[Image]Journolist, Ezra Klein's private mailing list, provided the venue for journalists from Time, Politico, the Puffington Toast, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon, the New Republic, and other outlets to orchestrate a rescue operation on several noteworthy fronts:
• To label conservative journalists 'racists' for reporting the news; and • To suppress any discussion of Wright's disgusting rhetoric.
In fact, the conversations on Journolist went far beyond what most reasonable Americans might imagine among those claiming the mantle of "journalists".
Thomas Schaller, a columnist for the Baltimore Sun as well as a political science professor, upped the ante from there. In a post with the subject header, “why don’t we use the power of this list to do something about the debate?... “It would create quite a stir, I bet, and be a warning against future behavior of the sort..."
[Image]...[The Nation's Chris] Hayes urged his colleagues – especially the straight news reporters who were charged with covering the campaign in a neutral way – to bury the Wright scandal...
[The Washington Independent's] Spencer Ackerman [was resigned to defending Obama and Wright, stating:] "Part of me doesn’t like this s*** either... But what I like less is being governed by racists and warmongers and criminals... It’s not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright’s defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically."
"...take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction." All of this is some damning stuff, but I wondered: what kind of articles did legacy media run in the immediate aftermath of the conspiracy? Did Journolist really have an impact?
It took but a few moments to find the template: Kevin Merida's May 2008 article in WaPo -- alleging all sorts of racism against Obama and his campaign workers -- to pick up the meme.
I have a new name for the mainstream media. I shall call it, from this point forward, the laughingstock media. They're unworthy of any contemplation above and beyond that which I'd devote to The Daily Show.
Oh, and Spencer Ackerman, if that is your real name, don't let me catch you on the street lest I be tempted to bust your head through a plate-glass window, take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas email to Journolist.
"A trip through the archives: the agitprop the Journolist conspiracy produced"
2 Comments -
Don't forget about the NY Times spiking the story about Anita Moncrief exposing Obama and his campaign to ACORN.
10:15 AM
Whatever you do, don't kick him in the balls.
That target don't exist.
Or in a jar somewhere...
5:58 AM