Oh, Jennifer Rubin. You really are a terrible hack, and why the Kaplan machine keeps inflicting you upon the populace, I’ll never know.
Romney as the nominee will be flyspecked and criticized over every word. He needs to avoid actual gaffes. But he can’t keep the media from editing out all the inconvenient parts of every sentence, paragraph and interview. He’ll need to work on talking directly to voters, making his case in ads and debates. The good news for him, at least in the primary, is that the media that are predisposed to pounce on every (other) word and offer the most negative interpretation of his every statement and performance appear to have zero influence among voters. Perhaps a less crazed approach to covering Romney would restore their credibility.
To recap, the woman that used her position at the Washington Post to push silly Holocaust denial garbage, who “apologized” for blaming last year’s deadly terrorist shooting in Norway on Muslims before the information was in by saying Muslims are all terrorists anyway (and this after howling that the Left jumped to conclusions on the Giffords shooting), who accused the President of losing the war in Iraq the second he agreed to send our troops home and called the move the “worst error” of his presidency, barely pulled up from fully accusing the President of being an anti-Semite, and who has enough strikes against her to, in a sane world, never have been hired at the Post in the first place, is now worried about the journalistic credibility of “the anti-Romney right” and “the anti-Romney left.” Effing really?
Jennifer Rubin probably deserves to have a dump truck full of her “credibility” deposited on her front lawn. It’s a level of sheer, overwhelming absurdity that would drive Beckett and Pinter to sit around in their underwear all day reading Lolcats and drinking moonshine because they couldn’t deal with trying to process it. The woman has credibility the same way a moldered cinder block in a New Jersey landfill has a fascinating appreciation of the political ramifications of the Dutch Tulip Bubble. Why is she still employed other than to give every other journalist in the country a reference point of just how awful they can be without being fired?
That she’s hitched her wagon to the Least Interesting Man In The World is significant in ways I could only apparently try to grasp if I were actively killing brain cells with alcohol and laughing at pictures of kittens conquering cardboard boxes in a manner befitting Alexander the Great.
[UPDATE] Steve M. points out that NPR is already taking Rubin’s “advice”, natch.
shortstop
Spanky little headline there.
Nancy
I wonder if Jennifer is aware that Mormons get extra stars in their heavenly crown if they “convert” a Jew. She needs to beware of white-shirted, black-tied young men traveling in tandem.
sock puppet
Heh indeed. Seriously, someone really needs to make ads based on Romney as the Least Interesting Man in the World. They’d go viral like mad, especially considering as a devout Mormon he doesn’t touch Dos Equis or any other alcoholic brew.
liberal
Where are we with that, anyway?
Not like it’s that important—seems like the primary cause is that the guy was literally nuts—but ISTM that his web cache/history would pretty much settle the issue.
liberal
@sock puppet:
Don’t forget—no coffee, either!
liberal
From a political science perspective, 2012 is going to be a very interesting test of the claim that elections are referenda on sitting incumbants, and that the economy is mostly what matters.
Also going to be an interesting test of the impact of Citizens United.
MattF
So, Ms. Rubin joins Mr. Will, Mr. Krauthammer, Mr. Theissen, and Mr. Gerson as the WaPo right flank regulars. Mr. Kristol sends his regrets. Mr. Cohen is unclassifiable. I could go on, but it’s just too depressing.
liberal
@Nancy:
Uh, like that would ever matter, given the bargain with the devil people like her have signed with the fundie crazies re Israel?
jibeaux
O/T but I would like to say that I am pleased that the Mutual Beneficial Arrangements ad seems to have been replaced with the Bad Kitty books ad. If you have a beginning reader, they are cute, funny books.
Samara Morgan
One of the funniest twitter feeds in the Omnium.
fake jen rubin.
Sloegin
Clowns are gonna wear clown shoes, especially if they’re paid very very well to do it.
JCT
OK, this is gold.
I am losing my capacity for being gobsmacked over the complete idiocy of these pundits. I think my bar is now just lying on the ground.
The tough part is I have a college senior who has worked her ass off for 4 years at a tough school and ended up with a stellar education. But here I am losing sleep at night over whether she will be employed after she graduates in June. And complete blithering morons like Jennifer Rubin get paid to scribble with crayons and pull stuff out of their ass.
Insane.
reflectionephemeral
That Rubin quote reminds me of the epic Newt press release from the first time his campaign imploded:
What’s the difference, in substance and attitude, between Gingrich supporters and Romney supporters, anyway?
Applejinx
@reflectionephemeral: I just had to go watch the dramatic John Lithgow reading of that press release again…
RSA
Mitt’s says he’s concerned with the 90% to 95% of Americans he calls middle class. But the 5th percentile for annual household income is about $6,500. Mitt has no idea what it means to be poor; he also has no idea what it means to be middle class. How can Rubin not see that?
wilfred
Rubin is the poster girl of the Israel Firsters. To her, the difference between Romney and Gingrich is that the former is at least theoretically electable. Romney has already made vassalage to the Israel Firsters so it’s win win for Jennifer and the rest of the WP editorial board.
Mormons convert dead people, too, by the way. They don’t have to be alive to be saved.
dmbeaster
Rubin is proof positive of the neocon takeover of WaPo under Hiatt. A complete despicable hack who is protected because she has the right kind of bias.
Chris
@RSA:
Sort of like when they brought out Joe the Plumber and tried to pass off $250,000 a year as a working salary.
Linda Featheringill
The anti-Romney forces on the right? I guess there are anti-Newt forces on the right, too.
[And don’t knock the attack kitties. :-)]
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@wilfred:
Shhh, not s’posed to say that. BAD WORDZ NOW.
(Even if they happen to be true).
Yevgraf
@sock puppet:
“I don’t ever drink beer. Or wine. Or hard liquor. Or coffee. And when I don’t do that, I reach for a cup of Postum, and read a coffee table book. Stay sober, my friends.”
RSA
@Chris: Right, I was forgetting about the top end. The middle 95% of households earn from about $6,500 to $230,000 annually. To Mitt, these households are indistinguishable.
LittlePig
@Yevgraf: Very nice, tho’ I’d go with ‘Postum table book’. I can just hear it.
Frankensteinbeck
If they pick Newt, the GOP finally admits to the nation they’re the party of racism. If they pick Romney, the GOP finally admits to the nation they’re the party of helping the rich squeeze the poor. I’m likin’ this. Reagan’s major achievement was putting a false face on those two facts, and it lasted for thirty years. Now it’s crumbling.
Original Lee
Oh, Zandar, I think I love you.
MeDrewNotYou
I fucking love your comparisons.
MeDrewNotYou
@LittlePig: Nothing beats, “Oh my heck!”
Patricia Kayden
So will Mittens pull a Palin and simply not do interviews with the “lamestream media”?
Luthe
You know, I think a better name for Romney is “The Most Inconsistent Man in the World.”
See also, Romneycare v. Obamacare, gay rights, his “unemployment,” etc. With the number of flip-flops and outright lies he’s told, there’s plenty of material.
DFH no.6
We here surely recognize this rant that the liberal media will just not “leave poor Mitt ALOOOONE!” to be utter bullshit hackery, but that’s not how it will be processed by said media (not that anyone’s going to “get in line” just because Jennifer Rubin says so).
Rubin lives in the rightwing bizarro world of up-is-down. “Romney as the nominee will be flyspecked and criticized over every word”?
By American media? Not hardly.
In the general campaign most of the media will not only bend way over backwards to make excuses and cut Willard slack for the stupid and awful shit he constantly says, and continue to do the whole false equivalency thing with anything Obama or some random “leftie” says, but will in fact actively promote Romney as the “free-marketeer” business pro who’s just the ticket for these difficult economic times.
That water-carrying will constitute the bulk of Romney “coverage”, not Rubin’s nonsense about criticism, “crazed” or otherwise. Count on it.
Kola Noscopy
testing
LAC
Poor, silly Jenny. Paul Ryan isn’t returning her calls so now she has to use her “O” face on Mitch Rommneyzzzzzzzz. To the WAPO board member whose donkey sex show pictures Rubin is using to stay employed at WAPO? Next time use a paper bag over your head…
LAC
@Yevgraf:
Here’s the commercial in my head:
(voiceover)The sound of his voice has been known to make GOP operatives wish for a time machine to take them to 2016.
He is the inspiration for the Grown Up Ken Doll
Some say that he is actually David Axelrod playing a trick on us
He is… the least interesting man in the world
(Rommney raises a glass of milk) Stop crying, my friends…
Stentor
Looked up a picture of her, because I wasn’t familiar with her face. Woof! Woof! Damn! Definitely not an attractive woman, so I guess her mind is just as ugly as her face.