(h/t commentor Comrade Mary)
.
The lead Media Village Idiots at Politico (h/t commentor jamick6000) are very, very wounded by President “Puppet Master” Obama’s refusal to get more intimate with them:
President Barack Obama is a master at limiting, shaping and manipulating media coverage of himself and his White House.
Not for the reason that conservatives suspect: namely, that a liberal press willingly and eagerly allows itself to get manipulated. Instead, the mastery mostly flows from a White House that has taken old tricks for shaping coverage (staged leaks, friendly interviews) and put them on steroids using new ones (social media, content creation, precision targeting). And it’s an equal opportunity strategy: Media across the ideological spectrum are left scrambling for access.
The results are transformational. With more technology, and fewer resources at many media companies, the balance of power between the White House and press has tipped unmistakably toward the government. This is an arguably dangerous development, and one that the Obama White House — fluent in digital media and no fan of the mainstream press — has exploited cleverly and ruthlessly. And future presidents from both parties will undoubtedly copy and expand on this approach.
“The balance of power used to be much more in favor of the mainstream press,” said Mike McCurry, who was press secretary to President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Nowadays, he said, “The White House gets away with stuff I would never have dreamed of doing. When I talk to White House reporters now, they say it’s really tough to do business with people who don’t see the need to be cooperative.”…
Eight years of accusing the Clintons of every possible crime, up to and including large-scale drug running and multiple murders, followed by eight years of dutifully promulgating whatever bullshit and phantasms the Cheney Regency invented, and the Very Serious Media is shocked, shocked that President Obama would rather “spend way more time talking directly to voters via friendly shows and media personalities”. Or that “Obama’s aides are better at using technology and exploiting the president’s ‘brand.’… [T]hey are obsessed with taking advantage of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and every other social media forums, not just for campaigns, but governing.”
You’d think Tha Meeja would at least admire the Obama administration’s deftness in beating them at their own game, but… “The president’s staff often finds Washington reporters whiny, needy and too enamored with trivial matters or their own self-importance.”…Oooo, burn…
Alison
These whiny little shits. Excuse me while I go look for some fucks to give.
TS
So politico hates President Obama – nothing new to report
LosGatosCA
I think it’s time for a bloggers ethics panel – it’s all their fault.
Of course, letting the birthers and the TeaBagging morons calling him a commie Muslim for 4 years without serious pushback did not influence the Obama team’s thinking on their credibility or usefulness in governing.
The Politico business model is fine, just don’t call it journalism.
Mustang Bobby
I’m having flashbacks to proctoring Grade 8 study hall.
MattF
The media hated and mocked Carter and overlooked Reagan’s various incapacities, so this has been going on for a while. But they really jumped the rails about the Clintons– both Bill and Hilary– and I’ve yet to see a good history and explanation of that.
LosGatosCA
@MattF:
Plus Gore 2000, inventing the Internet and Kerry 2004, Swift Boating.
It’s amazing these people still get a paycheck.
Villago Delenda Est
The former gatekeepers are pissed that the end of their cushy “jobs” is in sight. They’ll have to go out and actually work for a living, and this frightens and angers them.
Too fucking bad, maggots. Suffer, assholes. Suffer.
Bonnie
Mike McCurry was one of the most entertaining press secretaries since James Brady before he was shot by Hinkley. I’m glad he didn’t shy away from any question. Of course, he was followed by one of the dumbest press secretaries ever–whose name has slipped my mind. Bush’s little blonde Barbie. But, I do not understand what the big thing is about not knowing every minute detail of a conversation between the President and Tiger Woods. Not much of a dream interview for me. Nor do I see any national security issue in it. Politico always after the wrong story.
Mustang Bobby
@Bonnie: “Bush’s little blonde Barbie.” That would be Dana Perino. She’s lighting it up at Fox News.
JGabriel
Shorter Vandehei & Allen:
.
Baud
Wait…I thought the MSM consensus was that Obama had done a poor job with messaging.
Seems like another example of the “Obama is an evil genius who needs a teleprompter” meme.
Whatever sticks.
Sinnach
I just finished watching MSNBC’s special on the Iraq War. They tried oh so hard to draw a line between the administration and Colin Powell; to portray Powell as thoroughly competent but beholden to Bush’s decisions and willful deceit.
It makes him look way worse than if it had not tried to defend him at all. It’s pointing out that he knew what he was doing was wrong but did it anyway.
NotMax
Ho-litico?
47% of Politico is crap, another 47% is crud, 5½% is trash, and the remaining ½% is the exception to the rule.
NotMax
@Bonnie
So far as press secretaries go, Jerald terHorst stands alone on a pedestal, having the intestinal fortitude to resign when Ford pardoned Nixon, and the strength of conscience to make it crystal clear why was leaving.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Self-inflicted obsolescence. Well earned and truly deserved.
End transmission.
Nutella
@NotMax:
Thanks for the reminder. I had forgotten Jerry terHorst. Check out his resignation letter on his Wikipedia page. Impressive.
Rita R.
@Bonnie:
I had a Monicagate-era crush on Mike McCurry because of those press conferences and the way he jousted with the reporters. Intelligence and competence is sexy, yo.
@Mustang Bobby:
Dana Perino, the woman who didn’t know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was. Then again, Bush probably didn’t (still doesn’t?) either.
The White House press corps takes its lashings from the Republicans, whether they hold the presidency or not, and say, “Thanks sir can I have another.” They see the GOP as the jocks that beat them up in high school and crave their attention and approval. When Democrats do it, or even if the Dems just play the game better and around the useless D.C. press, the whining starts. They view the Democrats as the wimps they felt superior to in high school because they covered student council for the school paper and kissed a girl once in sophomore year after she’d had too much to drink and then thew up on them, and can’t bear being out-thought, out-acted, and out-everythinged by them.
BTW — that frog is creepy.
JoyceH
@Rita R.:
Awwwww – it PEEPS!
amk
@Villago Delenda Est: Bingo. These corrupt lil’ thugs are afraid of losing their meaningless, overpaid cushy jobs and are pissed that the kenyan muslin is accelerating the demise of their ilk and their kind of trivia journalism. Fuck’em.
raven
joe is explaining this all
raven
Joe is sick of hearing how badly Obama is treated since Clinton was treated the same way.
mai naem
You guys forgot Ari Fleischer. The guy who said you were committing treason if you were questioning anything Dubbya did. You would have thought Perino would know about the Bay of Pigs only because the GOP have kissed Cuban ass for so long.
amk
@NotMax: roger simon is the only one worth reading some times. Rest is all gop and propaganda.
Schlemizel
@Sinnach:
People do not raise to the rank of General without knowing how to kiss a lot of ass and knowing exactly when to kiss it. Powell succeeded in part because he was very good at doing as his superiors wished. He even rose to the rank of Cabinet Secretary.
This worship of military leaders as men of special wisdom, rectitude and honesty is bullshit and we need to stop believing in them as somehow different and better than “ordinary men”.
Schlemizel
@raven:
Thats funny because I thought all this explained Joe!
Patricia Kayden
@raven: It’s good that you watch Joe so that we don’t have to.
The Clintons were indeed treated horribly but President Obama’s race is definitely a factor in the hysteria against him. At least the Clintons had a few “scandals” (Monica Lewinsky, affairs, travel-gate, White Water, etc.). No Drama Obama hasn’t had any scandals that I can think of.
amk
@Patricia Kayden:
but… ben ghazi, ben ghazi, ben ghazi
raven
@Sinnach: But he is good at pronunciation.
raven
Here is letter to the prez about DOMA from my friend who had to leave the US for Australia with her wife.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Thank you, Raven. I was thinking about your friends just the other day. This is a brilliant letter and I hope it gets wide distribution, ultimately to the President’s attention.
BruceFromOhio
They finally figured out Rove had been playing them for over a decade, now they’re mad as hell, not gonna take it anymore, blah blah blah.
It’s okay, Cokie Roberts will be on NPR a bit later telling me what I should think. I always feel better afterwards.
Frankensteinbeck
Obama did not make the MSM irrelevant. He reacted to it.
The Original Raven
This has been going on since Reagan, perhaps since JFK, who was the first media president.
“Things in Politico that make me want to guzzle anti-freeze.”–Charles P. Pierce
WereBear
Exactly. Mr WereBear was reacting to the Rachel Maddow special, Hubris, and saying how much the press did NOT do their jobs. If they were to tell the truth now, can you imagine?
The Republicans are doing nothing but obstruct on these issues, Senator Graham. Why is your deficit plan to increase the deficit?
Gosh, I hope I live to see it.
sherparick
“The president’s staff often finds Washington reporters whiny, needy and too enamored with trivial matters or their own self-importance.”… Gee, you think??? Having, as Bob Somerby, would put it, follow Maureen Dowdism into the blackhole of the dumb, they now find themselves stranded in irrelevancy.
By the way, all these stories is because POTUS went down to Florida without them for the weekend to play golf with Tiger and they didn’t get to shout out questions about porn stars.
AIMAI
I don’t think I’m alone in being tired of seeing my President attacked and vilified. I’ve stopped reading or seeing TV which doesn’t seem to reflect my feelings about fact and history–let alone those that printed obvious lies as “questions” during both the Clinton years and now the Obama years. I’m not saying I’m not interested in hearing what is really going on politically but the Press doesn’t cover that anymore since they query the sincerity and goals of the Democrats but not the Republicans. The coverage of what happens on the Hill is, literally, incoherent at this point.
The problem Politico et al are having is that Obama (and Michelle) are incredibly popular qua celebrities, as a married couple, and as President and First Lady. People want to click those stupid links but they want, at the end, either information or a feel good story. The Press throws up Obama stories with great abandon but they conform to right wing needs by making the stories hostile, or weird, or empty of content. They are like the republican congressmen who listened angrily to Obama’s speech to them and then rushed him to get photos and signatures to show their children. Why should I/would I bother with this kind of reporting? To the extent that I want to know what my President and his administration are up to I can get that information elsewhere.
Anon
A cat would have taken 1 look at the ‘crab’ and realized it wasn’t worthy of its attention. Ergo, cats are better.
low-tech cyclist
And when Obama gives the general public the opportunity to ask him questions via social media, the people ask about actual issues and stuff, rather than the horse-race, inside-baseball crap the paid media asks about.
Given that they’re doing a discernibly worse job of it than regular people with other day jobs do, the need for the existence of a permanent White House press corps, let alone the need for the President to pay attention to them…well, there isn’t a need for them, is there?
MosesZD
“The president’s staff often finds Washington reporters whiny, needy and too enamored with trivial matters or their own self-importance.”
Sums up the Mean Girls Club right there. Someone gets a blow-job and it’s YEARS of bullshit. And at the time I was still a liberal/moderate Javits/Eisenhower Republican who voted 60/40 Rep/Dem.
Now, of course, I’m considered a Dirty Fucking Hippie who is too liberal for many of the Obama-bots seeing as I believe in such things as the fucking rule of law and that you don’t murder people, pass on tortures and criminals because they were following orders or think that any asshole has the right to preemptively drone strike people ‘because trust me’ so you want to set the proper world standard for state-run terrorism.
Which is odd, because my core political beliefs haven’t changed in close to 30 years…
Ash Can
They should have seen this coming from Day One. Remember how Obama’s campaign end-ran the press on the VP pick? People could sign up in advance at the campaign website to receive a text message announcing the pick that was sent out just before the official press release. And if that wasn’t enough to get it through the heads of the newsies how things were going to be from now on, there was also the first press conference, at which the prez was all but calling the White House stenographers idiots to their faces. It’s not Obama’s fault that these guys weren’t smart enough, when confronted with a president far more intelligent and competent than Dubya, to up their game accordingly.
And, SQUEEEE! FROGGY!
Patricia Kayden
@AIMAI: I agree with you. From where I sit, FLOTUS and POTUS are pretty popular as a couple. While there are those on the extremes who hate them to no end, overall, they’re doing okay with the public. I cannot imagine The Bot and Queen Ann getting the love shown to the current WH occupants.
arguingwithsignposts
@Patricia Kayden:
It would be better, however, if NOBODY had to watch Morning Ho. I fail to see a good reason that shitshow fail parade is still on the air.
Kay
I just can’t get away from the fact that the biggest story of the 2012 cycle was the original reporting done by what may have been a member of the waitstaff at a fundraiser.
While I recognize that Corn picked up the 47% tape and verified it, and I am grateful that he was able to lend it legitimacy among other members of his profession, the fact is it wasn’t his work.
They just didn’t see fit to tell us anything at all about Mitt Romney. Without that waiter, or whoever did the recording, I don’t know that we ever would have heard anything at all about the real Mitt Romney.
Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.)
“This is an arguably dangerous development…”
That right there is as good an illustration of why these people are on the way out. The whole story is a breathless warning about how awful and dangerous it is that the Obama administration won’t talk to the press enough, and in their own story, they can’t even work up the guts to call it “dangerous” without their weaselly qualifier: The president won’t talk to us enough, and this is awful. Well, some say it could be awful. And dangerous, arguably dangerous.
These assholes couldn’t tell us what they ate for lunch without qualifying it. Some people say I had tuna fish, and an argument could be made that that’s true. But sources say, on condition of anonymity, that there may be evidence that I ate chicken. On the whole, it’s best to leave this question open for now, until an official spokesman can be reached.
arguingwithsignposts
@MosesZD:
Oh, it’s not just the Washington reporters, but a certain set of journalistic pretenders who somehow find their way to the top of a number of beats, from sports to celebrities to New York culture (god, but those people are self-important!).
My response would be: and? The best way to combat that perception is stop doing the bullshit you’re doing now and try to be less whiny, needy and enamored with trivial matters and don’t think about your self-importance.
But none of them got to where they are by doing those things, so it would take an entire transplant of the press corps to achieve anything of the like.
MattF
@AIMAI: I agree, the coverage is mainly tiresome and irritating. In fact, the repetition and perseveration of the Drudge Flashing-Lights Big Story, the feces-flinging-see-what-sticks political coverage have long ago crossed the line into psychological dysfunction. Who wants watch the downward path of an incurable personality disorder?
Helen Bedd
Shorter Politico
“Obama said f#ck the gatekeepers,” and the gatekeepers had a sad.
ps
“The president’s staff often finds Washington reporters whiny, needy and too enamored with trivial matters or their own self-importance.”
It’s obvious that the beltway boys don’t see the inherent truth of this…they wrote an entire article that proves they are “too enamored with trivial matters and/or their own self-importance.”
Susanna K.
Had to stop the frog video. It was making my cat go nuts & I was afraid she’d attack the computer!
bemused
Morning Joe crew, particularly Joe, thought Obama should be more chummy. Oh right, that will work. I doubt Joe or others really believe this. I think they are just throwing that out there to see if it sticks. Either way, they are pathetic.
aimai
Obama actually went out of his way to meet and greet with people like Brooks and Friedman, IIRC, at the beginning of his first term but they were instantly too cool to be seduced, they were made fun of by the right and he was attacked by the left. What’s in it for him? There isn’t even a space for cool neutrality, at this point, or serious professionalism. The “deans” of the press corps are either shills or buffoons.
RaflW
The near-total inability of the media to do any self-reflection goes hand-in-hand with the GOP’s avoidance of all mirrors.
On a meta level, media folk are right to worry that a Presidency that is too walled off from a press that wants facts and is willing to work and dig for them.
But the press we do have is mostly shite. I can’t really fault the Obama White House for noticing that and trying to do something about it.
This also has a strong element of “ohhh, this new technology is so haaaaaaard, make it stop!” that is just pathetic. Newspapers in particular have had their asses handed to them by the internet. Rather than deal with it, they now blame the President? Fuck that.
Xecky Gilchrist
You’d think Tha Meeja would at least admire the Obama administration’s deftness in beating them at their own game, but…
…but they’re not very bright.
The Ancient Randonneur
Shorter Politic0: The corpurait MEdia haz a sad.
Aaaawwwww … is it raining in DC with all that sadness about?
Scuffletuffle
My cats freaked out at the frog…I took great amusement in playing it periodically for them.
SnarkyShark
I remember watching 911 hearings which featured Richard Clark, the ones where he apologized for the Government letting people down.He was strong and to me very believable. I thought to myself ” Here is the truth finally starting to come out”. Of course the beltway take was Clark was bitter and trying to sell a book also too. It’s like I wasn’t even watching the same hearing.
That’s when I realized what a load of horsesh*t propaganda the press corps really was. Every senior editor and owner needs to be put up against the wall when the time comes. Clowns and courtiers all of em.
gocart mozart
@Patricia Kayden:
Two out of three of those were non-scandels and the other was about a blow job.
jamick6000
crap, now people know I’ve been reading Politico.com
The Ancient Randonneur
Souldn’t that headline be:
ET
don’t see the need to be cooperative
really means
don’t see the need to kiss the White House press corps a**.
Chris
This thread reminds me of an old but hilarious Youtube video from from 2009 or ’10. I give you “Politico Editorial Meeting”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DwiBNZxN6Y
“I want Javers to dig through FEC reports to see which Obama donors have last names that rhyme with curse words. Carol Lee is going to write a White House piece about how no one can prove that Joe Biden is not the Zodiac Killer. And Michael Calderone is working on a blockbuster story about Joe Scarborough’s sweater-vests.”
“Excellent. I’m going back to my office to finalize our Pulitzer submissions.”
It’s from early in the first Obama administration, but the references to potential 2012 Republican candidates aside, couldn’t it just as easily apply to current Politico content?
Chris
@jamick6000: You win the morning!
hitchhiker
I liked the part about how many more questions W answered on the fly than Obama does. The point, dear press, is that you did not tell us when W was lying as he took those questions.
Roy G.
Joe Scar : Squint cloud of butthurt in the morning.
Howlin Wolfe
@Mustang Bobby: As Stephanie Miller calls her, the “lying sack of cute”.
low-tech cyclist
@Kay:
And while that’s an important issue of its own, in this case it’s a side issue. The White House press corps doesn’t do any original reporting, nor have they in eons. Nor does the pundit corps that imagines that they’re a part of the permanent government.
What they CAN do – ALL they can do, really – is ask good questions of those in power. When they fail to do even that – when they’re eclipsed in this task by ordinary citizens asking questions off the top of their heads when the President shows up on Reddit or wherever – then they’re demonstrably worthless.
But even if they did their jobs well, the lack of good reporting would be unchanged. That’s a whole ‘nother problem.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@low-tech cyclist:
Just so.
We really have two distinct problems. The first is that our news media is grossly top-heavy with punditry with very little in the way of actual reporting as a foundation upon which the Tower of Babel can then be built.
I think this is mostly because punditry is easy (“opinions are like assholes, everyone has one”) and reporting is hard and requires not only long and diligent work by the reporter but also a long term commitment of resources by the media outlet which employs the reporter.
The other problem is that judged simply as punditry qua punditry, our mainstream media sucks. Those morons couldn’t think their way out of a wet paper bag if their lives depended on it. The only thing they are any good at is catapulting right-wing propaganda, and they have 30+ years of training and practice to do that, which means they all could be replaced by any reasonably bright middle-school student with no morals and a thirst for ill-gotten cash and all the tiger shrimp you can eat, and nobody would be the wiser. Case in point: a 13-year old wowed CPAC a few years back.
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ
I absolutely despise frogs–it’s a phobia thing. But the noise this thing makes is so squeeeee!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
“The president’s staff often finds Washington reporters whiny, needy and too enamored with trivial matters or their own self-importance.”
Words like this were doubtlessly said during the John Adams administration.
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ
You know it occurs to me that Politico’s complaints about the White House media strategy is similar to the GOP’s complaints about the President.
Newt said, “An Obama plan led and driven by Obama in this atmosphere with the level of hostility towards the president and the way he goads the hostility* I think is very hard to imagine that bill, that his bill is going to pass the House…”
*bold emphasis mine
Shorter aholes–it’s HIS fault, not ours.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ms. D. Ranged in AZ:
Well, you know, he’s near, and that just angries us up something fierce, you know.
The natural, normal order of things would be for these twits to be asking President Rmoney if they can get some rides on his car elevator.
Jay C
@low-tech cyclist:
Beg to seriously differ. I think that for the most part the press corps (and its rear-echelon reserves of the pundit corps) actually still DO take that “Fourth Estate” think pretty seriously – which IMHO, is the core of the problem with this country’s political press. Sally Quinn’s infamous quip about the Clintons encapsulates the attitude perfectly. Our “political” media really is the “Beltway Village”; said Village really is “wired for Republicans”; and they really do consider themselves a permanent fixture of Washington, with elected Administrations (for the most part) the transient ones. An impermanent background against which the Village Media can polish their own resumes, and congratulate themselves on How Important They Are.
And btw, my irony meter pegged out on this: media types are bitching about President Obama’s supposed arms-length attitude toward the press because he didn’t want reporters along at a golf date in Florida with Tiger Woods? The mind, it boggles….
Ben Cisco
The FerengiMedia™ are, if not as big a threat to the country as the NeoConfederates, are certainly willing, even enthusiastic, courtesans.
nellcote
“The president’s staff often finds Washington reporters whiny, needy and too enamored with trivial matters or their own self-importance.”
memo to Politico: It’s not just the WH staff that thinks this.
donquijoterocket
@NotMax:
And on top of that,they seem to have, in this case, mistaken themselves for “journalists”.
Marmot
This whole thing is awesome. Awesome I tell you!
Linda
The Washington press corps is like the bully in A Christmas Story–mean to people they can easily beat up, but whiny and ultimately kowtowing to people who can beat them up. When W was riding high, they wouldn’t touch his ass, and piled on him when he was down. They can only relate to people from fear or contempt. So I say good for Obama. They are getting the treatment they deserve.
pat
Saw a cute bumper sticker today:
I get my comedy from Fox News
And my news from Comedy Central
kathleen
@AIMAI: Yes! These guys are nothing but low-rent, gossipy scandalmongers. And it’s generally not even good scandal! Who needs them?
Pococurante
Ir bothered me when the last administration did it.
I’m equally bothered now.
Del
@Pococurante:
What, exactly, bothers you? That Obama isn’t cowering at the feet of the Pundocracy? W was a lying sack of shit who convinced the media that any argument against him was akin to treason, that calling him on his lies was beneath them. Obama’s doing an end-run around the buggers. So please, please, tell me what the problem with this is.