A really sad combination for a person who writes about issues and politics is: Indignant, Sneering, and Wrong. If you're only indignant and sneering, but not wrong, you may be rude and unpleasant, but you've got the facts right, so you potentially have something legitimate to be outraged about. If you're regularly wrong on the facts, but not indignant and sneering, just low key, you might need some assistance, but at least you're not getting worked up and being mean.

But Indignant, Sneering, and Wrong - that's bad.

Jason Mattera is the Young America's Foundation media department spokesman. His latest piece, in Human Events tries to explain why YAF is refusing to let reporters from media like CampusProgress.org and The Nation cover the YAF student conference, even though Campus Progress has welcomed coverage and granted press credentials to publications Mattera writes for like Human Events and National Review to cover the Campus Progress student conference. Mattera's piece is Indignant, Sneering, and Wrong.

Mattera starts out with a warm wish, that our 18-year-old intern / student reporter, Julie Brinn Siegel, to whom Mattera has refused a press credential for the YAF conference, is "hopefully not a Clintonesque intern." The nicest word one could use to describe this remark is: babyish.

Mattera then offers an abrupt dismissal of one of Julie Siegel's points. Julie writes that one sign of CampusProgress.org's legitimacy is that we are featured on Google News. Jason sneers indignantly, "Note: an Internet connection and an RSS feed will get your name on Google." Duh, right? Wrong! Julie said Google News, not just Google. To get your publication's articles listed on Google News, Google needs to approve your application and deem your publication a "news source." CampusProgress.org applied, citing some of the same factors that Julie cited in her article, and Google approved the application. As to whether CampusProgress is a news publication, you also can check out the outstanding journalism credentials of our young editors -- Elana Berkowitz, Ben Adler, Dana Goldstein, and Graham Webster -- here.

Mattera resurrects the assertion, also relied upon by his boss YAF president Ron Robinson, that Campus Progress claims that Mattera received press credentials for our Campus Progress student conference. Wrong again! We never said that. Never. From Julie's article and ever since we've made clear that Mattera himself wrote about our conferences and that other people from National Review (in 2006, intern John McCormack), Human Events, and other conservative publications have received press credentials from Campus Progress. (A blogger on Alternet did write that Mattera was credentialed for our conference - an error - but that does not indicate, as Mattera's hyperlink suggests, that anyone at Campus Progress was "floating" that idea.)

Mattera addresses Julie Siegel's claim that his writing has "multiple errors" by sneering that she relies on his "trivial" repetition of misreporting about rapper Fat Joe by the Washington Post. Wrong! Julie's piece only mentioned the Washington Post thing in parentheses, as an aside. Her direct citation for Mattera's multiple errors was a post by Asheesh Siddique, taking on Mattera coverage of the 2005 Campus Progress conference. Mattera didn't respond to that. Other evidence of Mattera's multiple errors? You're reading it now, about yesterday's Human Events piece. (Also, Mattera continues his assault on Fat Joe, calling him "a gang-banger, misogynist, and glutton." Not sure what Jason's evidence is for all that, but does he know what a misogynist is? Perhaps someone who, losing a debate with an 18-year-old female intern, raises the specter of Monica Lewinsky.)

What of Mattera's indignant sneer about Campus Progress being a "Soros front group"? For that to be true, (1) we would have to hide George Soros's connections to our group; and (2) George Soros would have to be calling the shots for us. We've never hidden that George Soros is a donor to our parent organization, the Center for American Progress. We have over 3000 donors, and Soros, who donates through his foundation (OSI), is not the largest. No one on our Campus Progress staff, including me, has ever met or spoken to Soros, and we don't take direction from him, or any donor, on what we stand for or write about. (Many people I know, like, and respect, including my father, work for OSI.) Oh, yeah, Mattera also calls Campus Progress a "socialist smear group." Let's hope Mattera's invocation of such 1950's language doesn't mean he came away from Good Night and Good Luck with nostalgia for Joe McCarthy.

In my experience, there are some fine, sincere young people working in the conservative movement. We at Campus Progress may not agree with them on the issues, but we appreciate their commitment to honest debate and public service. Last summer, I spoke several times with a student reporter for Human Events, Amanda Carpenter. Amanda was friendly and polite, and the pieces she eventually wrote were mostly accurate and reasonable. An intern this summer for the National Review, John McCormack, who covered last week's Campus Progress student conference with a press credential, now is calling on Mattera and YAF to reconsider their denial of a credential for Julie Siegel, and he also posted a supportive note on CampusProgress.org.

When it comes to accuracy, persuasiveness, and civility, Jason Mattera makes Rush Limbaugh look like Abraham Lincoln. At least Limbaugh is right about some of the people, some of the time.

But I really don't want to attack Jason Mattera, who perhaps will find his way at some point. There's a larger issue. The notion that Mattera is the Young America's Foundation media department spokesman, and that YAF President Ron Robinson issues a statement backing Mattera's paranoid position and repeating Mattera's false arguments, suggests to me that the vaunted conservative youth movement is losing ground and failing to attract top talent. For skill and integrity, I would put any of our college-age summer interns head-to-head with Jason Mattera.

Campus Progress will continue to feature a wide range of speakers, from yes, Fat Joe to David Horowitz colleague Jacob Laksin, and welcome at our events young people with a wide range of viewpoints - as students and as intern reporters. We will continue to publish provocative and accurate journalism, and invite frank, open discussions about issues on our website. We aren't afraid of the truth. Conservative youth efforts still have far more funding than we do, but the momentum is on the progressive side.