, 2008:

• On Giuliani: “I quickly realized Rudy was a maniac. I had a recurring fantasy in which I took him out during a press conference (it was nonlethal, just something that put him out of commission for a year or so), saving America from the horror of a President Giuliani. If that sounds like I had some trouble being objective, I did… I was’t alone in the press corps. I don’t think I spoke to another journalist who ever said one good thing about the man. What did we say? We made fun of his divorces and his wives, that he had married a second cousin, that he surrounded himself with corrupt cronies, that he had a piss-poor relationship with his children, etc. We talked about his megalomania and his cynical exploitation of September 11. Still, I ate meals with staffers and campaign managers. I tried to say things that would make me appear sympathetic to Rudy while not technically lying.”

• On McCain: “He seemed to have gone just a little crazy, Captain Ahab style. One aspect of McCain that did intrigue me was his purported womanizing, which came up a lot among reporters.”

• Wanting Obama to win: “The attempt to smear Obama as a Muslim ratcheted up. A picture of him in Somali garb was leaked to the Drudge Report; soon after, a Clinton surrogate went on TV to say that Obama shouldn’t be ashamed to be seen in his native clothing. Finally, they even dropped the pretense of a cover when Clinton claimed in a speech that all the hardworking white Americans would vote for her. The campaign degenerated into a series of furious conference calls between Obama’s and Hillary’s advisers. I wanted out. I wanted Obama to win enough delegates to end this thing.”

• Obsessed With Porn: “For my part, I watched a lot of porn. A colleague told me the first thing he did after checking in to a hotel was to check out their porn selection. I followed his example. I’d become an expert on the various hotel chains and what they offered. The best was clearly the Hyatt Regency; the Homewood Suites had the usual selection of XX features. On my last night in Manchester, after the primaries were over and the campaigns had moved on, I selected one called Nasty Older Sluts or something like that for $11.95. (Note to Newsweek accounting department: I never expensed the porn.).”

An additional piece from Slate:

• On Jan. 21, 2004 – Hastings wrote a puff piece on Michael Moore and his relationship with Wesley Clark.