But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed, when the roar of the crowd fades away, when the stadium lights go out and those styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot, what exactly is our opponents plan?

Remember someone saying that in 2008? Who was it…just remind me…

Well Rex Murphy at Canada’s National Post remembers – and he also recalls the scorn heaped on that person because she dared to wonder if indeed there really were any clothes on a certain emperor.

Three years later those columns are safely back in the studio lot – and the man with the plan?

Under Obama, America’s foreign policies are a mixture of confusion and costly impotence. It is increasingly bypassed or derided; the great approach to the Muslim world, symbolized by the Cairo speech, is in tatters. Its debt and deficits are a weight on the entire global economy. And the office of presidency is less and less a symbol of strength.

Murphy believes that a reckoning is due – with the media

American journalism will have to look back at the period starting with Barrack Obama’s rise, his assumption of the presidency and his conduct in it to the present, and ask itself how it came to cast aside so many of its vital functions. In the main, the establishment American media abandoned its critical faculties during the Obama campaign — and it hasn’t reclaimed them since.

But if the media went easy on Obama, transforming an inexperienced Daley machine hack from Chicago into a demigod no punches were pulled for anyone else

The media trashed Hillary. They burned Republicans. They ransacked Sarah Palin and her family. But Obama, the cool, the detached, the oracular Obama — he strolled to the presidency.
Palin, in particular, stands out as Obama’s opposite in the media’s eyes. As much as they genuflected to the one, they felt the need to turn rotweiler toward the other. If Obama was sacred , classy, intellectual and cosmopolitan, why then Palin must be malevolent, trashy, dumb and pure backwoods-ignorant.

Read the rest here. You and I know the truth of it and it’s a message that is beginning to seep into the ivory towers of the panjandrums of punditocracy themselves. But it bears repeating and it needs to be broadcast loud and clear into all the newsrooms, not just in the US but also across the globe because hacks everywhere took their cue from America’s network and newspaper bosses who clearly turned a blind eye to the airbrushing of Obama’s past.

Don’t ever let them avoid responsibility for the way they abused their power – so here, courtesy of one of the comments on Murphy’s piece, is a list of some of the guilty parties, exposed to sunlight after the “Journolist” debacle. It doesn’t include all the weasels – but it’s a start….

1. Spencer Ackerman – Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect

2. Ben Adler – Newsweek, POLITICO

3. Mike Allen – POLITICO

4. Eric Alterman – The Nation, Media Matters for America

5. Marc Ambinder – The Atlantic

6. Greg Anrig – The Century Foundation

7. Ryan Avent – Economist

8. Dean Baker – The American Prospect

9. Nick Baumann – Mother Jones

10. Josh Bearman – LA Weekly

11. Steven Benen – The Carpetbagger Report

12. Jared Bernstein – Economic Policy Institute

13. Michael Berube – Crooked Timber (blog), Pennsylvania State University

14. Lindsay Beyerstein – (blogger)

15. Joel Bleifuss – In These Times

16. John Blevins – South Texas College of Law

17. Sam Boyd – The American Prospect

18. Rich Byrne – Playwright and freelancer

19. Ta-Nehisi Coates – The Atlantic

20. Jonathan Chait – The New Republic

21. Lakshmi Chaudry – In These Times

22. Isaac Chotiner – The New Republic

23. Michael Cohen – New America Foundation

24. Jonathan Cohn – The New Republic

25. Joe Conason – The New York Observer

26. David Corn – Mother Jones

27. Daniel Davies – The Guardian

28. David Dayen – FireDogLake

29. Brad DeLong – The Economists’ Voice, University of California at Berkley

30. Ryan Donmoyer – Bloomberg

31. Kevin Drum – Washington Monthly

32. Matt Duss – Center for American Progress

33. Eve Fairbanks – The New Republic

34. Henry Farrell – George Washington University

35. Tim Fernholz – American Prospect

36. James Galbraith – University of Texas at Austin (professor)

37. Todd Gitlin – Columbia University

38. Ilan Goldenberg – National Security Network

39. Dana Goldstein – The Daily Beast

40. Merrill Goozner – Chicago Tribune

41. David Greenberg – Slate

42. Robert Greenwald – Brave New Films

43. Chris Hayes – The Nation

44. Don Hazen – Alternet

45. Michael Hirsh – Newsweek

46. John Judis – The New Republic, The American Prospect

47. Michael Kazin – Georgetown University (law professor)

48. Ed Kilgore – Democratic Stategist

49. Richard Kim – The Nation

50. Mark Kleiman – The Reality Based Community

51. Ezra Klein – Washington Post, Newsweek, The American Prospect

52. Joe Klein – TIME

53. Paul Krugman – The New York Times, Princeton University

54. Lisa Lerer – POLITICO

55. Daniel Levy – Century Foundation

56. Alec McGillis – Washington Post

57. Scott McLemee – Inside Higher Ed

58. Ari Melber – The Nation

59. Seth Michaels – MyDD.com

60. Luke Mitchell – Harper’s Magazine

61. Gautham Nagesh – The Hill, Daily Caller

62. Suzanne Nossel – Human Rights Watch

63. Michael O’Hare – University of California, Berkeley

64. Rick Perlstein – Author, Campaign for America’s Future

65. Harold Pollack – University of Chicago

66. Foster Kamer – The Village Voice

67. Katha Pollitt – The Nation

68. Ari Rabin-Havt – Media Matters

69. David Roberts – Grist

70. Alyssa Rosenberg – Washingtonian, The Atlantic, Government Executive

71. Alex Rossmiller – National Security Network

72. Laura Rozen – Politico, Mother Jones

73. Greg Sargent – Washington Post

74. Thomas Schaller – Baltimore Sun

75. Noam Scheiber – The New Republic

76. Michael Scherer – TIME

77. Mark Schmitt – American Prospect

78. Adam Serwer – American Prospect

79. Thomas Schaller – Baltimore Sun (columnist), University of
Maryland, Baltimore County (professor), FiveThirtyEight.com
(contributing writer)

80. Julie Bergman Sender – Balcony Films

81. Walter Shapiro – PoliticsDaily.com

82. Nate Silver – FiveThirtyEight.com

83. Jesse Singal – The Boston Globe, Washington Monthly

84. Ben Smith – POLITICO

85. Sarah Spitz – NPR

86. Adele Stan – The Media Consortium

87. Kate Steadman – Kaiser Health News

88. Jonathan Stein – Mother Jones

89. Sam Stein – The Huffington Post

90. Jesse Taylor – Pandagon.net

91. Steven Teles – Yale University

92. Thoma – The Economist’s View (blog), University of Oregon (professor)

93. Michael Tomasky – The Guardian

94. Jeffrey Toobin – CNN, The New Yorker

95. Rebecca Traister – Salon (columnist)

96. Cenk Uygur – The Young Turks

97. Tracy Van Slyke – The Media Consortium

98. Dave Weigel – Washington Post, MSNBC, The Washington Independent

99. Moira Whelan – National Security Network

100. Scott Winship – Pew Economic Mobility Project

101. Kai Wright – The Root

102. Holly Yeager – Columbia Journalism Review

103. Rich Yeselson – Change to Win

104. Matthew Yglesias – Center for American Progress, The Atlantic Monthly

105. Jonathan Zasloff – UCLA

106. Julian Zelizer – Princeton professor and CNN contributor

107. Avi Zenilman – POLITICO