TNR’s Gabriel Sherman suggests that the establishment media is “breaking up” with Barack Obama — he treats them so bad!
HotAir’s Allahpundit, focusing on a quote near the end from a reporter claiming, “They’re terrified of people poking around Obama’s life,†writes:
After reading it, I can’t decide if the takeaway is (1) that the press is a bunch of whiny, self-entitled five-year-olds, per the comically overwrought reactions from Adam Nagourney and the reporters Obama ditched to meet with Hillary, (2) that TNR, which published a similar piece about Hillary last year, has an odd fondness for stories about journalists loathing the politicians they have to cover (“The difference is the Clinton people were hostile for no reasonâ€Â), or (3) that Obama and his team really are arrogant, secretive jackasses paranoid to a provocative degree about St. Barack’s personal life.
As tempted as I am to go with (4) all of the above, Team Obama is arrogant and bullying of the press on matters far beyond Obama’s private life, as noted here during the Obamaganda and fake interviews of the World Tour:
Consider this story in the context of: excluding from the trip New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza, whose Obama profile was the reason for the magazine cover Camp Obama complained about for days; excluding the foreign press; taking an “uncompromising approach†to when and where he would grant interviews to the network news anchors on the trip; complaining about the New York Times analysis of its own most recent poll; stonewalling the press to this day about the black liberation theology of his longtime church; stonewalling the press on his relationship with convicted fraud and real-estate partner Tony Rezko; walking out on a press conference after eight questions, and so on.
Only Rezko and the Rev. Wright can be said to be “personal,” but both of them were related to Obama’s political career as well. Moreover, the quote Allah picks says that “[r]eporters who have covered Obama’s biography or his problems with certain voter blocs have been challenged the most aggressively.” (Emphasis added.) In line with the campaign’s smackdown of New York Times chief political correspondent Adam Nagourney, I note that when the Politico ran a piece about Obama’s lagging support with Catholics, Camp Obama was on the phone complaining in a very bellicose manner within minutes. That might explain why the Politico quickly picked up on Sherman’s TNR piece.
The fact is we have already seen the establishment press pretend they were going to start treating Obama like a politician instead of a Lightworker. That was in March, yet Obama and the media are still together.
Sherman concludes:
Now, Obama may be handing McCain a shot at winning back his “base.” Of course, making ads that paint the media as Obama’s stooges may not be the best way to accomplish that. But the press wants to put its love somewhere, and, right now, that love is up for grabs.
That seems unlikely. When it comes to Obama, the media at least has a bad case of battered wife syndrome. They keep going back for more. The media ought to be more concerned that about half of voters already believe most reporters will try to help Obama win, and that McCain beat Obama in terms of viewers on YouTube on four of the last six days, thanks largely to the success of the “Obama Love” videos that mock the media.
(h/t Memeorandum.)
Update: Insta-lanche!
One of the few (no, make that only) ‘insiders’ to Obama’s university life I’ve heard speak of him and that time is Carol Platt Liebau who served as management with Obama during B.O.’s tenure at Harvard Law Review. She was guest hosting Hugh Hewitt’s radio show (I think it was last year) and talked about what a cold fish she thought Barry was. Also mentioned his hauteur in carriage on entering a room. Thought quite highly of himself, she said.
The podcast is still available on Hewitt’s Townhall site if anyone wants to go search it out.
Mmmmmmmmmm, batter.
I went looking, found it. I was wrong about the date. It was Feb22, 2008. Here’s the link http://tinyurl.com/5mv4gs. Skip your way in to 19:00 for the start of her story.
But, what I still can’t understand, is why Obama has such hatred in his heart for America and all American citizens. What possible purpose is his having such a hateful Marxist and totalitarian position on the future of the planet Earth? Why does he want to do this to everyone? Why does he hate the world so much? I can’t understand that. I can’t understand him at all.
I so thought that was happyfeet. I totally had a “heart three sizes too small” thing ready.
Obama’s great love is an ever expanding love of all mankind, don’t you know. He hates on the world not one little bit. Well, maybe he hates that ankle biting Rev. Jeremiah Wright just a tiny teeny bit for trying to put himself between Obama’s great love for the world and all the great things he’s going to do for us, but just that itsy-bitsy vanishing mote of hate, no more. Only so much hate as is necessary to finally be done with the self-aggrandising old coot.
I could go on but I’m feeling faint and need to lie down now.
Tom Maguire would scream “Ayers Ayers Ayers” as someone about whom Obama has not been forthright and the press has not been especially curious. I remember, but can’t find, someone at ABC reporting the original campaign response about Ayers was that there was no evidence the two men had any relationship. That is of course gone from the website now. I suspect there is more to find out there somewhere, and I applaud Ryan Liazza for trying.
There may be some in the press ready to break up with him, but then I read Serious Journalist Karen Tumulty ™ and her Sisterhood of the Traveling Corps diaries, and I know that breakup isn’t going to be complete. It’s infatuation, which is never known for its realism.
To be honest, if he’s elected and they want to fawn, I’ll be ok with that. I do want them to participate in reality a little bit more while we have a choice.
[…] Karl mentions the reported snubbing by Obama of US soldiers at Landstuhl Medical Center at Ramstein, Germany … as reported here, a statement from Camp Barry on the Rhine said: “During his trip as part of the CODEL to Afghanistan and Iraq, Senator Obama visited the combat support hospital in the Green Zone in Baghdad and had a number of other visits with the troops,” Obama strategist Robert Gibbs said in a statement. “For the second part of his trip, the senator wanted to visit the men and women at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center to express his gratitude for their service and sacrifice. The senator decided out of respect for these servicemen and women that it would be inappropriate to make a stop to visit troops at a U.S. military facility as part of a trip funded by the campaign.” […]
Pravda and the Tass News Agency have nothing on our MSM when it comes to Obama.
This guy is just another pompous arrogant Harvard elitist who happens to be half black. To get under the skin of this political campaign find out who Axelrod is privately consulting with, we know it’s not Rev Wright. If the press was doing their job the “handlers” would already be outed and this ObamaSham exposed.
Big big bucks imho.
Look, it’s pretty simple… visiting Americans wounded fighting terror at Landstuhl didn’t make the cut in a schedule that included preening in front of foreign citizens and schmoozing their politicians. What other interpretation is there?
The press here in Chicago has loved Obama since his first run for State Senate, when he ran for the US Senate in 2004 the local press went to court to get the divorce papers of his most serious primary opponent Blair Hull and used Hull’s ex-wife’s 25 year-old divorce depositions against him despite the fact that his ex-wife and children were both campaigning with him. More well known is what the Tribune Co.’s LA Times did in the general election for Obama, they went to court to obtain his initial Republican opponent Jack Ryan’s divorce records and used his ex-wife’s testimony against him. Both of those opponents are much more serious and accomplished people than Obama. Blair Hull was a very successful options trader who founded the Hull Group that was bought by Goldman Sachs. Jack Ryan graduated from Harvard, Harvard Law (JD) and Harvard Business before working for Goldman Sachs and making partner, retiring and going to work for an inner-city school. Both serious threats to Obama were whitewashed in the press while that press told us that Obama attended a “mainstream Christian Church.” That has to kept in mind, sometimes they just can’t help themselves.
Hey. HEY. Pssst: It’s that Reynolds guy again….
The man is a buffoon. I dangerous buffoon to be sure but still a bufoon. He’s done by October.
The Obama campaign will end in terminal boredom.
Obama has three months to convince American voters he is unelectable. He seems on track. German voters won’t help him.
There is a saying in my part of the country (and no doubt elsewhere): You gotta dance with the one who brung ya to the prom. This is the MSM’s dilemma with the Messiah.
I am glad to see that McCain to putting it to the MSM. The sooner that he realizes that the MSM is his enemy and always has been, the better off the nation will be.
The press are getting the same treatment as any other captive group. Having thown away discretion, wisdom, and any measure of critical distance from the Obama campaign, the Press will now be treated like a pack horse for the concerns of the Obama campaign.
Interest groups and occupations develop professional concerns and standards to enhance their independence and bargaining power vs. the rest of society, from politics especially. That so many educated professional groups, such as journalists, lawyers, scientists, teachers, would toss away that painfully gained professionalism, in favor of the concern of the moment, is an indictment of our education system.
Obama’s bitches.
When Katie Couric and Andrea Mitchell become news just for doing what news people are supposed to do it tells you something.
If Couric had asked, “How did it make you feel when McCain used those angry words to attack your position on the surge?” that would’ve been the kind of question more along the lines of what we’re used to.
The headline the next day would’ve read, “Obama Talks About His Feelings!”
Instead, Katie Couric herself became news — because she asked a tough question, something so unprecedented it made her asking it the top story.
I am beginning to wonder, now that Iraq is sort of stable and it seems like Obama is backing off his plan to royally screw it up, that maybe it would be a good thing to give the liberals what they want. I am not a Reagan Democrat, even though I voted for Carter twice, I am a Carter Republican.
Nothing like reality to remove the scales from the eyes of the Obama Youth who are reachable.
All it would take is one hint of compromise from McCain regarding future SoC choices and I am Obama all the way.
“Hit something hard, I don’t want to limp away from this sonuvabitch.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC0yfREBxWw
But the press wants to put its love somewhere…
That line is just embarrassing, it would be embarrassing for a fourteen yearold girl to admit that’s how needy she is, but to have suppossed adults going around like this…
Ooops.
“They’re terrified of people poking around Obama’s life,â€Â
Here that whistle? It’s the 527 Express. Due sometime around Labor Day.
I hear the train a comin’
It’s rolling round the bend
For stuff that ain’t seen sunshine since I don’t know when,
It’s comin’ for you Bammy, and it’s gonna be a hit.
You’ll be naked and a phony, and your name will be shit.
Are “citizens of the world” even eligible to be President of the US?
I’m tired of carrying those whiners. Want a vote in our election? Pay our taxes.
MarkD, be compassionate now – they’ve got to pay the Turks running the Fatherland, first.
Hard to take five weeks off (paid) every summer if you don’t have somebody around to cut the grass, build the gasthaus, sweep the autobahn, operate the sewer plants, dust the fretwork on the beer halls…
The “Obama Love” video you linked to has been removed due to This video is no longer available due to “a copyright claim by Warner Music Group”
There are thousands of music videos on youtube and this gets taken down do to a copright claim. Bwahaha.
you. Warner Music.
huh? that’s all messed up, but yeah, wired has some of the story on Michael’s #28