A New Medical Disorder: GDS

If [Jonathan] Chait were the only one whose priorities and judgment were being distorted by personal antipathy for [Glenn] Greenwald, it would hardly be worth noting. But I've now seen this kind of thing from (in no particular order of importance) David Gregory, Joy Reid, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Edward Epstein, Alan "Torture Warrants" Dershowitz, and many others. Irrelevant questions; questions about things that have already been repeatedly asked and answered and are easily findable with a rudimentary Google search; a focus on bullshit and gossip instead of a discussion about how the government has been illegally spying on the American people. It's enough to make me wonder whether there might be a Greenwald Derangement Syndrome at work. If so, it seems pretty virulent: it causes journalists (and others) to experience swollen egos and shrunken reason; to place the personal above the professional and the petty above the profound; and most insidiously of all, to become blind to the very behaviors that should alert them they've taken ill. It's a little late for GDS to make it into the new DSM V, but maybe it'll get an entry in Wikipedia. Certainly there are enough people who are showing symptoms.

  Barry Eisler