Uh oh. Somebody’s about to get audited! [REPRISE!]. Stuart Stevens, the Daily Beast:
What would you think of a president under whom the IRS targeted his harshest political opponents, during his reelection campaign?
What would you think of a president whose obsession with leaks and secrecy was so great that he used the Justice Department to obtain phone records of reporters, in violation of Justice’s established procedure?
What would you think of a president whose head of the Department of Justice signed a criminal warrant against a leading journalist working for the news organization most critical of the president—and monitored the movements of the journalist and even went after his mother’s phone records?
What would you think of an administration that directed the president’s press secretary repeatedly to deliver false information concerning the death of an American ambassador?
These are not hypothetical questions—and yet there is an entire class of journalist so invested in a certain moral and ethical image of the president its members are unable to entertain facts that might tarnish that image. They are the pro-Obama equivalent of Birthers, never letting emerging facts cloud the conclusion they’ve already committed to hold.
The same journalists who did not hesitate to assume the worst of previous Republican administrations—E.J. Dionne, Walter Pincus, Jack Shafer, to name a few—are now tying themselves in knots trying to explain that there is nothing to see when the IRS probes Obama’s enemies or that the Justice Department secretly seizing the phone records of one of their peers and his mother was really a good thing. […]
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What to make of journalists who have decided that it’s more important to defend the president than to defend their own profession?
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It’s as if the administration is playing a game to see just how far it can push its true believers in the press corps before some semblance of self-respect emerges and they push back. You can picture White House staffers chortling in amazement as they pick up the Washington Post to read Pincus’s stern defense of criminalizing journalism. They must be asking themselves, “What do we have to do to get these people angry?”
They might have thought they’d get Mother Jones to justify this, but convincing serious journalists to parrot this line is the stuff they give out medals for in White House communication operations.
Of course Jay Carney is no stranger to testing the limits of self-respect. This is a man who left a once-great newsmagazine to work for Joe Biden. How bleak does your professional life have to be that you figure it’s a step up to work for the man who stole words from Neil Kinnock? I laugh every time I see some reporter trying to shame Jay into telling the truth. Please. Jay knows that in Washington, shame is for sissies and better to be a Biden stooge than a sissy.
It’s disheartening to see the Obama administration attack the press in unprecedented ways and the reaction from the press is to accept that blame and then go forth to explain to the world that the president isn’t really like this. Most of the time he is a good guy. He loves us, honestly. He just has these moods.
By playing the victim, the press empowers not only this administration but also every one to follow. So if you’re okay with Eric Holder going after your mom’s phone records, just remember that you are giving permission to the next AG who might be some Republican you and your editorial board loathe.
But like Obama destroying the public financing system for elections, once you let the genie out of that bottle, good luck in getting it back inside.
Very impassioned, Stuart, and certainly not undeserving of the column inches. But c’mon, brother: are you really just now learning that the national press corp are loyal, punch drunk ho’s to the Democrats’ velvet-gloved pimp hand?
Because for my part, I’m honestly surprised every day when Carney shows up at press briefings and he isn’t wearing a big fur hat, an enormous diamond-encrusted watch, and platform shoes with live goldfish swimming in the heels.
(h/t Glenn, via Twitter)
He had to get rid of the platform shoes because PETA complained about the suffering goldfish.
But c’mon, brother: are you really just now learning that the national press corp are loyal, punch drunk ho’s to the Democrats’ velvet-gloved pimp hand?
Well sure . . . and it’s an original discovery with him and his like, who never think an unoriginal thought, nor suffer pangs of uncertainty as to their own ignorance aforetime, for they are the blessed. And as the blessed, they’re sure to be right again and again in the future thinking their original thoughts, for as the blessed there are no amends to be made.
What to make of journalists…
Human cannonballs.
While it’s nice to see some of the Bolshes waking up, the phrase, ‘Too little; Too late’, comes to mind
BTW: Don’t trust the rat bastards.
Emotion as a Substitute for Accountability
And the fawning press sucks this right up. As long as you have a (D) after your name, that is.
A law from this government isn’t worth the paper its printed on (or the spit behind the words).
Taranto’s column title “We’re all Fox News now”, together with the Breitbart piece yesterday titled “The Ailes Manifesto” — while defensible in themselves insofar as the First Amendment is concerned — nevertheless may unintentionally confuse some people to believe (as they may be already inclined to believe) that Fox News is on the side of the Constitution, when in a more thoroughgoing analysis, I think we find Ailes and Co. are on the side of the Republican ruling class — i.e., entrenched against the Constitution as such.
Careful distinctions must be made (and it seems to me are often elided), and differences made clear — and stressed — where differences are apparent.
The only side Ailes and Fox News are on is the side of Rupert Murdoch’s bottom line.
I don’t happen to think that’s true Ernst, though it is true in part. There’s more to Ailes machinations than merely making money.
– Carney has a presser today. Maybe he’ll hand out coupons for buy one, get one free BJ’s.
Someone should tell Uncle Joe about these gulags!
Carney /’car·n?/ n. One who spends a lot of time in the company of con men and weirdos, and/or may himself fit one or both categories.
Not surprising. After all, with the Sandinistas discredited, Fidel Castro over the hill and decrepit and Hugo Chavez gone, who are the Left apparatchiks going to fellate?
[…] Americans’”; So honestly, there’s nothing to see here; “A Bad Relationship: How the Press Came To Love Obama More Than Itself”; Hmmm.. “Did Eric Holder Lie Under Oath? An Early Investigation of an Investigation”; My […]