The NYT's lead White House reporter is bored, thinks you're bored, and calls it a jump ball. https://t.co/r6F8uJzBog pic.twitter.com/pv2a7mjVOj
— Dan Froomkin (PressWatchers.org) (@froomkin) August 15, 2023
‘Chief White House Correspondent’, putting the prick back into Peter, Mr. Baker…
Another grand jury, another indictment. For the fourth time in as many months, former President Donald J. Trump was charged on Monday with serious crimes and what was once unprecedented has now become surreally routine.
The novelty of a former leader of the United States being called a felon has somehow worn off. Not that the sweeping 98-page indictment handed up in Georgia accusing him of corruptly trying to reverse the state’s 2020 election results was any less momentous. But a country of short attention spans has now seen this three times before and grown oddly accustomed to the spectacle…
i'm not saying it would be easy to get a rigorous, evidence-based sense of where public opinion is but I am saying that if all you can do is call up the first two or three republican consultants in your phone to see what they reckon then it would be better if you didn't bother
— flglmn (@flglmn) August 16, 2023
And again!
Holy shit. You're telling me Biden is vacationing with his one remaining living son for the weekend? Idk why that's bad, but I am furious!
— Centrism Fan Acct ?? (@Wilson__Valdez) August 19, 2023
And the importance of any of this is what, exactly? https://t.co/AdCpF4h0fV
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) August 19, 2023
Think the tweet below was meant to read ‘… in order to fund Baker’s retirement property at the beach’:
Seriously, presidents stay at rich people's houses, even if they themselves are rich. Hunter's presence is a surprise? WTF?
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) August 19, 2023
Beyond parody.
Literal "both sides" story.
Such vitally important information.
— ErinLWOH (@ErinLwoh) August 20, 2023
Over 60% of Americans say they disapprove of Donald Trump’s conduct. But at this New York Times staff meeting, that percentage seems much lower.
— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) August 16, 2023
And the mini-Bakers of the mainstream press will run dutifully behind him, yowling all the way…
The press doesn’t just want to even the partisan playing field on policy questions; they pretty clearly don’t think it’s fair that Donald Trump has a shitload of legal problems and Joe Biden doesn’t, so they pump this Hunter stuff. https://t.co/DQ1JRIDvzQ
— The Fig Economy (@figgityfigs) August 19, 2023
Alison Rose
You deserve a raise, AL.
Ruckus
I think that I am actually pretty fucking pissed off that the GOP sees everything as if looking in a guilty mirror.
You know, that mirror that when you look at it and say anything about someone in the opposite political party every word that comes out of your mouth is a confession of how badly you’ve fucked up your life.
Origuy
I was in the Lake Tahoe area last month. There was a lot of road construction on the Nevada side; I wonder if they finished it before the President got there. They were also hauling dead trees out by helicopter and stopped traffic on the road when the chopper flew over. That can’t be cheap. Steyer’s house is in Glenbrook, near the junction of US-50 and CA-29; that’s just about where the chopper was. I wonder if the Secret Service had something to do with that.
eclare
So, so frustrating. And I am glad Hunter is spending time with his family, he needs them more than ever now.
HumboldtBlue
DougJ is a goddamn snark sniper. Rarely does he miss, and if he does happen to miss, it’s by a hair.
I am re-watching My Blue Heaven with Steve Martin, Rick Moranis and Joan Cusack, and I am enjoying it as much as I did the first time I watched it.
As I get older, I find myself watching the intros and credits to movies and shows much more, and it’s no surprise MBH is a Nora Ephron flick, I tend to like her stuff. Goldie Hawn too.
Citizen Alan
Blood-gargling psychopaths Peter Baker and (his wife) Susan Glasser are still furious with Biden for ending the War in Afghanistan, which they both needed to maintain sexual arousal. It’s no coincidence that their nepo-baby Theo Baker, who won a Polk Award as a fucking freshman, was conceived sometime during the Shock and Awe stage of the Iraq War.
Brachiator
Ugh. These are sad but great examples of the jaded, insider cynicism of the Beltway press and the sneering right tilt of the NY Times.
The first sentence of this snippet wants the reader to think that Biden is just like Clarence Thomas, hanging out with billionaires for whom he will do favors.
But no. He’s just staying at the guy’s home. You might not approve of this, but it is not the same as Clarence Thomas. And you might need to be a CPA to understand how Biden is putting extra distance from any possible impropriety by paying fair market value rent for the home.
And the cherry on top is the reporter’s slimy suggestion that Biden is doing something wrong by including his son on a family vacation.
The whole thing is a lazy fucking smear job.
ETA. I mentioned before that David Brooks mentioned that he knew and was friends with Clarence Thomas’s sugar daddy. I wonder how many other political reporters regularly pal around with billionaires?
piratedan
Biden gets South Korea and Japan at the same table to talk about strategic partnering, and you know, this shit is kind of important and is also incredibly sensitive considering the history involved and Japanese recalcitrance to take ownership of their past behavior in regards to Korea, so coercing everyone to the table in recognition of shared interests, both politically and economically.
The press wants to know if China came up, shit yes it did, but I bet North Korea and Russia came up too. I’m guessing Taiwan came up as well, and Vietnam and Myanmar and Indonesia and The Phiilipines… I mean hell, it was a summit attempting to get key Democracies that exist in the region and get together on the same page.
Instead, we get the usual press corps idiocy, no nuance… yes, I’m sure China was a big concern, not just in regards to politics and economics, but what happens if Russia collapses, what about the Chinese economy, which has its own concerns and the internal unrest that always appears to be simmering under the surface. How do they view India as a growing economic power in the region? I mean there’s more to the region and its challenges that await us on the planet.
I just find it irritating that on average, every damn jackal on Balloon Juice has more on the ball about damn near everything than 89% of the press.
Chetan Murthy
@piratedan:
You’re right, but we’re not paid seven figure salaries to drool on national television. I mean, wouldn’t you do What Peter Baker does for a sweet $2 million a year? [I’m making up the salary figure I don’t actually know what he gets paid But I’m sure he also gets other income from other sources that all adds up to a tidy tidy sum]
Mai Naem mobileI
Mai Naem mobileI
Chetan Murthy
@Mai Naem mobileI: your #2: Atrios talks about this a lot: the idea that there’s lots of things reporters know about elected officials and rich people, but they don’t tell us hoi polloi because after all if they did they’d lose their access.
Mai Naem mobileI
@Chetan Murthy: the business reporters are in some ways even worse. Elon, Elizabeth Holmes and SFB have gotten some real tongue bath treatments from the press. I used to watch CNBC and most of the coverage is so superficial.
rikyrah
@Mai Naem mobileI:
You are correct about those Supreme Court reporters. How could they have NOT KNOWN about Thomas et al?😠😠😠
rikyrah
They resent the competence of 46 and his Administration😠😒
NotMax
@HumboldtBlue
For some movies, the credits are the best parts.
;)
sab
@Mai Naem mobileI: I bet Peter Baker still pronounces it Nevahda although he has been corrected a thousand times.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
They also like that there was always something to write about SFB.
I don’t know what makes a lot of reporters write what they do and how they do it but I’d bet some of it comes from the people that sign their checks, because the people that sign the checks of the people that sign employee checks tell them what to do, and if that means how they think about their job, most people are not going to leave a decent paying job that has a side of attention served with it.
Tony Jay
It’s of a piece with that muchly-mockable Ruth Marcus piece last week whining that the Georgia indictment(s) were too much of a pile-on and that ‘people’ were starting to detect the stench of partisan overreach.
It’s a deplorable fact of the world we live in that corporate media reserve the right in all cases to tell their viewers not only what they do and don’t care about, but what they do or don’t think about these things that they’re told they care about. That’s their ‘job’, and when their viewers fail to live up to their part of the bargain by voting the way they’re told they think they should vote, the corporate media will just carry on regardless until such a time as their viewers wise up and get back in line.
It just so happens in all cases that what the corporate media know their viewers really think coincides with whichever take on current events would most benefit the dominant Right Wing party.
Feature, not a bug.
ColoradoGuy
Driftglass is right: Both Siderism is a religion in the national press corps. No matter how low the Republicans go, there’s always a false equivalence that must be found.
World is round, world is flat: opinions differ, and we report the controversy!
Kathleen
@Citizen Alan: I endorse this comment. It’s truth. These soulless ghouls are vile. All of them.
Kathleen
@Mai Naem mobileI: That is an excellent point.
karen marie
@Chetan Murthy: As Driftglass reminds us: there’s a club, and you’re not in it.
Very expensive wine is tasty, especially when you have friends who will invite you to a nice dinner where it’s served and they’re picking up the tab.
Nina strikes me as someone who’s developed a taste for fine wines.
karen marie
@ColoradoGuy: Something something minds think alike.
gene108
@ColoradoGuy:
Opinions do differ on the shape of our planet. Is it fair to only treat one side of the debate as credible?
We learn nothing by cancel culturing the side we disagree with. This doesn’t broaden discourse or achieve a consensus on what people believe is right.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
They’ve investigated Biden’s kid for 5 years. If they had something the Dump appointed attorney in Delaware would have charged him by now.
The statue of limitations for most federal laws is five years. Time is almost up.
Brachiator
@Mai Naem mobileI:
Just in case this thread is still alive.
Excellent point. There used to be talk among mainly male reporters covering mainly male political figures about the “gentleman’s agreement” where no one would write about who was having affairs or who was an alcoholic or who was in the closet unless it clearly affected their job performance.
There may be some of this. But as another poster noted, reporters want access. And sometimes if they don’t dig too deep, they stay on good terms with the people they cover.
But I think that this is an excuse given by lazy reporters who don’t want to dig for a story. I also think that too many reporters and editors want to be part of the club. They want access and an occasional invitation to a party or event. Or maybe they are veteran reporters who have been around so long and have so much seniority that they hang out in the same social circles as the people they cover.
And some reporters may get a little extra job security if they file puff pieces and keep their bosses and the political figures happy.
gene108
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
Investigation won’t until either Hunter and/or Joe are dead.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/attorney-general-garland-appoints-special-counsel-hunter-biden-probe-rcna99447
TriassicSands
@Brachiator: “You might not approve of this.”
I neither approve, nor disapprove, but in these times, especially given the current MSM practices, it would probably be better to avoid something that the media can turn into the appearance of equivalence with Clarence Thomas. It’s not like the reading public is overly astute.
Why give them something when it is obvious how they will try to portray it? The answer is elusive, since almost anything can be twisted into something it is not by a determined media outlet. Still, there must be a better place to stay than in a billionaire’s home. I’d change my mind, if I called Steyer and asked him if I could stay in his house by paying the “fair market value.” And he said, “Sure.” What is the “fair market value” of staying in a billionaire’s house? I don’t know since I don’t know any billionaires.
I realize Biden is over 80, but, ideally, he should be sleeping on the ground in a tent in an overpriced, commercial campground. Oh, wait, the media would claim he is wasting federal funds by not sleeping in the Walmart parking lot in the back seat of a government SUV. Oh, wait…
Baud
@ColoradoGuy:
The world must be parabolic. #MeetThemHalfway
Shalimar
@Brachiator: My parents were newspaper editors, so I grew up knowing pretty much every political figure in our state. Objectivity has always been difficult, and yet it seems so much worse now than when I was growing up. Then they kept private stories private as long as they didn’t affect the public. Now it seems like any story that powerful people disagree with isn’t going to be covered at all.
TriassicSands
@Brachiator:
Many New York Times political reporters will leave no stone unturned in their search for false equivalence and bothsiderism. But that’s true at the Post, as well. Our two “premier” newspapers.
Separation of Church and State is barely on life support in this country thanks to Alito, Thomas, et al., but separation of reporters and politicians has been dead for some time now. As you point out, it’s all about access. Perhaps we need a new law that requires elected officials to speak to reporters and an assumption that “No comment” or non-answer answers mean “Of course I’m guilty, lying, or trying to screw everyone but my pals.”
If we had two political parties that were actually actively engaged in trying to help all of their constituents, not just the wealthy, politicians might be a lot more interested in granting access, so they could talk about all the positive things they plan to do. However, with the Republican Party’s politicians having embraced positions somewhere on the spectrum from authoritarianism to fascism, it’s understandable that they don’t want to speak honestly about their plans. And, I’d like to think, that if Republicans magically became responsible governing partners, that would put pressure on, or enable, Democrats to be even more constituent oriented. Sadly, that would also require massive changes in campaign financing.
I’m not criticizing Democrats here, just pointing out that in a rotten system it is more difficult for even good elected officials to be as good as they could and probably want to be. it makes me think of the health care system, in which good doctors are hamstrung by a horrendously corrupt and dysfunctional system, which severely limits their ability to provide the best, or often, even adequate care.
matt
Republican attempts to fabricate scandals need to be allowed to succeed sometimes so they don’t get bored and stop wanting to play.
lowtechcyclist
Hear the voices in my head, I swear to God it sounds like they’re snoring,
well, if you’re bored then you’re boring,
the agony and the irony, they’re killing me, so
I’m not sick but I’m not well…
-Harvey Danger, “Flagpole Sitta”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYsMjEeEg4g
TriassicSands
@Shalimar: “Now it seems like any story that powerful people disagree with isn’t going to be covered at all.”
I see it a bit differently. Now, outlets like Fox News will not only report on anything they think will hurt Democrats, they will blow things out of proportion and go so far as to make or imply false allegations.
The so-called “liberal” newspapers continue, in the face of overwhelming counter-evidence, to treat the GOP as if it is a responsible governing partner and go to great lengths to find (false) equivalent examples of how Democrats do “it” too. It’s unusual to find a story about Republican misbehavior that somewhere doesn’t bring up the Democrat’s “similar” offenses.
One example of that came in the Post’s fact checking in which they selected the worst lies and misstatements of the year. Trump and other Republicans were prominently mentioned and then, the article brought up Biden’s Pinocchio-earning fabrications. Those that Trump and other Republicans were called on were very serious and were part of the threat they pose to democracy in the US. Biden’s “equivalent” sins were typical of Biden — ridiculous exaggerations that were fairly typical of the kind of stuff politicians have spewed forever. They threatened nothing important and were mostly commonplace Biderisms in which he exaggerates his accomplishments or tells stories that make him look good, but for which reporters can find no evidence that they ever occurred. For better or worse, Biden has done that forever and it would be better if he stopped doing it. However, nothing he was called on belonged in the same article with the Republican’s lies.
HinTN
@Brachiator:
I’m old enough to remember that the shorthand for deriding this proclivity was “cocktail weenies”.
Princess
I can tell you, I’m definitely bored of the strategies Baker uses to normalize Trump’s criminality. He always has the same schtick.
Ocotillo
@Origuy: Hmmm, dead trees? You sure they weren’t also raking the forest?
Patricia Kayden
@gene108: If Hunter Biden did something criminal, most of us on the left are perfectly fine with him being punished in accordance with applicable penalties. We’re not going to defend his criminality just because he’s the President’s son. We’re not cultists.
Soprano2
@Brachiator: I can’t get over the scare quotes around “fair market value”, as if that’s not true. Clarence Thomas took gifts worth tens of thousands of dollars every year and didn’t report them as required. Biden pays rent for a house. Somehow they have to try to make these two things the same, thus the scare quotes.
JML
The political reporters all know that there are a lot of limitation on where a president can vacation purely based on the security requirements for the Secret Service. Which is one of the reasons they end up using a rich person’s home: it already meets a lot of the security standards. Baker’s just a hack. I hope people bash him incessantly for this kind of crap, because he deserves as much internet scorn as can be heaped upon him.
SFAW
@Soprano2:
I had the same initial reaction, because FTFTFNYT/Baker. But I think it’s more likely a case he was just quoting the WH press statement.
I mean, Baker’s still a Rethug operative, and it gives him (im)plausible deniability, but still …
zhena gogolia
I know Matt Weiner is no hero, but I just noticed a razor-sharp little depiction of a smarmy New York Times reporter in Mad Men Season 4, Episode 5, “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword.” It’s lovely.
PPCLI
@Soprano2: And also prefixing it with “the white house says it is…”.
Look, Baker, you are a reporter. It isn’t hard to look up local rental listings to get a sense of how much such a rental would cost. If it is out of line with market values, say so. If not, then drop the “white house says” and report what a reasonable estimate of fair market value actually is. Lazy bastard.
Parfigliano
@PPCLI: You are asking him to work.
JerrytheMacGuy
@Shalimar: “Now it seems like any story that powerful people disagree with isn’t going to be covered at all.”
No, that’s not true. They save it for their “tell-all” book years later.