Let's Call It "Hewitting"

First it was Fisking.  That’s the process, according to Britain’s Observer, of:

savaging an argument and scattering the tattered remnants to the four corners of the internet.

It is named after lefty Brit reporter Robert Fisk, who often deserves it.

But now it is time to talk about “Hewitting.”  That’s the interview technique in which radio talk-show host Hugh Hewitt interviews an MSM journalist and exposes him (or her, but usually him) as a pompous weasel.

The latest victim of Hewitting is Los Angeles Times media critic Tim Rutten. Hewitt had him agreeing that Rosie O’Donnell is a disgrace.  Then Hewitt steers the interview into more dangerous territory, the LA Times itself.  In the interview, he relates,

We also range over the sale of The Tribune Company to Sam Zell,  the Andres Martinez resignation, the deathly dull nature of the paper, and who’s to blame.

 And so off High Hewitt goes:

HH: Do you have any responsibility, Tim Rutten, for the poor performance of the newspaper over the last seven years?
TR: Do I personally have any?
HH: Yeah.
TR: No, I think I’ve done about as well as I could.
HH: Do any of your colleagues in the newsroom have any responsibility?
TR: Sure. Some of them do.
HH: Which ones?
TR: Oh, I don’t!I’m not going to go there, you know that.

Now we are getting the victim softened up.  So Hewitt goes in for the kill.

HH: But can you name for me the conservative columnist who is full-time at the Los Angeles Times?
TR: Who is full-time?
HH: Yeah.
TR: We don’t have a full-time political columnist at the newspaper.
HH: No, are any full-time columnists at the Los Angeles Times conservative?
TR: Not that I would characterize!I think not that you would recognize as conservative, no.
HH: Or that you would. I mean, they’re just not there.
TR: That I would? No.
HH: Okay, are there liberal columnists at the Los Angeles Times?
TR: Sure.
HH: How many of them?
TR: I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t think about my colleagues that [w]ay.

Really, liberal journalists ought to be issued a Miranda warning before being interrogated like this.

Surely they deserve the same rights as a common criminal suspect.