The New York Times’ David Carr (via MY) on WeigelGate:
A little thought experiment: What if a reporter made a wildly inappropriate video suggesting that the secretary of state, who happens to be a woman, should drink Mad Bitch beer? Surely that reporter would be forced to apologize to Hillary Rodham Clinton before walking the plank. Yet when this happened, Dana Milbank, the longtime Washington Post star who made the video, remained a prized political writer at the paper. (The “Mouthpiece Theater” video segments, mercifully, have been canceled.)
It’s simple: Mibank and Cillizza are part of the Kaplan fraternity, Weigel was not (and neither was Dan Froomkin). That’s all there is to it. If the blogger/reporters at Kaplan stick around long enough, do some beer funneling with Fred Hiatt, allow themselves to be paddled by Sally Quinn, and so on, they’ll be able to write mean personal emails to their friends without getting shit-canned. But until then….
El Cid
Well, and also reorient what they write to more pro-establishmentarian ass-kissing, because otherwise, they won’t be invited to stick around.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
I love the way Danny McBride says “bro’s before ho’s” in Pineapple Express.
And how he says “shrimp tacos”, too.
MattF
Another factor is that it’s OK to say crazy things about the Clintons in the WaPo. Although, as of right now, outright Clinton Obsessive Disorder is somewhat-frowned-upon, it’s not in the same category as suggesting that Matt Drudge has a problem.
Bill H
Wait a minute. There is a war in Afghanistan, with men and women dying and at risk of dying. There is a massive oil disaster in the Gulf, with an an ecology at stake and the economy of an entire region being disrupted on a massive scale. There is a worldwide economic crisis, with serious risk of double dip situation. There are people falling out of unemployment benefits, with Congress unable to help them.
And we are still talking about the “firing” of one relatively unimportant political gossip writer after more than a week? Really?
El Cid
@Bill H: I think it’s relevant with regard to establishmentarian media activities, because it’s an insight into how they eliminate figures who would be more likely to more sanely examine such huge matters as you reference.
If, on the other hand, you fill your pages up with reporting and opinion on important topics with material by writers you carefully choose to reflect your preferred range of opinions, who cares if you address the big topics? The Washington Times and Human Events address the big topics too.
DougJ
@Bill H:
It’s symptomatic, it’s the same reason the fiscal austerity bullshit has so much traction.
D-Chance.
WATB.
JGabriel
Umm … why do I have 4 identical ads for something that looks like a plateful of variegated pastel-colored White Castle(tm) sliders?
.
JohnR
@MattF:
Exactly! It’s also situational. It’s true about the fraternity, but even the frat boys would get dumped if they were so thoughtless as to write something vicious and petty (ie accurate and truthful) about the Big, Bright Shining (Female) Stars of the Whack-a-doodle Right: Bachmann, Generic Christianist Fluffyhead, or especially Palin.
El Cid
@DougJ: Right, but we still have to act to cut the deficit so as to protect ourselves against all the inflation, which doesn’t exist and which no one is actually predicting. Just ask establishment figures like David Brooks.
stuckinred
@JGabriel: Because you look like an easy mark?
El Cid
@JGabriel: I think they’re macarons.
Downpuppy
@JGabriel:
Those things look sort of like cookies, but more like fancy diaphragm holders. Who would need a dozen? Maybe someone who accidentally clicked on the “Make a Baby” add at the top of the page.
Very scary stuff.
stuckinred
@Downpuppy: Do they all say Atlanta on them?
qwerty42
From a recent post by Sullivan
The Tea Party And Marc Thiessen
…the point of his columns is not to propose anything. It is to find some way, any way, to attack the new president grappling with the enormous problems bequeathed to him by the man Thiessen worked for. Why? That’s his job – and always has been his job. He’s a partisan propagandist, a protege of Helms and Cheney. Why he is regarded as a journalist by the WaPo – and Dave Weigel isn’t – is beyond me.
Te
I dunno. I think it has more do to with who was the target of the jokes/insults.
Examples of acceptable targets: The Clintons, Hippies, Muslims, Hollywood libruhls, gays, Jeremiah Wright, Europe
And unacceptable targets: Jews, Tea-baggers, the military
The likes of Milbank and Cilizza are part of the Kaplan circle because they understand these rules.
Kryptik
Hey, don’t hate on the macarons for the looks or the taste. Those things are yummy.
…
Hate on them for the prices. As delicious as they are, I’m never buying them again because they’re ridiculously overpriced for something literally half-dollar sized.
As for the topic at hand, I think @El Cid, @JohnR, and @El Cid managed to say what I wanted to say before I could.
Bill E Pilgrim
Agree and perhaps stated even more simply: Weigel said mean things about conservatives.
If the person the paper had hired to cover progressive thinking had written mean things about liberals, the Washington Post’s response would be: “We hired someone to cover progressive thinking?? What were we thinking? Were we nuts??”
“But since we did seem to take leave of our senses and hire you, good work saying mean and nasty things because as everyone knows, progressives deserve only scorn and ridicule, not coverage, so you can keep the job, and if you’re really abusive next column then you can have a promotion.”
Kryptik
@qwerty42:
Why is he regarded as a journalist? Well….look at the company he runs with on the WaPo op-ed page. Hiatt’s made it a Bush II employee’s sanctuary, under the guise of ‘hard hitting, thought provoking opinion’. Oh, and they need to balance out the paper’s own OVERWHELMING, BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS LIBERAL BIAS, their own employees say so!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kryptik: Perhaps the most galling thing in that Carr article is the WaPo ombudsman explaining that The Washington Post just isn’t trusted by conservatives, darn it. I’ve read Beltway gossip that Donnie Graham couldn’t wait to turn the paper rightward after Mommy wasn’t around to stop him. I don’t know exactly when Hiatt took over the op/ed page, when Charles Lane and Jackson Diehl were made part of the op/ed board, but it certainly seems as if that gossip had some truth in it. The fact that their ombudsman thinks the Post has a liberal bias because Sean Hannity and Michelle Bachman say so is still another symptom of Beltway Rot.
Bill E Pilgrim
Nobel economist nails professional ex-National Review pundit pretending to know something about economics. Rinse and repeat.
Clone Krugman please, and set him to work full-time debunking, and his little clones too.
I have to say kudos to This Week this week, since they actually let Krugman speak at some length and make his case and show that the right wing opponent was lying and so on. I complain about them and rightly so, but I had to notice they actually had this point of view on without it being “countered” by sixteen or seventeen extreme right wing conservatives.
Okay they only have four or five guests I realize but Liz Cheney always seems about fourteen, and George Will a hundred or something, so it adds up.
Sheila
Perhaps Dana Milbank should eat Cool Whip, as he is to journalism what Cool Whip is to whipped cream.
Kryptik
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
And the saddest thing is that, it will NEVER EVER get the respect it wants from conservatives, no matter how hard it tilts right, because the conservatives don’t care about substance. The fact that it’s the Washington Post is proof enough that it’s part of the Evil Tyrannical Soshulizt Liberal Media Machine.
And thus, it ends up a self-perpetuating cycle. WaPo tacks hard right. Conservatives see this, and believe that if WaPo is this ‘right’, it must not be ‘right’ anymore and tacks FURTHER right. WaPo sees this…and believes it’s still too liberal and TACKS FURTHER RIGHT.
The only way it’ll ever get the respect it wants so desperately is if they let Rupert Murdoch buy it out, and even then.
JGabriel
Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Conservatives trust Fox News(tm); i.e., they trust only lies. Confessing to goal of gaining the trust of conservatives is tantamount to confessing to a goal of greater dishonesty.
.
Kryptik
@Sheila:
Funny. Thought he was more like Miracle Whip is to Whipped Cream. The only similarity they really have is the word ‘Whip’, much like the only similarity Milbank has to journalists is he dare refer to himself as such, despite not even being in the same ballpark.
Waynski
@Bill E Pilgrim: I didn’t see This Week, this week, because like most Americans I was out enjoying the Fourth, so I wouldn’t give them too much credit for letting K-Thug explain and debunk at length. They gave him this latitude when no one was watching. If it’s a harbinger of things to come, that’s good. If not, it’s a tree falling in the woods.
jwb
@Bill E Pilgrim: If you read the comments to Krugman’s column and blog, you’ll notice that he’s been assigned a large number of gooper trolls to attempt to muddy up what he says. That it doesn’t seem to be working is no doubt one reason Bobo has no been called in. Since Bobo’s the one pundit whose opinion Obama, for reasons known only to him, cares about, you can’t simply dismiss him, whatever drivel comes out of Bobo’s mouth.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Waynski: Ah good point. Unlike most Americans I’m nowhere near America and completely forgot about the 4th at least that day, though more to the point is that I have watch that show online if I want to see it, which you can do any day of the week by the way.
Well, I was impressed anyway. It’s usually a festival of right wing nonsense. I often read Krugman’s columns and wonder if anyone is listening, so seeing him being pretty much featured on one of those moron festivals, even if in a take out the trash sort of way, was encouraging.
Mnemosyne
@jwb:
It’s pretty obvious why, actually — Bobo is the Blue Dogs’ pundit of choice. Bobo will tell you with precision what the Blue Dogs are thinking and they will spout his claims.
Why would the administration ignore the guy that a huge part of their caucus listens to?
Bill E Pilgrim
@jwb: If anyone is seriously considering what anonymous commenters on blogs post in the attached comments, then I fear for us even more than I already did. And yes very much including this one.
That was the most depressing thing I read in months by the way, the one about Rahm consulting Brooks by e-mail every week.
NB: As OT as possible: Does anyone know anything about making pasta? Let me rephrase that: Does anyone here know anything about making pasta?
I just rolled out my first batch and er, not impressed. I’m using rice flour. Which is sort of the point. I guess one of those machines would work, but it’s also the taste, sort of er, like flour and water rather than pasta. I’m using a pizza cutter which works well, trying this before I spring for a machine. TIA
ricky
@Bill H:
“And we are still talking about the “firing” of one relatively unimportant political gossip writer after more than a week? Really? ”
You will know when the blogosphere has matured as soon as a pretty white woman blogger mysteriously disappears.
Until then keep your snarky criticism to yourself.
Waynski
@Bill E Pilgrim: Touchy, touchy, dude. I didn’t mean to minimize your ‘murican-ness. I was just pointing out that you were probably part of a very small audience that day. But if I your feelings were hurt, I apologize. Non-apology apology complete.
On the pasta question, I’ve used a machine in the past with pretty middling results. I find it’s better to buy a good package at a gourmet store.
jwb
@Bill E Pilgrim: the amount of trolling is a good index to the danger the columnist/blogger is understood to pose. I’m quite certain conservative politicos have assigned a stable of operatives to shadow Krugman’s blog and cast aspersions especially on his technical economic claims.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Waynski: Oh I didn’t take any offense whatsoever, I was thanking you for making that point which I didn’t realize.
I thought the “Good point” part got that across, but hey, it was possibly the expression on my face while I said it;)
No, I think you’re right, I hadn’t thought of that, and yet I still find it encouraging, which you sort of implied that it might be also. We shall see.
Waynski
@Bill E Pilgrim: I think you’re right that it’s encouraging, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see. If they return to mindless drivel next week, we’ll know it was an anomaly. Good luck with the pasta.
Kryptik
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Sad fact of the matter is that, it does seem like a lot of those ‘serious news sites’ tend to take the frothing right wing comments seriously and to heart, whereas left wing comments, frothing or not…tend to be very much ignored or brushed off much easier. Must be that liberal media bias.
Lupin
Bring out the powdered wigs. I also feel like watching Black Adder III’s NOB & NOBILITY again.
terry chay
The Washington Post is a joke, and Hiatt is running that rag into the ground. Just sit back and watch the car wreck.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Kryptik: This couldn’t possibly be less scientific but my general impression is that they take calls and letters and e-mails seriously, but just assume that online comments are a both right and left wing missed meds festival in progress and just leave it as the hell hole it is. The WAPO ombudsman for example makes it pretty clear that they don’t even read them unless someone insists they remove something by flagging it.
On the other hand they mention “calls and e-mails” constantly as being worthy of great consideration, clearly, and make entire policy initiatives based on how many Rush and Glenn Beck fanatics have contacted them. Why someone who bothered to write an e-mail is to be taken more seriously than an online commenter escapes me, and of course only the right seems to be listened to, but I get the sense that this is at least partly because they get so many more frothing right wing e-mails. It still amounts to roughly zero percent of the population of course, but they must immediately go out and hire two new George W Bush speechwriters in response and fire another liberal.
It’s like the whole national media has been Freeped, and didn’t realize it.
Freeped, there’s a word you don’t see much anymore. And now before I get into we-used-to-tie-an-onion-on-our belt territory, I’ll go back to throwing away the pasta.
Tom Hilton
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I wrote to the Ombudsman asking why in the world the WaPo should care if it lost “standing” with conservatives. His reply:
I wrote back, asking if anyone had even questioned the fairness or accuracy of Weigel’s reporting. That time, he didn’t respond.
skippy
breitbart owes me $100,000.
Janet Strange
@Kryptik: I don’t think it’s about whether the Post or any other newspaper or news show is right or left enough to suit them. It’s the cult leader psychology – listen to me and only to me.
Step one: Demonize liberalism. Liberals are pure evil. And stupid. You don’t want to be one. Or even be in the same room/planet with one.
Step two: All sources of information other than me (Fox, and its disciple Limbaugh) are liberal. Run away screaming from all who are not me. They will lead you astray.
Mike
“I don’t know exactly when Hiatt took over the op/ed page”
The idea that WP turned right after Don Graham took over is a myth. It is repeated so often that people now believe it.
WP turned right in the 80s under the leadership of sainted Katharine Graham. She and Nancy were good friends and scandals like Iran Contra got swept under the rug until it started getting reported in foreign papers.
Hiatt replaced Meg Greenfield, who hired all the neocons in the WP op-ed page, incuding Krauthammer and Kelly. Greenfield was a neocon herself. She hired Hiatt, another neocon.
It is time to stop portraying Katharine Graham a civic minded liberal. The paper made a sharp turn to the right under her leadership.
asiangrrlMN
@Bill E Pilgrim: I love love love Paul Krugman. I am glad he has the balls to tell the truth as he sees it without pulling punches. Question authority, indeed.