Obama and the Journolist
[Guest post by DRJ]
Prof. William A. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection explores the connection between Journolist and the Obama campaign/administration:
“So… An Obama campaign operative interacted on the Journolist with sympathetic media types in the run-up to the election, and then rewarded favored Journolistas with a visit to the White House.”
On the plus side, some Journolist members don’t care for Keith Olbermann. Apparently they don’t like the way he treated Hillary Clinton and other women like Carrie Prejean.
I’m curious about the Obama-Journolist connections. I always assumed Obama campaign and Administration sources talked to Journolist members, who shared Obama’s ideas and positions with their fellow Journolistas. Now I wonder if it wasn’t more of a two-way street where Journolistas batted around PR ideas and came up with storylines and recommendations they funneled to Obama sources. Is it possible that losing its Journolist sounding board explains why the Administration was initially so clueless and panicked on the Sherrod story?
— DRJ
Aren’t Biden’s top economic advisor and Orzag JournListers?
JD (b09d7d) — 7/23/2010 @ 2:28 pmNow I wonder if it wasn’t more of a two-way street where Journolistas batted around PR ideas and came up with storylines and recommendations they funneled to Obama sources.
All the Obama folks needed to do was watch what’s being said to figure out what messages would resonate with the JournoListas.
Wonder if Orzag shared his password with Obama?
Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C. O.R. (a18ddc) — 7/23/2010 @ 2:36 pmIs it possible that losing its Journolist sounding board explains why the Administration was initially so clueless and panicked on the Sherrod story?
— Put that one down to basic incompetence.
Icy Texan (81232c) — 7/23/2010 @ 2:46 pmOrzag’s quitting since no one in the White House nor in the Democrat party actually bothered to create a budget.
SPQR (26be8b) — 7/23/2010 @ 2:54 pmAgree with Icy Texan. Obama saw his chance to be post racialist, and imagined he could use this to negate claims he was not biased towards to blacks, but forgot to the necessary homework to make sure of what Sherrod said. That’s incompetence.
And there is after all, Cabalist now.
I’d presume that whatever evidence of WH-Journolist collaboration is in the hands of Tucker Carlson will be published when he thinks the time is appropriate.
kishnevi (6c49d9) — 7/23/2010 @ 3:03 pmOrzag’s quitting since no one in the White House nor in the Democrat party actually bothered to create a budget.
Orzag’s a hack first and foremost, his credibility is beyond repair at this point. Now, if Elmendorf resigned, that would definitely get my attention.
Dmac (d61c0d) — 7/23/2010 @ 3:14 pmI’ve also lost a ton of respect for Volcker for backing that hideous piece of crapola of a “financial reform” bill.
Dmac (d61c0d) — 7/23/2010 @ 3:15 pmWhen Katha Pollitt, noted feminist described in a Journolist dicussion how she held her nose and held her tongue over the worst of the Clinton bimbo eruptions–for the “greater good”– it made me realize that sort of compromise of principles probably happens a lot. Even Volker maybe?
elissa (ac36f5) — 7/23/2010 @ 3:23 pmI’m really much more interested in how the White House didn’t know the tape was coming but the subject of the tape did. There’s an obvious source for the tape there … who seems to be getting job offers.
htom (412a17) — 7/23/2010 @ 3:28 pmI’m confused. Are there some people that really think these so-called journalists are actually reasonable human beings? They sound like complete douchebags to me. They haven’t had an original thought since third grade when they finally woke up and found out that kissing the teacher’s ass meant more than the assignment.
There is NO journalism. There is NO history. There is no education.
xsssx (10aa8c) — 7/23/2010 @ 3:46 pmTo quote Bruce Campbell, “bunch of bitchy little girls”.
SPQR (26be8b) — 7/23/2010 @ 3:48 pmThe JournoListas are the pointy end of Obama’s army of media warriors, his shock troops. They are an essential element defending Obama and his agenda from criticism. Any attempt to distinguish between Obama’s official media advisers and the JournoListas is a failure to grasp the essentials of asymmetrical warfare.
ropelight (02fbf8) — 7/23/2010 @ 5:15 pmIn a JournoList exchange, Spencer Ackerman wrote that Adam Serwer’s post at the American Prospect read like it was written by an Obama speechwriter.
Such a statement would be deeply insulting to any real reporter, but Ackerman meant it as a compliment. One doubleplusgood duckspeaker congratulating another.
Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C. O.R. (a18ddc) — 7/23/2010 @ 5:26 pmTrue. Basically the only “product” reporters have to sell is accurate reporting, objective analysis and independent thought. Many of these Journolist folks seem to think groupthink is a good thing, and I can’t help but believe they think that because they’ve been taught it.
DRJ (d43dcd) — 7/23/2010 @ 5:34 pmBasically the only “product” reporters have to sell is accurate reporting, objective analysis and independent thought.
I wish that were the entire story, but I think what is in such high demand nowadays is the ability for the reporter to break a story. This of course generally involves them having personal access to key decision makers, which leaves the reporter open for being used by a devious and cunning politician for purposes of spin.
I may be a real cynic, but I’ll bet if you went to major newspaper editors and TV news producers and asked them to choose between Reporter A who will break a story first but will have several details wrong and Reporter B who will have the story a day later but with much more accuracy, just about all of them would choose Reporter A.
JVW (a52530) — 7/23/2010 @ 5:40 pmI wonder how they felt about they way he treated Sarah Palin. Or does she not count as a woman?
Some chump (e84e27) — 7/23/2010 @ 5:45 pmShe is just a hootchie and doesn’t deserve respect, SC. Or so I read.
Eric Blair (e5766c) — 7/23/2010 @ 5:59 pmFrom the washingtonexaminer.com:
Sarah Spitz, producer of the KCRW public radio program “Left, Right and Center,” which is heard on a number of NPR stations across the country, wrote on JournoList that if she witnessed [Rush] Limbaugh dying of a heart attack, she would “laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out.”
“I never knew I had this much hate in me,” Spitz wrote, according to the Daily Caller account. “But he deserves it.”
These guys make me sick. If Spitz or any of the Journlisters were on fire I wouldn’t even take the time to urinate on them to put the fire out.
DVS1 (53cca4) — 7/23/2010 @ 6:43 pmI wonder how they felt about they way he treated Sarah Palin. Or does she not count as a woman
And what did he (as opposed to the Democratic Party and the MSM, inasmuch as those two are different things) do to Palin?
Meanwhile, I stumbled over this tonight.
kishnevi (733718) — 7/23/2010 @ 6:50 pmThe Daily Mail obviously would pick speed over accuracy in JVW’s scenario.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1297212/Sarah-Palin-dragon-slayer-political-correctness-riotously-non-PC-supporters.html
The JournoListas conspired to trash Sarah Palin because they can’t stand the idea that a virtually unknown woman could achieve such wide spread credibility with the American people so quickly. The chauvinistic jerks just can’t handle a strong conservative woman’s success, especially a real woman who has husband and a family, and one who can catch a fish or skin a moose.
The JournoListas are hollow men, mincing little pantywaists who’ve never even seen a moose in the wild, or caught and cleaned a fish, and couldn’t keep themselves fed in the woods on an overnight camping trip.
But, the can conspire in secret to destroy a woman they fear.
ropelight (02fbf8) — 7/23/2010 @ 7:02 pmYou missed the point, kishnevi. It wasn’t what Olbermann said about Palin that mattered, it was that members of Journolist were in high dudgeon over things he said about some women, when their own treatment of another woman was less than kind or fair.
Some chump (e84e27) — 7/23/2010 @ 7:04 pmMeanwhile, I stumbled over this tonight.
Jeeze, kishnevi, even my cynicism doesn’t live up to the twaddle peddled in this article. On the hand I am trying to tell myself that the author is probably a Brit writing for a UK newspaper, so she is almost certainly largely ignorant of anything outside of what her lefty media buddies tell her. On the other hand, the author’s penchant for willfully repeating all the half-truths and lies about Sarah Palin and casting every single controversy of hers in the harshest light possible, leads me to believe that this is certainly a purposeful hit piece designed to play into the Euro-left’s wildest dreams of backwoods, ignorant American conservatives. What utter garbage.
JVW (a52530) — 7/23/2010 @ 7:14 pmYes, then again, this was the same paper who described Michelle as some fashion plate, and Sarah
ian cormac (d407d8) — 7/23/2010 @ 7:26 pmas the sexless hockey mom, even with the 150,000 wardrobe which she returned more than half of, and she wasn’t responsible for. I wonder if Colbert is on the Journolist or Stewart, their reaction to her campaign seemed right out of their seminars
JVW–
I read it as a hit piece on, ahem, you should excuse the expression, “Tea Baggers”.
My absurdometer tipped over when the article managed to mix up April 15 and April 19. I felt like sending an email reminding the Mail what did happen on April 19.
kishnevi (3cb554) — 7/23/2010 @ 7:44 pmI felt like sending an email reminding the Mail what did happen on April 19.
Brits can perhaps be excused for wanting to ignore that day and what it led to.
Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (fb9e90) — 7/23/2010 @ 9:02 pmActually, I left a comment there; let’s see if it makes it past the moderation system.
Meanwhile, here it is preserved for posterity
kishnevi (6c49d9) — 7/23/2010 @ 9:24 pm1) It’s not “Tea Baggers”. That’s a mocking name trotted out by the political opponents of the Tea Party.
2) April 15 is the day we officially fork over our yearly installment of money to the Federal Government. April 19 is the anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord–you know, when we got serious about kicking you Brits out.
3) The Tea Party’s real concern is stop a government anxious to grab power over every area of life, especially the economy. If we wanted to live like Europeans, we would live in Europe. But we don’t.
maybe it’s tea sandbaggers now
happyfeet (19c1da) — 7/23/2010 @ 9:25 pmWhen Katha Pollitt, noted feminist described in a Journolist dicussion how she held her nose and held her tongue over the worst of the Clinton bimbo eruptions–for the “greater good”
I’d say a lot more liberals will sell their soul (along with their mother, grandmother and right arm) in the pursuit of — and to uphold — leftism than what those on the right will do.
I’ve often mused that a high percentage of pro-equal-rights, pro-NOW liberal females would rather have a government of 100% liberal males than a government of, say, 80% (or, hell, even 70%) conservative females. Similarly, I bet a high percentage of pro-civil-rights, pro-NAACP blacks would prefer a government dominated by white liberal politicians than one dominated by black conservative politicians.
Mark (411533) — 7/23/2010 @ 10:55 pmWhen Katha Pollitt, noted feminist described in a Journolist dicussion how she held her nose and held her tongue over the worst of the Clinton bimbo eruptions–for the “greater good”
I wonder if Nina Burleigh (Time mag) – “I would be happy to give him [Bill Clinton] a blowjob just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be lining up with their presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs” was a JournoList member, too? She too was obviously willing to sacrifice her soul for the greater good.
Dana (8ba2fb) — 7/24/2010 @ 12:14 amIs there a link to who the writers are that are members of Journolist? I would love to see it.
Arizona Bob (e8af2b) — 7/24/2010 @ 10:11 amColonel think Naughty
ColonelHaiku (6d95fe) — 7/24/2010 @ 10:16 amNina just looking for more
excuses to suck