Supplemental: People don’t know how the press corps works!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2014

But then, we never tell them:
On September 25, the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza discussed an important topic.

He discussed the relationship between Hillary Clinton and the national press. This could become an important topic if Clinton runs for president, and especially if she becomes the Democratic nominee.

In truth, Cillizza discussed the attitudes of Clinton World more than he discussed the attitude of his own guild. He was quite frank about all the hate directed at him and his kind.

As he started, Cillizza described “the dark and, frankly, paranoid view the Clintons have toward the national media.

“Put simply: Neither Hillary nor Bill Clinton likes the media or, increasingly, sees any positive use for them,” the scribe paranoiacally said.

Soon after, Cillizza described “a candidate and an operation that always assumes the worst of the press horde and acts accordingly.”

“The Clintons have as dim a view of the political press as any modern politicians,” he gloomily said as he closed. “So you can imagine what a Clinton 2016 campaign will think of those tasked with covering it.”

In Cillizza’s view, Clinton and Clinton pretty much hate the mainstream press. But in accordance with his guild’s heavily mandated codes of silence, he had little to say about what the press corps thinks of the Clintons.

At one point, he did refer to “the remarkably adversarial relationship between the Clinton campaign and the media” during the 2008 campaign. He also said this:

“Regardless of who was to blame, by the end of the campaign, reporters—including me—and the Clinton operation were at each others’ throats daily and often more than daily.”

In those passages, he did cop to adversarial relations. But in our view, he made it sound like the Clinton operation was much more at fault than the press.

In truth, the insider press corps has behaved in egregious ways, down through the decades, toward both Clintons and toward Al Gore. In Campaign 2000, they waged a twenty-month against Candidate Gore. Their conduct in Campaign 2008 was often egregious toward Candidate Clinton.

There's some horrible history there. But for various reasons, many voters have no idea that any such conduct or any such animus has ever existed.

Why are people so clueless? Easy! The press corps never discusses its own attitudes or its own behavior. And major liberals have played along with the press corps’ code of silence with regard to this long, low-grade war.

This leaves many voters utterly clueless about the lay of the land. As an example of this cluelessness, you need only scroll through the comments to Cillizza’s self-pitying post.

Some commenters did allude to the press corps’ long war against the Clintons and Gore. But good lord! Many more wrote from the imaginary realm of Liberal Biasylvania:
COMMENT: Most of the media wants Hillary to succeed and win the presidency. They relish the opportunity to once again help to create an historic first, this time the first female president.

COMMENT: The Clintons don't need you any more. But you guys will support them anyway, you'll lick their boots again regardless of what they do to you or the country. And the best part is that the Clintons know it!

COMMENT: Hillary is a liar and a money-grubber and defended her husband while he was sexually assaulting women. And thanks to the mainstream media, she'll probably be the next president.

COMMENT: Chris Cillizza will be in the tank for Hillary, in any event, because a rigid extremist Left philosophy contaminates and putrefies his columns. As if he'd divert for a second from the approved, official Democrat Party narrative.

COMMENT: These fools in the newsfotainment media have absolutely no problem with the Clinton "team’s" Soviet-style tactics. In fact, they'll even vote for them, fools they are.

COMMENT: The press will still blindly support Hillary so what difference does it make?

COMMENT: The media will carry water for the Clintons long past the time when the Clintons have use for the media.

COMMENT: Is this story an effort to convince the "masses" that liberal media will not be in Clinton's corner? Feeble effort, but some people might buy into that.

COMMENT: This part is a hoot: “Her distaste for and apprehension of a rapacious, shallow and sometimes outright sexist national political press corps acting as enablers for her enemies on the right.” Yep, those sexist MSM press corps people that are so anxious to enable the right. That's right up there with her "vast right wing conspiracy" meme as a real knee slapper.

COMMENT: The Clintons don't like the media or see any use for them? Who do you think you are kidding? The media are 100% Clinton propaganda drones.

COMMENT: For a long time now the media has allowed cretins like Bill and Hillary, Barry, the Gores, and the rest of the Democratic cabal to control the message. The media is so far in the tank, has abandoned even the perception of independent investigative journalism.

COMMENT: The media will fawn all over a Hillary candidacy, forgetting all the abuses and restrictions of the current administration and the past history with Hillary.

COMMENT: And when the time comes if it not already here, the WaPo will carry the water for the Clintons. It's as predictable as the sun rising…They don't call WaPo “Pravda on the Potomac” for nuttin'.

COMMENT: How the woman Clinton treats the press now is but the iceberg tip of what she will do once her coronation happens. You leftist fools will never grasp what tools you are to her in your slavish sycophancy.

COMMENT: This is a bizarre story. The press and the left are practically living together. Whatever "disagreements" they may have are petty and trivial, not substantive.

COMMENT: "Put simply: Neither Hillary nor Bill Clinton likes the media or, increasingly, sees any positive use for them.” Yet you, the media, will do everything possible to get her elected.

COMMENT: But none of you in the establishment media is going to challenge them. Are you?

COMMENT: “The remarkably adversarial relationship” between Clinton and the media? Come on, Washington Post, don't make me laugh. You carry her bags, fluff her and her pillows at night.

COMMENT: I really doubt that there is any meaningful friction, unless intended of course, between the Clintons and any WaPo or NYT reporters. More like a kooky love affair.
It’s easy to dismiss these commenters, and quite a few others, as dim-witted ditto-head wing-nuts.

In our view, these commenters seem to be totally clueless about the antagonisms which have roiled the insider press corps over the past quarter century. But this must also be said:

These people are repeating the things they constantly hear from Rush and from Fox. They’ve never heard the truth about these matters because our liberal “leaders” have persistently agreed not to state it.

Darlings, it simply isn’t done! It’s terribly bad for careers!

Back in 1996, our liberal leaders buried Fools for Scandal. For fifteen years, they’ve refused to discuss the war against Candidate Gore. They won’t discuss the horrible conduct exhibited by many media stars during Campaign 2008. Some of the biggest misogynists from that campaign are now our exalted leaders!

Our side has never told the public the truth. We then sit back and roll our eyes at how little the public knows!

“What a bunch of wing nuts,” we say. What instinctive losers we are!

30 comments:

  1. Internet comments make me weep.

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    Replies
    1. You and Meredith need to get together for a good cry.
      Meanwhile I'll watch a rerun of Sponge Bob. Or read another one.

      Delete

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  2. You're writing stuff i don't agree with and that challenges my beliefs. I do not come here to read opposing views, so that makes you a troll who needs to go away.

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  3. Good thing Bob doesn't read comments on his own blog. That would detract him from presenting commenters elsewhere for his own readers to get angry about.

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  4. Suit yourself, but I am paranoid about it. Pseudonyms are almost as bad as anonymous posting, I think most people around here would agree.

    But then there is the practical matter of web stalking, particularly by 3rd Degree Masons of Second Wave Feminists.

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  5. He does read his comments. He's acknowledged it in 2 recent posts. What kind of Bobfan are you to have missed that!?

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  6. The public doesn't know how the press corps works, but Howler readers do.

    The press hates the Clintons. The minute Bill Clinton's impeachment was history the guild transferred all their pent up Clinton anger into hatred of Gore.

    Gore should have been President. He won the most votes. He deserves another chance. By running against Hillary, he can truly prove his distance from the Clintons and win back the guild. After all, he was a member of the guild for five to seven years if you count time spent in the military twice and don't deduct time off for lawyer and preacher class.

    Gore is younger but has more experience and he spoke out against the Bush run-up to Iraq. It is a proven formula against the Clinton machine.

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    Replies
    1. theghostofchrishayesOctober 11, 2014 at 3:33 PM

      Howler readers don't know how the press corps works - they only know that it is compromised, and willfully keeps itself in that shape by its own accord.

      Is that so wrong?

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    2. I disagree chrishayesG. Most Howler readers do know. They have just been driven away from the comment box by troll infestations. They hang on every new post about how the guild made their fateful decision to transfer Clinton haterd to Gore in March 1999. They just don't want to share their thoughts any more. That hurts all of us. Like it did during the 2008 primary fracas. Which I hope Bob further explores as we move into 2016.

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  7. Saying Bob reads his comments based on those two posts is like saying Al Gore knew the event at the Buddhist Temple was a fundraiser because there were memos saying so he could have read plus he showed up.

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  8. IMHO I agree completely with DinC. Except for the dog thing. Only someone who doesn't have a dog would call Romney's act sensible.

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  9. No, TDH didn't call you a "dim-witted ditto-head wing-nut." He said that it would be easy to dismiss the commenters he quoted as such, but that to be fair, where could they go to cure their ignorance about the media?

    "The media" can be a lazy reification. It's true that the brainless Gail Collins loved to mention Romney's dog's trip atop the car, but a focus on Mormon practices? How about you come up with equivalent sources that mocked Romney's religion. It doesn't have to be from the NYT Op-Ed page, but something equivalent.

    The WPE was mocked for being stupid when he made his famous slips of the mind, but stupid is as stupid does, and when you do one dumb thing after another, you have to expect to be called dumb, even when you make minor slips.

    Ted Cruz is not portrayed as a madman. Ted Cruz is portrayed as the reckless, lying ideologue that he is. If you don't believe me, you can listen to him accuse Hagel of being a paid agent of North Korea and Saudi Arabia. Or you can read about his imaginary list of Harvard Law School Faculty communists who were in favor of overthrowing the US government. That should sound familiar. Of you can investigate his brilliance and accomplished performance in the white paper he has online in which he lists a number of Supreme Court decisions that went 9-0 against the gov. His conclusion: Obama is trying to extend his power so nakedly that the Supreme Court has often unanimously slapped him down. Of course, if you check (and by you, I mean me), you'll find cases that started in the lower courts before Obama took office and cases that reconciled conflicting Circuit Court rulings. None of these cases was anything but judicial business as usual.

    You are a reliably uninformed, thoroughly ignorant parrot of right-wing tropes. You never check your sources, and you apparently live entirely in a manufactured world of your own opinion. You might want to fix that lest people think you're a dim-witted follower.

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  10. Dave, you're done. I'll never read your comments again.

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  11. Jesus, DinC. If the Repugnicans and Libretards run the same stable of candidates they did the last time around OF COURSE informed people will support Hillary.
    The only completely SANE Republican candidate was Jon Huntsman, Jr., so naturally he was ignored by his party, the MSM, and the Presidential Debate Commission.
    Ayn Rand's twisted objectivism is not economics, and anyone that claims it is, is a fool, a charlatan, or both.
    We don't need or want morons whose education stopped in its tracks when they read Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead in high school.
    The dog-whistling Tea Party candidates have been trained by ALEC to go back to their state legislatures and corrupt the system by forcing through laws that benefit wannabe oligarchs at the expense of the rest of us.
    Wise up!

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  12. I do discount the comments in the Washington Post. I've been reading the comments in that paper for years. It's amazing what ignorant red necked hoosiers comment in that paper. Maybe because it's in the South?

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  13. I don't agree pseudonyms are almost as bad as posting anonymously. People can establish about as distinctive a voice with a frequently appearing pseudonym as they can using their own name. As for Gaius Pulius, here were the bio lines he was introduced with during what I thought was a good discussion during a Virtually Speaking episode he participated in with the identified by their own names Jay Ackroyd, Dave Johnson and Stuart Zechman:

    [1:20] Gaius Publius is a professional writer living on the west coast of the United States. He's written in a variety of genres and styles; short stories, poetry, books on education and technology, and is currently working on two book projects including one novel. He blogs at AMERICAblog. In addition to his writing he's been a professional educator and currently manages a small publishing consultancy. He tweets as @Gaius_Publius, that's G-A-I-U-S underscore Publius, just like it sounds.

    I've been following what he's been writing on blogs and saying on podcasts for long enough to be convinced he's sincere- and, in any event, his expressed take on things are worth considering. I do, however, find myself wondering about what the business model for Down With Tyranny, itself, is.

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  14. "You might want to fix that lest people think you're a dim-witted follower."

    "Lest."

    That ship has sailed. Gone.

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  15. The article you reference has nothing to do with the election. It doesn't mention Romney at all. You might as well dig up all the theater reviews of Book of Mormon and call them political too.

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  16. John Aravosis was strongly anti-Clinton, which was at odds with the major support Clinton had generally among gay voters. I stopped reading Americablog in 2008 and never went back, so he was off my radar. Thanks for the info.

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  17. Remember when I said of your "media" cite that "It doesn't have to be from the NYT Op-Ed page, but something equivalent"? And you picked salon.com. Fail #1. So apparently you've ignored what TDH has to say about your source. Just to underscore my point, here are two from salon's "Most Read" teasers: "When guys find out I'm a virgin" and "Gay porn's' most shocking taboo."*

    Here's what your source actually has to say about the underwear:

    <quote>
    The idea of sacred, secret underwear seems a little kinky, at least to some outsiders.... But are they kinky to insiders? It’s hard to get a balanced sample from active Mormons, because the Garments, as I said, are sacred, and catering to the curiosity of prurient outsiders would violate a covenant sworn during the same temple ceremony in which a Mormon gets authorized to wear the Garment.... Discomfort seems to be the predominant theme.
    </quote>

    In fact, the article reports that from the point of view of the Mormon church, the answer to it's title question is no:

    <quote>
    The Catholic hierarchy has an established procedure for assessing claims about weeping statues or a miracle cure, but the Mormon hierarchy largely ignores stories about the real-world protective powers of the white underwear.
    </quote>

    So the article actually portrays the Catholic Church as more irrational that the Mormons.

    So, Fail #2

    *Just to save everyone the trouble, the 26-year old author of the first finds that guys bail when they find out she's a virgin who intends to save herself for marriage. And the taboo is "twincest."

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  18. Not to excuse so-called liberal leaders who refuse to shed light on press misconduct, but the letter writers that Somerby references are simply not going to be swayed by "the truth". I know that some liberals are capable of behaving in much the same way. It isn't that those writers are particularly "dim-witted", there are just those that find deep psychological comfort in adopting a rigid political ideology. It's like the ultimate security blanket. It's sad but evidence and reason are of no consequence.

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    1. Yes, nobody makes them eat that garbage, but they do it anyway. And they do it because they want to do it. Bob portraying them as victims is a little too much. The country is the victim, not the people who demand a steady diet of comforting lies to reinforce their already rigid worldview. And there are far more of those people on the right than on the left. Look at the viewership of Fox vs MSNBC, or the number of people who listen to Rush and Sean and so on, vs the number of people who listen to Air Americ -- whoops, Air America is gone, gone, gone. But Bob spends a good -- actually, it's quite bad -- 75% of his time here attacking the left for what he seems to think is its predilection for horseshit. Most of the rest of the time is spent complaining about a 15 year old election. It's what's made Bob a crank. He's been writing good posts recently, but I suspect that's because he's about to do this fundraiser. Soon after it's over, it will be back to the same cranky bullshit.

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    2. When right-serving pundits are labeled left in our media, that is worth Somerby pointing out, repeatedly. That was the point of the comments he posted -- that many of those folks think the same media that attacks left candidates like Gore and Clinton are actually left-leaning and not serving the interests of the right. So, because of the confusion about who is left and who is not, we need Somerby to keep saying exactly what he has been saying.

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  19. Happy Columbus Day everybody! A day our indigenous brothers and sisters always look forward to in hopes you bring your Andrew Jacksons to your nearest native casino instead of wasting them on internet spells.

    We hope Bob finishes up with the Nantucket tour so we can finally learn some new facts about the press outrage of 2000, because without this work, things like the comment box at the Washington Post displayed here will just keep on happening.

    If you don't believe me, ask yourselves how, in the wake of the ebola crisis in Dallas, we didn't learn from the smallpox blankets the Pentagon sold to tribes which came before us.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Triplet three-ways are OK?

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