What do Joe Paterno, Muammar al-Qaddafi, Silvio Berlusconi, Rupert Murdoch and Stephen M Walt have in common?

Now read on.

He is of course younger than the other folks on the list, but like the rest of us, ageing day by day. Unlike the others on the list, he has the protection of academic tenure.

To suggest, as he does, a couple of months after Rupert Murdoch appeared on television for more than two hours being grilled by members of the British parliament (a couple of them evidently crooked foes and misrepresenters); and a couple of weeks after he faced discontented shareholders of his company, answering questions there -- to suggest as perfesser Walt does, that Murdoch doesn't need to respond to face-to-face questions is just plain ridiculous.

Same with Silvio Berlusconi. Hasn't the perfesser noticed that the former Italian prime minister was appearing regularly in that bear pit that's the Parlamento Repubblicano? Claiming he didn't undergo face-to-face challenges is just plain crazy.

That's funny; who knew that Professor Walt considered Qaddafi to be such a bad guy? Now he tells us that,

"at the extreme end, a megalomaniac like Qaddafi was willing to kill his own people to sustain his own kleptocracy, while somehow believing to the end that he deserved to govern."

But only a a couple of years ago, Walt presented a far more benign view of Qaddafi. In January, 2010 he waxed eloquent about how unusually serene Libya seemed to him. He said,

"...although Libya is far from a democracy, it also doesn't feel like other police states that I have visited. I caught no whiff of an omnipresent security service -- which is not to say that they aren't there -- and there were fewer police or military personnel on the streets than one saw in Franco's Spain. The Libyans with whom I spoke were open and candid and gave no sign of being worried about being overheard or reported or anything like that. The TV in my hotel room featured 50+ channels, including all the normal news services (BBC World Service, CNN, MSNBC, Bloomberg, Al Jazeera, etc.) along with contemporary U.S. sitcoms like "2-1/2 Men," shows like "Desperate Housewives," assorted movies, and one of the various "CSI" clones."

The pièce de résistance of Walt's post entitled "The Shores of Tripoli" was his warm embrace of the regime that had murdered hundreds of innocent people aboard Pan Am Flight 103. I can't help but wonder if, as Professor Walt struggled to say something nice about Libya that would pass the smell test, he bothered to stop for even a moment to reflect on the terror of the Pan Am victims as they plunged into the ocean realizing that they would never see their wives, husbands, children and parents again.

Here's what Professor Walt had to say,

"Overall, the remarkable improvement in U.S.-Libyan relations reminds us that deep political conflicts can sometimes be resolved without recourse to preventive war or "regime change." One hopes that the United States and Libya continue to nurture and build a constructive relationship, and that economic and political reform continues there..."

The entire sickening post can be found here,

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/01/18/the_shores_of_tripoli

What makes Professor Walt's Libya whitewash even more disturbing is that like other famous commentators who had been to Libya and downplayed the perfidity of the regime (Frank Fukuyama, Bernard Lewis, Joseph Nye, Robert Putnam, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and Richard Perle), Professor Walt failed to disclose that his trip had been paid for with funds that originated in the coffers of the Libyan regime. Another well-know pundit who failed to provide full disclosure (but did provide partial disclosure) was Steve Clemons, now of the Atlantic.

With First Class airfare and accommodations provided by a regime anxious to improve its reputation in the West it is little wonder that numerous members of our increasingly unhinged pundit class did what they could to accommodate the Qaddafi regime. The fact that this unethical behavior was committed by academics and think-tankers alike and by political progressives as well as political conservatives makes the whole sad story stink to high heaven.

The tone of Professor Walt's post from January, 2010 was unmistakable; he wanted to leave his readers with the impression that if Libyans could watch, CSI, Desperate Housewives and Two and a Half Men, conditions in the country really couldn't be that bad.

Walt, and the other pundits who did what he did, should feel ashamed. Of course; they don't.

Their arrogance has reached a point where their sense of shame has entirely disappeared.

Ironically, in this Walt and the others, resemble nobody so much as Silvio Berlusconi, and Rupert Murdoch.

I would add DSK, Jon Corzine

small men with bad intentions !

It is kind of odd though that a bunch of Eurocrats could force out two democratically elected leaders of their respective countries, whatever you think of them personally.

And I like the idea of adding Corzine to your list.

Grouping people together because they have made media headlines the past few months is pure tabloid journalism. "Hey, their names are selling like hell! Let's drag them all into one article for whatever reason and the people will love it!"
Berlusconi is an incompetent politician, Gaddafi was a dictator, Murdoch a ruthless businessman disregarding privacy while Paterno negligent in failing to report a crime (is there such obligation in US criminal law? I don't know, I'm not from there, somebody could help me out). Why don't you just add Steve Jobs to the list, he made pretty decent headlines, too.

Bottom line is that you are making far-fetched attempts at finding common points. Berlusconi's scandals as sign of inability to run an economy??? I know plenty of incompetent leaders without scandals (Obama) and many competent leaders with scandals (Clinton). I categorically refuse to judge a politician on his/her private life. By this scandal-scavenging, you become hardly better than Murdoch, who believed privacy is news material.

Come on, Mr. Walt, you can do better than this.

Despite his obvious flaws, Quaddafi helped give Libya the highest standard of living in Africa.

The rightwing government of corrupt billionnaire Silvio Berlusconi, including Martino, was a big supporter of an Iraq war. Moreover, we know that the forged documents falsely purporting to show Iraqi uranium purchases from Niger originated with a former SISMI agent Greg Tims . Watch the reporting of Josh Marshall for more on this SISMI/Ledeen/Rhode connection.