Look, I hate Lanny Davis and James Carville and Mike McCurry and all the Clinton admin media grifters, probably more than I hate the Bush admin ones. But why are these so many from the Bush administration?
It’s been tough to keep up with all of them, but the list is getting pretty long. In addition to Orr and Malcolm on the Los Angeles Times’ “Top of the Ticket” site, we also have Dana Perino (Fox News), Michael Gerson (Washington Post), Marc Thiessen (Washington Post), Mary Matalin (CNN), Sara Taylor (MSNBC), Tony Snow (CNN), Frances Fragos Townsend (CNN), Nicole Wallace (CBS News), Dan Bartlett (CBS News), Jeff Ballabon (CBS News), Tony Fratto (CNBC), Juan Carlos Zarate (CBS News), and of course Karl Rove (Fox News, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal).
The only president in recent history who left office as unpopular as Bush did was Nixon. And, yes, I realize that are plenty of Nixonites on the airwaves these days, did they start hiring them right after Nixon resigned?
AhabTRuler
Well, I don’t think that Tony Snow will be bothering you much anymore.
And no one in politics goes away, they are merely recycled. Even Nixon began to be rehabilitated right before he had the good sense and decency to fucking die (he got my support for that one).
Bill E Pilgrim
I’ve never seen anything like it.
Bush left office in as close to utter disgrace as anyone since Nixon, and the famously “liberal” Washington Post has half his lead speechwriting staff working for them writing columns.
I long ago learned to not think of the WAPO as even remotely liberal, but this was amazing even so. It seems to be nothing short of the continuation of the Bush White House messaging unit, for some unfathomable reason allowed to hang out a shingle at a major newspaper.
c u n d gulag
Look, someone has to hire these people. How can they be un, or under, employed like the rest of us?
Another way to look at this is, either the wingnut welfare programs are running out of money and can’t hire them, or these people are too stupid to even be hired there.
This is another reason I don’t watch network, or even cable, news (except ocasionally for Ed, Keith and Rachel).
Cat Lady
Corporate media hackery demands hacks, and hacks need other hacks to keep their own hackery hacktastic so there’s no time or place for truth telling, except on Comedy Central. So far so good.
cleek
apparently former insiders are very attractive to people whose main goal in life is to become an insider.
John W.
Including Tony Snow makes the list look like a hit job. Bad form.
Dan
Correct link:
washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_02/022396.php
gbear
@Bill E Pilgrim:
It’s either let them hang out a shingle or else face the reality that they were played for chumps all thru the Bush years. The denial is strong in the major media. They’d rather pretend that everything was hunky-dory in the 00’s.
edit: or what Cat Lady and cleek said…
Dan
It’s a list of folks who have gone through the “revolving door between the mainstream media and the staff of the Bush White House” past and present.
Why shouldn’t he be included?
JGabriel
No, but only because they had to wait for the Nixonites’ prison terms to expire first.
.
Mark S.
Well, many of them had to serve some time first.
FlipYrWhig
I’ve been annoyed about that too, but, you know, we had eight years (shudder) of that crew in charge, and if you want to hire people with executive branch experience to compare and contrast with the new crew, that’s pretty much the pool. I would draw a distinction between the people hired to be all-purpose pundits, like the execrable Thiessen and repugnant Gerson, and the for-hire talking heads like Perino and Townsend.
Tony J
Really, Doug. Who better to provide informed insider commentary on a popular Democratic Administration than the bitter, revenge-driven failures who staffed the previous Republican Administration?
Look at it this way, these people need jobs, and it just so happens that the MSM is currently in really desperate need of people with just their kind of on-the-job experience in explaining why Republicans aren’t really as crazy as they seem to be, so of course they got snapped up before they had to try and look for real jobs in the economy they helped create.
It’s Supply and Demand at its most pure, and one of the little, unexpected treats that make Capitalism the bestest system ever.
AhabTRuler
You go to air with the partisans you have, not the partisans you’d like to have.
Martin
There are so many because on 1/20/2009, they were all unemployed. Anyone with any real liberal credentials on that day had just gotten a job.
Wingnut welfare isn’t just a cute phrase, it’s the truth.
Tony J
@gbear:
This.
Someday (most of) America is going to (more or less) come to terms with what the Bush Administration did, and how badly the MSM failed in reporting honestly about it. But right now what we’re seeing is an example of the cover-up being more incriminating than the original crime.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@FlipYrWhig:
So that means everything will be all peachy keen in 2017 when the media has nobody to hire but ex-Obama admin staffers, right? They won’t keep on hiring GOPers, none of whom have been in power for years? The media will finally be liberal in fact and not just in reputation? Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.
cleek
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
well, no. but that will be because the country will have taken a decisive turn to the right and it’s only fair that the media reflect the country’s mood.
these days, it’s important to have wingnuts in the media for balance. tomorrow it will be important to have wingnuts in the media for adequate representation.
maus
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Hahahah, no. Not unless they “turn” conservative, or provide the “i’m a liberal… BUT even I think that” view, or they’ll just find new conservative “talent”.
Observer
@Dan:
past and present according to whom?
The post in question gives no temporal guidance and in the context of the entire post would appear to be “current”.
And making a pairing list of people with their job/corporation in brackets and including a deceased person on the list who obviously is no longer at the bracketed job (since he is, you know, DEAD) is tacky and definitely churlish.
Brachiator
@cleek:
This pretty much nails it.
Cathie from Canada
Looking at this list, it makes me realize what a hard time Obama would have had actually prosecuting anyone from the Bush administration for high crimes and misdemenors — the media spin against such prosecutions would have been a total war.
Not that the Department of Justice still shouldn’t have tried, or at least investigated, of course.
But could it possibly be that the reason all these people inserted themselves so quickly into these media posts — instead of, say, taking jobs on Wall Street or K Street — was to be in place just in case Cheney or Woo or Rumsfeld needed some fierce media spin?
Naaaah, just another conspiracy theory…
FlipYrWhig
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Well, we’ll see. They hired a few Clintonistas and Gore staffers, after all: Carville, Begala, Stephanopolous, Brazile, Dee Dee Myers (IIRC), Dick Morris (blarf)…