The Other McCain

“So imagine my surprise today to find I’m the victim of an Andrew Beitbart wannabe, a blogger with a clear agenda of his own who has decided in his hypocrisy I have one of my own.”
— Nick Green, Torrance (Calif.) Daily Breeze

He’s the victim, you see. Nick Green was just minding his own business, cheerfully ignoring the congressional election that he’s paid to cover, blowing off the Republican challenger’s campaign as too insignificant to merit his attention and then — without notice or warning — somebody called him on it.

Sucks to be you, doesn’t it, Nick?

Let’s begin by clarifying the chronology of Nick’s alleged journalistic victimhood:

• Tuesday, Aug. 10 — In a story headlined, “South Bay officials welcome passage of jobs bill,” the Daily Breeze treats the $26 billion legislation as a godsend to the California economy, citing a teachers union estimate that the measure “will provide $15.4 million and save 215 jobs in Rep. Jane Harman’s district.” (Hey, when it comes to economic analysis, nobody can out-estimate the National Education Association.)
• Wednesday, Aug. 11 — Campaign consultant John Thomas e-mails Breeze reporters Nick Green and Art Marroquin, asking if they “have a second to chat today about Jane Harman,” to discuss Harman’s statements about the area economy.  When Green replies, “No,” Thomas asks, “Tomorrow then?” Green e-mails that he is “busy all week,” and Thomas then replies, “Are you covering this race or is there someone else I should talk to at the breeze?” It is in reply to this query that Green sends the now-infamous “we’re not interested” e-mail. (The entire colloquy was posted as a PDF at Mayor Sam’s blog.)
• Thursday, Aug. 12 — Under the headline “Officials hope to extend temp jobs program,” Daily Breeze reporter Douglas Morino quotes Rep. Harman, who is featured in a staff photo showing her “at a press conference to highlight the success of a Los Angeles County employment program.” To say that this article was favorable to Harman and the Democrats is an understatement on the order of saying that Triumph of the Will was pretty good P.R. for a certain German political party.

See the picture? St. Jane of the Blessed Bailout gets adulatory coverage from the Breeze and, when a Republican tries to get some notice for Harman’s GOP challenger, Nick Green is “busy all week” and “not interested.”

Now, sources close to the Fein campaign (nudge, nudge) tell me that the Republican challenger felt like she got reasonably fair treatment from former Breeze political reporter Gene Maddaus (e.g., “Republican Mattie Fein makes run aganst Harman official“). But Maddaus has since departed for L.A. Weekly, and lately the GOP candidate feels like she is being purposely ignored by the Breeze.

Er, sources say.

All of this was unknown to me when, at the behest of my filmmaker friend Ladd Ehlinger Jr., I boarded a flight to LAX expecting to cover Ehlinger’s astonishing ascent as a producer of attention-getting campaign ads. Insofar as I had any interest in California politics, per se, it was to find an answer to the question, “What the #$%* is wrong with the California Republican Party?”

What I’m trying to get across here is that I was utterly unaware of Nick Green’s existence until late Thursday when sources close to the Fein campaign — hey, did you notice my elbow jabbing you in the ribs? — forwarded me Green’s e-mail to John Thomas. Let us now consult Nick Green’s lecture on the subject of “news judgment” :

It’s the job of newspaper reporters and editors to decide what to cover when and how. . . .  It’s a matter of news judgment, time and resources.

Indeed. And here, according to my own news judgment, was a great story served up on a silver platter:

California Reporter to Republican
Candidate: ‘We’re Not Interested’

Piece of cake. The story “wrote itself,” as they say. It took me barely an hour Friday morning to compose the original post, which was then extended with a series of updates aggregating the blogospheric reaction.

This was not the only reaction, however. A lady who happens to be a subscriber to the Daily Breeze forwarded me her e-mail correspondence with the newspaper’s editor:

Dear Editor,
Will you be addressing this issue in your newspaper?  I’m a subscriber and would appreciate a response.

To which the editor replied:

I just learned of it a little more than an hour ago. I will handle it internally as a personnel matter. And yes, I will be addressing. We don’t tolerate this type of behavior.
Linda Lindus

OK, so now the relevant questions are:

• Is Nick Green, as he says, a “victim”?
• Am I, as Nick Green says, “an Andrew Breitbart wannabe”?
• Has Nick Green heard of Denis Healy’s First Law of Holes?

Let’s start with Nick’s claim to victimhood. Having some direct personal experience with the dangers of hitting the “send” button on e-mails I subsequently had cause to regret sending, I certainly feel Nick’s pain. And my buddy Dave Weigel can probably relate, too. Anybody can have a bad day on the Internet.

Andrew Breitbart is someone I admire and consider a friend but, in point of fact, I was working full-time as a reporter when Andrew was still in high school, so the “wannabe” accusation is kind of ironic. No hidden cameras or young Republicans posing as pimps were employed in this story. The complete e-mail exchange between Nick Green and John Thomas has been online at Mayor Sam’s all day, so there’s no Shirley Sherrod “gotcha” editing involved.

Obviously, however, Nick Green is a stranger to the First Law of Holes: “If you are in one, stop digging.” His attempts to justify and defend his churlish response to John Thomas constitute “digging” in this context.

And allow me to point out something that perhaps Nick Green hasn’t considered: Former Breeze staffer Gene Maddaus (a) treated the Republican candidate with evident fairness and (b) has now moved on to a more prestigious gig.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc?

Call me a “wannabe,” if you like, but if Andrew Breitbart himself decides to take notice of Nick Green . . .

Well, it sucks to be you, doesn’t it, Nick?

UPDATE: In the comments, Thane Eichenauer says liberals are now playing “the Breitbart card.” And in this case, it’s decidedly misplayed. There’s just really no comparison.

When I first met Breitbart — at CPAC 2007 — I sat for hours listening to him talk about his experiences in New Media. The guy is an authentic genius. Some people talk in sound-bites.  Andrew talks in paragraphs. If you ever get a chance to catch him when he’s off-the-record, relaxed and in a mood to tell stories, it’s an adventure you don’t want to miss.

Being  the guerrilla leader of an epic struggle against liberal bias in media and pop culture, however, is above my pay grade. Oh, I have my moments, but my focus for the past couple of years has been on chronicling (and cheering on) the grassroots insurgency against the GOP Establishment and its defeatist mentality. In a word, “WOLVERINES!”

The problems of the Republican Party are systemic and rooted in what sociologists might call “selection effects.” It’s a matter of organizational dynamics. Personnel is policy, as they say and, in the final analysis, the GOP has a personnel problem. 

Over the years, the Republican Party has attracted to itself — at both the operational and managerial levels — certain types of personalities, so that the style and content of Republican politics tends to be predictable. This is a problem that people who’ve lived their lives inside the GOP “bubble” can’t accurately perceive, and so change must come through outsiders who challenge the status quo.

Andrew Breitbart is one such outsider, Dan Riehl is another, and many of the candidates and campaigns I’ve covered — including the “Not One Red Cent” rebellion and the Hoffman campaign in NY-23 last fall — have been outsider/insurgent operations.  The fact that Ladd Ehlinger is now working in California is one indicator that some Republicans in this state are adopting that outsider/insurgent stance, and it’s about damned time.

As for media bias, we need not wonder why polls show a declining trust in major news organization, and Mark Goluskin has further thoughts on the Martyrdom of Nick Green.