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
