R. Emmett Tyrrell

So what happens when you put the likes of David Frum, Bruce Bartlett and now apparently Jim Manzi - pseudo-conservatives with a penchant for criticizing Republicans and other conservatives all in the same place?

You have the makings of a New York Times hit piece on conservatism. In the April 27 issue of the Times, a story in its Style section of all places by Patricia Cohen, singled out and accused a number of conservatives of "closed-mindedness" or as the article claimed "epistemic closure."

"It is hard to believe that a phrase as dry as ‘epistemic closure' could get anyone excited, but the term has sparked a heated argument among conservatives in recent weeks about their movement's intellectual health," Cohen wrote. "The phrase is being used as shorthand by some prominent conservatives for a kind of closed-mindedness in the movement, a development they see as debasing modern conservatism's proud intellectual history."

On Friday, NewsBusters editor-at-large Brent Baker noted that the Freedom Alliance was strongly refuting allegations by blogger and radio host Debbie Schlussel that the veterans charity organization founded by Oliver North and actively promoted by radio host Sean Hannity was a "huge scam."

Upon an "exhaustive investigation," Tim Mak of FrumForum.com concluded in a March 19 post that there is "enough evidence to substantially rebut each of Schlussel’s claims."

You can find that piece here.

What's more, nearly an hour and a half before Mak provided readers with his analysis, veteran conservative journalist and American Spectator editor R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.,  personally penned a retraction to an earlier Spectator blog post entitled "Hannity's Big Rip-Off," in which writer John Tabin linked to Schlussel's incendiary allegations and concluded that "Hannity has a lot of explaining to do":

Conservative publisher R. Emmett Tyrrell gave readers of the Washington Times his endorsement of the latest book by MRC president and NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell, "Whitewash: What the Media Won't Tell You About Hillary Clinton, But Conservatives Will." From his December 4 op-ed:

"Whitewash" is one of the most important books I have read about the Clintons' relationship with the press, and I myself have contributed a number of books to this field.

The American Spectator editor-in-chief also praised the Media Research Center for 20 years of exposing and combating liberal media bias: