While Reeve pointed out that there was "indeed a disconnect" between Scott and his editors at the magazine — when Scott would be two hours late for a scheduled conference call because, say, his friend had driven his Bradley into a canal and he had to pull him out, Foer would panic and be "like, 'OH MY GOD WHERE WERE YOU?!?!'" — she says that the editors did their very best to communicate with her broad-shouldered beau "on his level." How'd they accomplish this?

In emails and IMs with their soldier correspondent, she explains, they littered their exchanges with phrases like "yeah man" and "fuck that d-bag" and also "we're gonna nail that guy's balls to the wall."

In addition, says Reeve, one editor revealed to her husband — and also, the TNR office — that he had come "thisclose" to joining the Marines 10 years earlier. (Another ex-TNR staffer, corroborating this story, added that this particular editor, is also "given to wearing" motorcycle boots along with jeans and french-cuffed shirts to work.)

Another editor told Reeve he "very seriously considered joining the IDF" right after high school, but didn't because he "knew someone like Ariel Sharon could be elected." (Hey guy: Marty Peretz resembles that remark!)

Reeve added that she is considering pursuing a graduate degree for which she will write a thesis about "manliness and how it ruins everything."

How Soccer Explains The World: An Unlikely Theory Of Globalization [Amazon]

In the end TNR retracted Beauchamp's columns in a hand-wringy 7,000-word piece called Fog Of War describing in painstaking (and also, gratuitous) detail their efforts to corroborate Beauchamp's claims of which Beauchamp's fact-checker-turned-wife Elspeth Reeve says: "That piece says, 'Pity me. I'm a victim of these two crazy kids.'" (She no longer works for them, duh!) (But Beauchamp is still in the Army!)

The big takeaway of the piece is that Beauchamp is an eminently decent, credible young who made a few mistakes — the infamous "mess hall incident" happened in Kuwait, for instance, not Iraq — in the execution of some of this war's most truly courageous journalism, only to get thrown under the bus (Bradley!) that rightfully ran over the careers of young TNR fabricator Stephen Glass and young TNR plagiarist Ruth Shalit. Because: conservatives are evil people with no interest in truth and TNR editor Frank Foer is fundamentally a pussy.

To be sure, that is the angle one would expect from Spencer "Attackerman" Ackerman who has not exactly been grinding his axe against the magazine that fired him in private. To be also sure, Beauchamp did a lot of caving under all the fact-checking pressure. (He was assigned backbreaking labor in 120-degree heat and Ackerman tells us he was hospitalized for a viral infection and the Army put a gag order on him but in any case, he disappeared.)

But motives aside the piece rings true. Because it most certainly has gotten to the point where internet skirmishes are as pointlessly vicious and traumatizing as real ones. I am not being melodramatic! You read that Times Magazine story about the internet trolls who wouldn't stop making fun of that poor sweet-faced 13-year-old kid who had already killed himself. (Also, if I am not mistaken you are reading Gawker!) Why would it surprise you that over in Iraq this same generation kicks around the corpses of Iraqi children or whatever? That is the cruel radiance of what is, friends, and laying it bare is the only purpose journalists can possibly serve.

But there's a dramatic disconnect — has been for awhile, but it's widening — between the guys who run lofty cash-strapped journalism outlets and the actual world they profess to strive to portray. For years those guys have lived in the world of prestige and peer esteem and talking points and ASME applications and panel discussions and correspondents dinners. But once there was a time when they didn't have that whole scene going on all day long on Bloggingheads and Memeorandum.

As long as this disconnect deepens amidst this backdrop of tightening news budgets, a nagging insecurity about the future of journalism combined with a hardening certainty among its younger generation of practitioners that success within it requires above all else a commitment to one's personal "brand"…well, guys like Frank Foer are going to take chances on hot young "voices." And those voices will invariably get silenced by mobs of angry haters in protracted, embarrassing sagas ending in tortured lamentations that "those young folks, all they care about is their personal brands!" but in the end only serve to expose how little anyone really gives a shit about the truth at this point.

Notes On A Scandal