Dana Milbank on the breaking “Issa press aide scandal”:
… The latest symptom of our deformed political-journalistic complex presented this week, when news broke that the office of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House committee in charge of probing the Obama administration, had been secretly forwarding private correspondence with journalists to an author writing a book about Washington. This caused a great kerfuffle among reporters and a fear that the release of the e-mails could prove them to be sycophants: flattering Issa and his staff in hopes that favorable coverage would be rewarded with scraps of news.
__
The episode makes everybody look bad. Issa, a man with subpoena power, was having his staff work as his personal publicists rather than doing honest government work. Issa’s spokesman, Kurt Bardella, was justifiably fired for his double dealings with reporters. And reporters were (or soon will be) exposed as currying favor with the powerful. […] __
From what I understand, the e-mails won’t look good for Politico if and when Leibovich releases them. There are expected to be many from Allen and reporter Jake Sherman. There could be embarrassments for other outlets, including The Post, that played footsie with the 27-year-old Bardella as part of a culture in which journalists implicitly provide positive coverage in exchange for tidbits of news.
_
But this isn’t real news. The items Bardella fed journalists were “exclusive” previews of announcements designed to make Issa look good. Now that Bardella has been fired, Issa has been embarrassed and a few reporters are set to be humiliated, it might be a good time for those who cover the news to regain a sense of detachment from those who make the news.
(h/t Dave Weigel at Slate)
I don’t know what inspired Milbank to abandon his place inside the cocktail party, climb atop the Media Village wall, and send reports down to us peons outside the charmed courtier circuit, but I have to admit I’m enjoying his new perspective.
Scott
Issa is one of the guys I’d most like to see take a perp walk. He strikes me as a deeply, spectacularly unethical guy
tripletee
Good luck trying to shame shameless whores, Dana Quixote.
Emma
That’s all right. Milbank will go back to his old ways soon. His owners don’t tolerate more than token resistance.
Yes, I’m fed up with all of them. Does it show?
Ash Can
I am shocked — shocked! — to find that gambling is going on in here.
Someguy
Milbank thinks that paid partisan Congressional Staff really do “the people’s work” rather than carry water for their Member, and that it’s a scandal when a Member’s press secretary busts his ass to make his boss look good? Really? That’s a scandal? My understanding is that’s *exactly* what they’re paid to do, and it’s the non-partisan committee staff who are supposed to do “the people’s work.”
Or maybe he thinks leaking to reporter A, then mentioning to Reporter B (on the same paper writing a book) the earlier leak to Reporter A is a scandal?
Um, sorry, no. That isn’t a scandal. What it is, is a Member who is having a press afairs scandal because his press secretary is a promiscuous leaker.
The actual scandal is that the media is in various members’ pockets.
freelancer
@Scott:
He’s the richest member of Congress.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Mike Allen a power-sucking sycophant? Nay, never, I refuse to believe it!
I was thinking recently about Mary Matalin’s memo that came out during the Scooter Libby trial, that the Dark Lord considered Chris Matthews too tough and interview, and preferred Tim Russert. Russert wasn’t the least bit embarrassed, it didn’t put a chink in his reputation. Granted, he died not long after and has been apotheosed (if that’s a word) in the minds of his fellow Villagers, but if there was ever a blush on his part or a snicker on anyone else, I never saw or heard of it.
MikeJ
OT, but Nick Jonas proves anybody can sound halfway decent if you put them in front of a band that knows how to rock a Motown cover.
John Legend, who actually knows how to hit the notes, wasn’t all that great.
And as we got into “Aint to proud” the cheesy synth sound sounded more like the airport Ramada lounge than a presidential motown salute.
Scott
@freelancer: Yeah, I know. “Richest” always seems to mean “most unethical rotter.”
Another Commenter at Balloon Juice (fka Bella Q)
@Scott: That’s an understatement. @freelancer: and somehow the tow are not unrelated, I suspect.
Evolved Deep Southerner
He’s just pissed he wasn’t on the mailing list. You think we’d be hearing about it otherwise?
MattR
Did y’all see that Rep Rush Holt beat IBM’s Watson at Jeopardy? To be fair, I think Watson was playing multiple games at once with various representatives which slowed down its response time a bit. But Rep Holt is no slouch as he was a 5 day Jeopardy winner more than 30 years ago.
Mike in NC
And the Villagers all rush to their fainting couches…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Scott: If you haven’t read the New Yorker story by Ryan Lizza that Milbank refes to, if Issa isn’t a criminal, he’s stumbled into more circumstantial evidence than anybody since the kid in 12 Angry Men
El Cid
This is more proof that Wikileaks has destroyed the known universe. Its lack of connection with this issue is irrelevant. An ethics paneled should be empaneled and it should condemn anyone who snickers at released e-mails showing how ‘journalists’ kissed political ass.
Ash Can
@MattR: That’s pretty cool!
jeff
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I left that article in the New Yorker with the impression that Issa is a terrifying man; the arson and other crimes seemed well-supported according to the article. Frankly, he sounds like his own private cosa nostra. In other words, he appears to be an actual sociopath:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/24/110124fa_fact_lizza
Martin
Issa certainly authorized those leaks. Remember, this is the guy that financed the recall election of Gray Davis so that he could get an easy ride onto the governors ballot without having to slug through the GOP machine. Figured he’d just buy his way into office but then Arnold jumped in and Issa backed away. He then slutted around the state until he found a House seat he could win.
Guy is 100% douchebag.
Ija
Question for the masses: is there really an assumption of privacy with emails? I mean, with the FORWARD button, any email we send to anybody is fair game, right? The recipient can forward it to anybody he chooses.
Mark S.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Never heard that one before. Not the least bit surprising; Luke Russert is probably a tougher interviewer.
But Tim was a real blue-collar guy like the rest of us.
asiangrrlMN
Issa is a slime, to be sure, but this doesn’t really seem to be that high up on the scale of crimes.
@MattR: And, oh, lookie. The representative is a Democrat.
Roger Moore
Let’s be honest, this is about him doing something that puts journalists in a bad light, so it’s naturally going to get turned into a scandal. If it had been cooperating with journalists to put any other category of person in a bad light, the press would think it was dandy. I just goes to prove the old saw about not getting in a scandal war with somebody who buys ink by the barrel.
mclaren
As our flipper-footed thalidomide-brewed teratogenic press corps(e) continues its descent toward lunacy and dementia, the parallel twixt the creatures that came out of the wall in the movie Hellraiser grows increasingly compelling.
I look forward to our new press secretary Pinhead.
James E Powell
This will be a one-off. Issa is an insane right-winger who consistently provides the kind of hysterical, anti-Democrat mole hills that the corporate press/media loves to make into mountains. Which means that the corporate press/media will continue to flatter him with positive coverage.
MattR
@asiangrrlMN:
If you were a reporter you would understand that what this staffer did is worse than murder and just slightly less heinous than lying about an extramarital affair.
hamletta
Dana Milbank was never as much a Villager as most lefty blog-type people thought. He was in the WHPC during the run-up to Iraq, and IIRC, asked some rather pointed questions.
A few years ago, he did a live blog over at GOS, and it was a feeding frenzy where the commenters were holding him responsible for everything published in the WaPo instead of asking him about his own work. It was a trainwreck.
His bailiwick for a long time was the absurdity of political theatre, and a lot of people took his commentary for approval.
Yes, there was Mad Bitch Ale, and the dick-whisperer. I was ready to cut him then, and even floated the idea of a rebuttal to Masterwonk Theatre, or whatever it was, with me and my mom’s neighbor, who’d been recently turfed out by the WaPo, with us in tatty bathrobes and pink curlers.
He’s always teetered on the line of in-it-but-not-of-it, “it” being The Village. But I think he’s a good reporter, and his heart’s in the right place.
Encourage good behavior, people! Tell him, “more of this”!
Mark S.
Update from Team Huckleberry: The governor misspoke and meant Indonesia. That’s why he brought up Obama’s Kenyan father and grandfather. The Mau Mau Revolution was a hot topic in Indonesia when Obama was growing up.
driftglass
I reject the premise that Politico has the capacity to understand what the concept of “embarrassment” means.
asiangrrlMN
@Mark S.: Fucking geography, how does that work again?
Ash Can
@Mark S.: Whatever that poor slob of a spokesman is getting paid, it’s not enough.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ash Can: … or far too much.
Roger Moore
@Mark S.:
Does it really matter what kind of scary, dark skinned mooslims the Kenyan in Chief grew up around? Either way, they weren’t decent, white, heartland Americans, so he’s a dirty furriner at heart.
Steeplejack
@asiangrrlMN:
How you doin’? Heard on the street that you’ve been sick lately.
AnotherBruce
@freelancer: No doubt it helped him buy his house seat. And his committee seat. Y’know, it never has before, but Marxism is really beginning to appeal to me.
Mark S.
Shorter Chris Christie:
Stillwater
Milbank is in it for the long con. CYA is the only strategy the corrupt know. Apart from the con itself, course.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mark S.: Awfully full of himself (not a fat shot), isn’t he? Didn’t Christie only win in NJ because there was a purer-than-Corzine indy candidate?
Raul
From the Milbank column
So when we (frequently) call the press corpse stenographers, that’s much too kind. They’re just copying and pasting.
RalfW
OT, and I noticed another commenter mentioned this on an earlier thread, but the ‘click-to-edit’ just makes the screen go black now and no box in which to edit opens.
RaflW/Raul
freelancer
@RalfW:
Open “Edit” in a new tab or new window.
S. cerevisiae
OT, but since this is an open thread this guy is a hero
Emerald
@Martin: Nah. Issa was, alas, MY congresscritter before the recall election. (I live in shame.)
There is no chance of unseating him. You normally don’t know who’s running against him until you see the ballot. The lastest opponent did manage to get a few yard signs up, but that was it.
North San Diego is winger territory. We also had the highly esteemed Duke Cunningham, in the next district down.
Villago Delenda Est
Huckabee “misspoke”.
Right.
The Jeebus-addled doofus knew the teatard meme is all about Kenya, and that’s why he said it. Indonesia? Is that some place where you find Apache and Navajo?
Mike in NC
@Emerald:
I was stationed at NAB Coronado back in ’80-’81 and thought that parts of SoCal were just the Bible Belt with surfboards.
LanceThruster
@Scott: Yeah, where’s the phrase, “Issa has been ‘recalled'”, or “Issa has been ‘indicted'”.
RadioOne
@Ija: well, it’s definitely uncouth, so there’s that. There is a serious practical danger of journalists being unable to do their job without confidential email correspondence with politicians and their staff, simply because it’s been the way both parties have communicated for a very long time. On the other hand, Politico and pretty much every other political news venue has served up so much political bullshit over the past few years, that I think the covenant should be at least questioned for the moment. So I look forward to seeing their emails.
hamletta
Anne Laurie, since you turned me on to (my Maryland homeboy!) Tom Scocca in the first place, I hope you’ve read this: The Politics of Entitlement: David Brooks Will Decide When It’s Time for You to Die
There is no money quote. There is only read the whole, righteous, glorious, wonderful fucking thing.
N W Barcus
Journolist. That is all.
kdaug
I think the pertinent question here is, (and this is a compound one, so pay attention) : How does one go about weighing one’s boobs while mopping naked and admiring one’s beautiful feet without shattering your clavicle?
(Yeah. Dog, ice, whatev. Own up Cole. The truth is out there.)
demz taters
Between this, Wisconsin and the absolutely beautiful take down of HBGary I’m actually daring to hope that we can start saying “This is how realignments happen” without irony.
kdaug
@freelancer:
Meritocracy. QED.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason (formerly frosty)
@Roger Moore: He grew up around Hawaiians, I hear. A mongrel race of Japanese, natives, and Scotsmen. I shudder to think what kinds of teachings might have been rammed into his head under those circumstances. Especially from the Scotsmen.
freelancer
@N W Barcus:
And Climategate, hah! Consider yourselves pwned, libturds!
Villago Delenda Est
@freelancer:
No doubt this is the brilliant observation of some melee hunter in WoW…
Ija
@RadioOne:
I can understand off-the-record conversation being off-limits. But once you commit something in writing (even electronic writing), I think all bets are off. You can’t really expect it not to get out.
Why can’t these journalists just ass-kiss in person? Do they have to ass-kiss in emails too?
opie jeanne, formerly known as Jeanne Ringland
@Emerald: I lived behind the Orange Curtain until recently, and the politics there seemed tame by comparison to stuff that went on in San Diego county.
We had the ever-lovely Loretta Sanchez, opposed by two candidates whose last names were Nguyen. Tan Nguyen was the guy who got into trouble in several different ways, including sending letters in Spanish to registered voters in Santa Ana that threatened them with prison or deportation if they voted.
opie jeanne, formerly known as Jeanne Ringland
@Emerald: Meant to say that Issa and Cunningham kept us wondering what was in the water.
freelancer
@Villago Delenda Est:
Not an MMORPG gamer, so the reference is lost on me, sorry.
WarMunchkin
Uh, what did he do wrong here, besides offend the courtiers?
Ailuridae
What’s up with the anti-union AAE ads here?
I signed up for Tougher Mudder today. I hope I don’t die.
El Cid
Fuck yeah, baby.
Georgia does the South proud again.
I have no idea what the fuck any of these people even imagine an acceptable birth certificate to be.
If it doesn’t say “FORGED DOCUMENT TO INSTALL KENYONESIAN MUSLIM N***** AS PRESIDENT TO DESTROY AMERICA BY ALL THE SPENDIN’,” then they won’t accept it.
bago
@Ija: Uhh, once you send out unencrypted data on the internet it’s all out there. Every router is a man-in-the-middle.
bago
@El Cid: Y’know, it might be worth it to see the sworn testimony of the C.I.A. stating that anyone questioning the chain of command would have less intelligence than the C.I.A.
Yutsano
@Ailuridae: We shall cheer your triumph and
mock your failuremourn your death should you die. We gotz ur back dawg.MikeJ
@Ailuridae: They had money, bj had avails. I assume that’s the extent of it.
El Cid
This is cool, too:
The Georgia Secretary of State can smack down any weird black guys running for President if he or she believes that the non-sufficiently-white candidate has failed to deliver enough pictures of his doctor pulling him out of the birth canal in front of that state’s Governor… [PDF here]
…then the proposed Georgia law makes it a crime for any of the electors (i.e., electoral votes) to cast their votes for the Negro alien.
Apparently no one born in Hawaii can ever run for President in Georgia, because Hawaii has converted to the electronic birth certificate system.
So has Texas, I believe. And a number of other states. Arkansas. Massachusetts.
I guess we need to make sure Georgia prevents anyone from Illinois running for office, too:
Yutsano
@El Cid: I suppose this ruins my chances of becoming President as well. Damn my father for getting stationed in Honolulu.
El Cid
@bago: The CIA could easily have been taken over by Kenyan anti-colonialist Islamic caliphate Weather Underground community organizer infiltrators.
El Cid
@Yutsano: With so many states transiting to EBR systems, soon no one will be eligible.
I wonder too if swearing allegiance to the Confederacy rules you out?
That would winnow out much of the GOP bench.
Jebediah
@Ailuridae:
Clicked on the Tougher Mudder link. Why do they want to set you on fire?
Good luck – looks like “don’t die” would be more appropriate than “have fun”…
alwhite
I have thought for a while now that Milbanks might actually have a decent heart and desire to actually commit journalism. But his head tells him the money & ‘success’ are with the cocktail circuit crowd. As a result you occasionally get good work out of him but mostly he spews the expected amount of hinny smooching. He is very aware of this conflict & it eats at him, hence the ‘dick whisperer’ – angry for being humiliated on TV but more angry with himself for doing the things that get him humiliated.
With each new “decent Milbank” story I hope he has finally broken away but, sadly, next week he will probably smooch twice as hard as a form of penance.
Jebediah
@El Cid:
So they will rush to disqualify any white gooper who can’t meet the requirements?
Some doubts I am having…
Villago Delenda Est
@freelancer:
Sorry, but the joke here is that a “melee hunter” is one of the most stupid things you can possibly be in WoW, in that every last one of your most powerful abilities uses a ranged weapon…if you’re using a melee weapon, you’re fail. Total fail.
ppcli
@Mark S.: Well, that would explain Obama’s famous pathological hatred of the Dutch.
ppcli
Well, I’m arriving at the party just as the chairs are being put upside down on the tables, but I wanted to add to the chorus that the only scandal I see is the fact that this is somehow regarded as a “scandal”. If Issa’s rep had been sending emails to journalists that made him or Issa look bad, they, or at least the information they contained, would be published in an instant. Why are journalists exempt from scrutiny? Maybe it will improve the sorry state of journalism a bit if their cynical, favor-currying, fawning over the powerful behavior is more often exposed to the light of day. I hope this book appears soon.
Catzmaw
Please, oh please, someone embarrass that smug little twit Mike Allen. Every time I see his grinning mug on some morning show blathering about Obama and smirkily dispensing often irrelevant details of exaggerated failings I feel like smacking him. At least Fox is honestly dishonest. They’ll wink at you as they pick your pocket and lie to your face about things, but Allen and Politico like to pretend they really ARE dispassionate, objective observers despite the obvious spin to many of Politico’s stories, the little jabs made with just the right adjective or adverb to raise the unsuspecting reader’s sense of derision or cynicism.
N W Barcus
@freelancer & the Village Must Be Treated Like Carthage:
1) I thought it was interesting that no one had noticed the parallel.
2) I wanted to point out that some of those who are clutching their pearls about violation of privacy were jest fine with those on Journolist losing theirs.
For the record, I believe both the Journolist kerfuffle and “Climategate” are bullshit. And my stance on human sacrifice continues to evolve. Have a nicer day.