Pajamahadeen

Pajamahadeen is a word play on Mujahideen. It was coined during the Killian documents controversy during the U.S. presidential election campaign of 2004, in which webloggers were derided by Jonathan Klein, a former CBS News executive vice-president for vigorously challenging the accuracy of a 60 Minutes story by CBS anchor Dan Rather. Klein is reported as saying, "You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances (at CBS), and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing." Webloggers who were pursuing the story such as Little Green Footballs [1][2], Power Line (blog) [3], and Jim Geraghty at National Review Online [4] took this insult and turned it into a variety of humorous self-deprecating descriptions of their form of online activism. As Andrew Sullivan noted in response to Klein's remarks: "Actually, I'm in sweatpants and a tanktop. But of course, it doesn't matter a jot what a fact-checker is wearing as long as his facts are correct. CBS's apparently aren't." [5]

External Links

• Jim Geraghty Rathergate Memo using the term Pajamahadeen, September 2004
• Jim Geraghty on Jonathan Klein's new emphasis on Bloggers, March 2005

See also

• Argument from authority
• logical fallacy