The White House just couldn’t help themselves. They couldn’t muster the discipline.
Political egos are an author’s best friend. That’s particularly true when you’re writing about a president and an Administration who are used to the press panting instead of revealing.
How fitting Jonathan Alter has now come to the aid of the White House using the Obama v. Bill Clinton theme. It’s all so predictable.
Mika Brzezinski didn’t like Ron Suskind’s reporting on what the women of the Obama administration said on tape and in interviews with Suskind, so at one point during “Morning Joe,” as she her temper boiled over, she actually asked Mr. Suskind if she could get him coffee. (video below)
In the end, whether it’s the “Today” show or “Morning Joe,” Suskind came out on top, because blaming the messenger is just so 2008.
Ron Suskind fights back on Obama book
“It’s not so much about the substance of the book,” he said. “It’s simply tactical. ‘Must kill book.’ And that doesn’t tend to work.”
[...] “The Bush White House was so aggrieved that they launched a frivolous federal investigation against me and Paul O’Neill,” Suskind said. “Despite a raft of public denials from everyone and their cousins, everything in that book was utterly verified and irrefutable. That’s the way these books work.”
They didn’t dare do it to Bob Woodward.
What was spectacularly obvious today is that Ms. Brzezinski and Mr. Alter both represented the type of defense the press made for Candidate Obama back when he was trying to garner the nomination. Nothing wrong with media sticking up for their guy and the women around him, but viewers take note of the bias, which is important as we enter the general election season.
I’ve read most of Mr. Suskind’s books, though I haven’t had time to start his latest, and I’ve never seen a shred of ideological bias in them. Excavating the reality inside a White House has always been his goal.
Part of what’s wrong with our political system is the defensive crouch our media takes, which includes taking the side of a president or any politician when what’s needed to be learned is what actually unfolded behind closed doors.
It’s called history, whether you like the story being told or not.
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The media is largely as stuck in the two corporate party framing as the Electeds and Elites they theoretically “cover.”
For a while, I’ve been calling Obama “Bush II” and thinking maybe I’m being a little over the top. No, it looks like I’ve been spot-on.
Suskind bends over backward to be fair, in amazing contrast to those he tells the truth about. The latter remind me of Rove and Cheney, trying one nasty tactic after the next until they find one which works.
Part of the problem is that it doesn’t see investigating * as part of its job.
You can count that as one of the principle reasons we are in the state we’re in. And yes, only the bylines have changed since the days when we read this stuff in support of George W. Bush. Thanks for taking these folks to task.
* While most of that article is somewhat relevant to the point, the meat of it is the quote from Walter Pincus.
Cujo359 – Just wanted to let you know that “blockquotes” in the comments here is a request this particularly version of WordPress fights to the death. We haven’t figured out how to go around that wall yet.
Suggestion: use italics for quotes until we find a work-around.
Thanks for your patience.
Hey, no problem. I wonder how Firedoglake got around it? They must have a lot of custom code on their site…
I hate using italics for quotes. We’re seeing one of the less important ones right now – if someone forgets to close them, everyone’s in italics. Mostly it’s a stylistic choice, though.
Haven’t watched MSNBC in a long, long time. Just figured I was in the wrong demographic group for them. They seem to go for a way younger group of folks. Mika Brzezinski’s behavior proves this poiint. Her behavior is akin to a teenage girl finding out some horrible truth about her heart throb (movie start/pop singer): such as, oh, he has a girlfriend. So of course, there is absolutely nothing good say about that girlfriend. Kind a sad and pathetic for a 44 year old women.
Well, anyway the video clip does show a still certain naive approach in the Obama administration. For an administration to automatically assume that a reporter/author will portray their administration in a ‘good light’ because he portrayed the previous administration to thier liking is well, just stupid. It also shows the -still dependency- that they have on Bush. Thought the 2010 mid-terms would have settled that, but then again one can never predict the action of a dependency.
Joe makes Mika out to be the “token” liberal on the show. She has been star struck by Obama from the get go but she is anyting but a liberal. Mika’s politics are about Mika period.
She irks me in many ways but the snide tone she uses for all things Clinton irks me the most. I don’t know what is wrong with people like she and Alter ( who lost any credibility with his love letter book about Obama) they just seem unable to stand the fact that WJC is a winner.