California Journalists Caught on Video Making Fun of Sarah Palin Speech

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“The dumbness doesn’t just come from soundbites” says one reporter in the open-mic moment after the Palin speech, while another asks: “How am I going to write about this? There’s nothing there!” To which a colleague replies: “Well, there’s your story.”

This is nothing new. The first time I went to cover a Sarah Palin speech (“Sweetheart of the Heartland,” Sept. 10, 2008) in Ohio, I saw a network reporterette  mimicking a certain phrase in Palin’s speech, with an eyeroll reaction indicating that there was no news value in hearing the candidate repeat what she’d said at previous campaign stops.

It’s a common situation in campaign coverage: The candidate wants to deliver their well-rehearsed talking-points, whereas the reporters want the candidate to “make news” by going off-script or taking questions at a press conference.

Steve Schmidt’s policy of tightly-controlled “message discipline” for the McCain-Palin campaign thus had the unintended effect of alienating those reporters (the “traveling press”) who covered the campaign day after day without ever having direct access to the candidates and seldom got to report anything unplanned or unscripted. But the campaign seemingly didn’t care about how bad they were pissing off the press.

Were there ways the campaign could have dealt effectively with that problem? Yes. Does any Republican ever ask a journalist for advice on media relations? No.

Sigh.

More at Memeorandum.

Rep. Paul Ryan Delivers 3:20 Of Lucidity

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by Smitty (via Gateway Pundit)


Emphasis mine:

Hello – I’m Paul Ryan – I work for the people of Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District and I serve as the top Republican on the House Budget Committee. Yes, Congress does have a budget committee, but I’m afraid it hasn’t been very busy this year. In fact, this week the House Majority Leader announced that Democrats are canceling this year’s budget. Instead of reining in out-of-control spending that has pushed our total national debt past $13 trillion, Democrats have made clear their intention to raise taxes on middle-class families to fuel their continued spending spree.
Talk about a recipe for disaster: Democrats are offering no budget, no priorities, and no restraints – yet all their taxing, borrowing, and spending continues unchecked. With this budget failure – a first in the modern era – Democrats are missing a critical opportunity to provide the fiscal discipline economists say is needed to create private-sector jobs and boost our economy. This unprecedented budget collapse also sends a clear signal to American families struggling to meet their own budgets that Washington still doesn’t recognize the severity of its spending problem.

Or maybe the Pelosi crew does, and all this is an exercise in “smoke ’em if ya got ’em”.

Democrats say their decision is about what’s best for the future of our country. It’s not. With the political season upon us, Democratic leaders believe it is better to take a pass than to pass a budget. While Americans ask ‘where are the jobs?,’ they seem content to simply run out the clock and let their borrowing binge continue to drain resources from our economy.
The debt is on track to exceed the size of our entire economy in the next 18 months. We have run out of road to kick the can down. If this is really about the future of our country, then leaders should make the tough choices they promised they would, put moral obligation before political expedience, and focus on what’s in the best interests of the next generation, not the next election.

Aw, c’mon, Paul: our system punishes leadership and rewards avoidance behavior. Sure, go after the symptoms of the current budgetary crisis, but we also have to attack the Constitutional decay that is the context for the dilemma. New names on the doorplates is necessary, but not sufficient, sir.

This is a time to make tough choices, not run from them. To that end, Republicans on the Budget Committee have already identified $1.3 trillion in specific spending cuts we could implement right now to make Washington do more with less and help small businesses put people back to work. These are specific, common-sense ideas, such as canceling unspent TARP bailout funds and ‘stimulus’ money, that would help us focus on creating more jobs, not more debt. We also propose reducing federal employment and freezing government pay. Instead of growing government, we need to restart the engine of economic growth. Of course, this is just a starting point. Much more needs to be done to set our nation on a sustainable economic course. We need to start reining in unnecessary spending now so that we can boost the economy and work together to address our nation’s long term fiscal challenges.
It is our shared responsibility to take on the challenges before us to make sure that our kids and grandkids have a better life. Let’s begin this important work today. Let’s make certain we do not simply retreat to the same failed policies. Let’s make the tough, forward-looking choices that will restore the promise and prosperity of this exceptional nation – and let’s do it together.
Thanks for listening.

Again, cuts are fine, but we need to amputate the system that buries liberty in reams of legislation to support un-Federal tasking.
God bless you, Mr. Ryan, and grant you grace and strength to keep up the fight. I support what you’re doing, insofar as it’s a good start.

Sad Ending for USA in the Quadrennial ‘Let’s Make Fun of Foreigners’ Festival

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Third World 2
Effete Pansies 1
American imperialism ain’t what it used to be:

RUSTENBURG, South Africa — In the end, the U.S. team was undone by what had haunted the Americans throughout the World Cup. By giving up early goals, the Americans fell to Ghana 2-1 on Saturday and were knocked out of the tournament.
With the score tied at 1 at the end of regulation, the game went into extra time. And once again, the USA’s slow start resulted in the game-winner as Asamoah Gyan knocked Carlos Bocanegra off the ball and finished with a pretty left-footed volley to take the lead in the 93rd minute . . .

Thus dies the red-blooded American dream of kicking butt all the way to the world championship of this silly sport for fags and foreigners. However, thanks to my soon-to-be son-in-law, El Romantico, I have an excuse to keep watching, as Argentina plays Mexico on Sunday morning.

Also, checking the schedule for Sunday afternoon, I’ll be cheering for England against Germany. (Limeys vs. Krauts — just like the good ol’ days.) A win for the limey poofters would set up a quarter-final match in which the Brits will taunt the Argentines about the Falklands and the Argentines will make fun of the Brits’ bad teeth.

World Cup 2010: If We Can’t Mock Foreigners, What’s the Point?

The G-String 20

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by Smitty

While exotic dancers are feeling pinched financially from the economic downturn in Louisiana, more public dancers gather for another ecdysiaster in Toronto.

Via Insty, Mead at AEI falls short of respect for the undertaking:

These summit meetings of world leaders date back for a generation; they have always gotten lots of coverage in the serious press, and they have almost never meant anything or gotten anything done. World leaders like them because they provide a platform that lets presidents and prime ministers look like statesmen instead of politicians. Bureaucrats adore them because position papers must be written and revised and many obscure officials must rack up air miles preparing compromises and talking points for communiques and declarations. It doesn’t matter to the bureaucrats that the declarations have no binding force and that countries who sign onto them will generally go on and do exactly what they would have done had no declaration ever been made. Process! Paper! Junkets!

Dan Mitchell at Big Government calls for poxes on all houses. The descriptions of what constitutes responsibility are bizarre, “David Cameron’s proposal to boost the U.K.’s value-added tax from 17.5 percent to 20 percent is supposedly a sign of austerity” and climax in a quote from the Christian Science Monitor that I cannot parse:

“…the overall effect of national austerity in the EU will harm recovery. They are joined by US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, investor George Soros, and Nobel laureate and columnist Paul Krugman, among others, arguing that austerity works against growth, and may lead to a recessionary spiral.”

The notion comes somewhat against growth if the Geithners, Soroses, and Krugmans represent some kind of abstract drug pusher, and “works against growth” means that their pool of addicts may shrink. Discuss.

Finally, via Drudge, these absurd chemical notion of mine is bolstered by the fact that these proceedings have been legally bolstered by laws only the likes of Napolitano and Holder could love:

The Ontario government secretly passed legislation giving police sweeping new powers for the duration of the G8 and G20 summits.
Police are now able to jail anyone who refuses to furnish identification and submit to a search while within five metres of a designated security zone in downtown Toronto.
Critics reacted furiously to the new rules, which remained unpublicized until Thursday when a 32 year-old man was arrested in Toronto for refusing to show ID to police.
New Democrat MPP Peter Kormos said Friday the provincial Liberals created a “Kafka-esque” situation where people could be arrested for violating rules they didn’t know existed.

Kafka is left in the dust, and things enter the realm of the Onion-esque when the Peggy West reaction to the new security regime are included. Plucked from her humble Milwaukee roots by the US G-20 delegation, in the name of bolstering the US’s egalitarian cred, she had this to say when she saw the Canadian police working out on the citizenry:

Well, I thought that Arizona meant “arid-zone-a”, but this is really a much cooler climate, which is better for my hair. And I really object to the SB1080 legislation and all these cops. What if they really can’t tell how important us visitors are? Well, at least we’re finally doing something about that border problem. When do I get to meet Jan Brewer and tell her how wrong she is? Oh, and I wish people on blogs would quit picking on me. I’m hungry. Is there a Subway nearby?

(The last portion is completely fictional.)

McCain Sell Out? Who Knew There Was A Market?

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by Smitty

Dan Riehl accuses Stacy of selling out on the Weigel situation:

Of course, if Stacy defends one faux-conservative, another would praise him. And why not? He’s probably angling for Weigel’s slot. That’s how the game is played down here.

Look, Dan, I can’t pretend to know the exact quid required to tempt Stacy into a WaPo gig. The apprehension of him overtaking the entire organization would be palpable.

In any case your post title demands a Reel Big Fish embed:

UPDATE (RSM): Wait a minute, Smitty. Dan’s linked some genuine news: Did Liz Mair burn Josh Trevino with an off-the-record conservative listserv message?

OK, so this is even more inside-baseball than WeigelGate, but at least it’s a change of pace from all-Weigel, all-the-time. And I’m friends with both Liz and Josh, so I’ll just keep my mouth shut, pop some popcorn and watch them claw each other’s eyes out.

‘Human Sacrifice! Dogs and Cats Living Together! Mass Hysteria!’

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Inspired by a Tweet from Conor Friedersdorf. When he agrees with me, this could be a sign that the Apocalypse is upon us.

UPDATE: Maybe this whole thing is part of a secret conspiracy to destroy my right-wing grassroots street cred?

Yeah. I’m totally screwed. Now I’m forced to admit that David Frum is actually making sense here:

A lot of crazy things are happening inside the conservative world today. . . . This is a movement in moral and intellectual crisis. Yet it’s very difficult and even dangerous for a committed conservative to acknowledge that crisis or to write about the crisis without excuse or apologetics. Weigel did just that, and very successfully. He is no Max Blumenthal, a self-identified ideological counter-warrior bent on harassing and humiliating those who disagree with him. He is a sympathetic and skeptical outsider, as the best reporters almost always are.

“He is no Max Blumenthal” = damning with faint praise . . .

What I’m trying to say in this American Spectator piece is that some people now seem to be demanding that conservative journalists like myself — Philip Klein, Matt Vadum, J.P. Freire, et al. — must choose between being conservatives or being journalists.

To surrender to that demand would be to give credence  to Matthew Yglesias’ oft-iterated and counterfactual assertion that conservatives are incapable of doing “real journalism.” And it is especially infuriating when these demands are delivered as part of a More Right-Wing Than Thou message, as if failure to join the Dave Weigel high-tech lynching indicates that I am ideologically unsound and must therefore be shunned.

Acceding to that mentality is to turn the conservative movement into a clique, a gaggle of schoolgirls on the third-grade playground: “I hate Suzy because she’s nasty. You can’t be my friend if you’re friends with Nasty Suzy.”

Frum’s great sin was his attempt t0 purge paleoconservatives — among them some of my friends — from the movement. In that purge, Frum was sufficiently successful that by 2002 there were no dissidents in the Bush White House to say, “Hey, chief, how about we slow down and double-check this Weapons of Mass Destruction angle before we start ginning up the jingos for the conquest of Mesopotamia?”

As I have often remarked, I’d love to write a history of the neocon/paleocon feud titled, First, They Came for Mel Bradford. The ascendancy of what might be called “Claremont conservatism” can be traced to that one episode nearly 30 years ago. Combine that with Ronald Reagan’s ill-advised choice of GHW Bush as his running mate (rather than Paul Laxalt) and you have the two basic ingredients of nearly all that has gone wrong for the conservative cause ever since.

Frum is therefore accountable for what I deem harmful mischief, which he has stubbornly refused to recant. Yet I suspect there may some day come a moment of crisis — and perhaps some day soon — when an important conservative gets hit with the “anti-Semite” smear, and Frum will stand up to defend our guy, bringing to bear the credibility on that subject he garnered by calling it like he saw it back in the day.

Even though I think he called it wrong.

Again I remind readers of  the moral of Androcles and the Lion: Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.

‘The Written Word Is Forever’

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Do you remember this headline?

Dede Goes Down Upstate

That story was filed from the Carriage House Inn in Watertown, N.Y. Ali Akbar, Kerry Picket of the Washington Times and Dave Weigel (then with the Washington Independent) were all blogging in the same hotel room where I was trying to hit deadline for the American Spectator with my 793-word account of Scozzafava quitting the race. The next day, Joe Biden was due in Watertown to campaign for Bill Owens, while Fred Thompson was coming in for Doug Hoffman.

John McCormack of the Weekly Standard was on his way into town that Sunday night and was supposed to meet us at the local pub later. John called to get directions and I was right up against deadline, so I wanted someone else to take the call. But Ali, Kerry and Dave were like, “What are we, your personal secretaries or something?”

And I went nuts. Total Jekyll-and-Hyde screaming meltdown: Why couldn’t my f–ing friends do me this one little f–ing favor and deal with this f–ing phone call so I could hit my f–ing deadline?

NY-23 was crazy like that. Good times.

Sam Stein at HuffPo says the news of Weigel’s ouster “was greeted with shock within the close-knit community of Washington political reporters.” Well, yeah, a small group of people go through a certain crucible of shared experiences and a “close-knit community” develops.

Writing is an inherently lonely occupation — just you and that blank page — and unless you’re an anti-social introvert, the chance to hang out with fellow writers is a welcome relief from the maddening isolation. When you’re all covering the same story, fighting each other for scoops and racing to hit deadline, the basis of camraderie is understandable.

Which is a roundabout way of explaining why I see Weigel differently than some of the readers who seem to be viewing WeigelGate strictly through the prism of political allegiances. As a reporter on the beat, Weigel generally hung out with the relative handful of campaign journalists on the Right.

The stuff Weigel wrote on Journolist, etc., doesn’t match the guy who hung out with us. Kerry Picket summed it up best:

UPDATE: Two previous posts get the ‘Lanche, while I ponder the significance of praise from . . . Conor Friedersdorf?

After a few hours’ sleep, I’ve returned to find still more commenters telling me I’m full of crap for refusing to repudiate and denounce my friend Dave Weigel.

Let me make reference to my American Spectator colleague Philip Klein, whose defense of Dave prompted one commenter to label Phil a “Weigeltard.”

Phil responded on Twitter, “The day a friendship causes me to support abortion, higher taxes and bigger govt, they’ll have a point.”

Exactly. By the way, excuse me for speaking in parables. (Hey, where did I get that idea?) I told the story of my deadline conniption in Watertown as an example of where I had totally screwed up and been in the wrong, and yet Weigel is still my friend. As are Kerry and Ali.

WeigelGate became the No. 1 topic on Memeorandum — the blog topic du jour — because conservative bloggers see in this episode a sort of Rosetta Stone of how media bias operates:

“Ah, here’s how it works, see? Erza gets his buddy Weigel hired on at the WaPo as the token ‘conservative’ blogger, knowing full well that Weigel is secretly on Ezra’s side, as proven by the Journolist rants.”

In this perspective, Weigel is a black-hatted villain, and any conservative journalist who refuses to denounce Weigel becomes an accomplice to evil, either as a useful idiot or as an active agent of the liberal media conspiracy.

And therefore all journalists are “wild animals,” as Melissa Clouthier says.

OK, but this is exactly the same inductive reasoning by which Charles Johnson and others imagine that they have “proven” that I am a white supremacist — an example of all that is hatefully wrong about conservatism — and then demand that other conservatives either repudiate me or be guilty of abetting raaaaacism.

In other words, Weigel is getting the “Ransom Note” treatment.

Well, let us balance Weigel’s errors — the known evidence of mala fides that everybody is now discussing — against other evidence that is not known. (Being a top Hayekian public intellectual, I believe that unknown information can often be more important than that which is known.)

Ali Akbar called me to discuss WeigelGate and pointed out something: Weigel hung out with us in NY-23, in Boston during the Brown campaign, at CPAC and at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference.

During all that time, Ali remarked, not once did Weigel do a “gotcha” by disseminating reports of the off-the-record stuff he saw and heard. Whatever vicious snark and gossip Weigel dished out via his blog, or e-mails or Twitter, he did not abuse his journalistic privilege by burning the people who gave him access. (However, as someone else pointed out, Weigel did breach the confidentiality of Grover Norquist’s Wednesday morning briefing, which is always explicitly off-the-record. Grover will surely exact his pound of flesh in retribution for that burn.)

Those of you who don’t know Dave Weigel, and who are now judging him solely on the question of whether he is good or bad for the conservative cause, are free to think whatever you want about him. However, you can’t tell me what to think about the guy. If I’m giving him too much benefit of the doubt, OK, time will tell. Maybe I’m like Luke Skywalker, convinced there is still some spark of good left in Darth Vader.

And as to the question of whether Weigel has done anything good for the conservative cause . . .

Well, you are free to speculate that Dave may have done me favors which I am not at liberty to discuss. A good reporter never burns his sources, and a good source never burns a reporter. “Ethics, shmethics.”