I think seen as "raw data," the Dossier has merit. The problem is Steele appears to have tried to give his clients (GOP newspaper first, then Hillary's campaign, and the FBI) as much product as he could.
Might've been much more effective if he broke it down into verifiable and unverifiable stories. By lumping it all into one report with some absolute facts, some incorrect allegations, and some possibly true events and circumstances, he created a document easy to attack.
I know you hate Taibbi, but regarding the point made in this article about journalists like Woodward "riding a wave" of public denunciation of the Dossier, you really should read
Hate, Inc. Taibbi rips into that piling on phenomenon (among many others). It's caused by two things:
1. Media, including Woodward, doesn't have time to actually vet sources anymore; and,
2. There is a huge premium on commenting early and frequently, so whatever narrative takes shape quickly becomes the safest and easiest path to follow (easy because all you have to do is repackage prior comments from other equally uninformed commentators and "journalists").
It works like short term investing. Run with the herd.
The most interesting issue in this cycle, which Taibbi doesn't address unfortunately (because I don't think anyone can really know), is whether the originators of the narrative onto which others pile on is acting on behalf of someone, or is just lazy. It'd be interesting as hell to see, when the Steele Dossier came out, who in the media first attacked it. Did Fox do so, followed by a litany of other right wing sources, which might indicate intent to discredit? Or did CNN do so, followed by by more moderate news sources, indicating either laziness, or perhaps a desire to appear even-handed and skeptical ("real news").
I wouldn't be surprised to discover there are war rooms at Fox and MSNBC which seek to shape the narrative by feeding "facts" about stories to lazy secondary news outlets. There's really no way to get caught doing this because, by the time all of the other outlets have repackaged the spin on facts an originating source has offered, no one can recall where the narrative started. It's suddenly credible by sheer volume of its repetition in various sources.
