Saturday, April 18, 2009

An email to Mike Allen of Politico

I don't much visit Politico's site anymore. Now that the campaign is over, I don't have any interest in the Very Latest, ten-minute-shelf-life gossip, and I find their increasingly rightward slant by turns ham-handed and pathetic. However, that bastard TBogg tortured tricked me into reading an excerpt from one of their posts, and it was so far over the top that I … that I … fired off an angry email! Maybe I will even Twitter about this! Bow down, Mike Allen! YOU OWE ME AWE.

I sent the "email" through the microscopic complaint box on his fancy profile page. This box doesn't even have a subject line, just to be sure you get the hint that there is no chance in hell he will ever read it. Here is a CC, so that you may laugh at my ineffectual bleatings, along with instead of him.

Mike:

In your post "Obama consulted widely on memos," you allowed a "former top official" in the Bush Administration to comment anonymously. The official was not talking about anything that could have hidden behind the usual "not authorized to speak on this issue" dodge. He or she was not sharing any sensitive information. From your description, he or she is not even part of the government anymore. He or she was only giving what might politely be called an opinion, and would more honestly would be called fear-mongering spin.

You should not have used this person's statement if he or she was too gutless to go on the record. You let yourself get used as a mouthpiece. This is either obvious bias in favor of the GOP or the worst form of stenography on your part.

I know it is your organization's policy to try to "win" every news cycle, but this one gets marked down in the loss column. Journalistic independence and credibility still count for something, you know. Or should know.

Brendan Keefe

2 comments:

James Briggs Stratton "Doghouse" Riley said...

"Increasingly rightward slant"? What'd they do, put Pinochet on the masthead?

At least FOX is Evil and delusional. Politico is basically a collection of garden-variety Beltway insiders: second-rate juveniles, third-rate intellects, and careerist suck-ups, whose utter, and utterly facile, cynicism will always be at the service of a Cold War/Reaganite mentality, for the same reason the Governor of New Jersey needs a phalanx of bodyguards while he vacations in Rome: inflated self-worth and the secret knowledge that if people with guns ever did come after 'em it would probably be justified. The banality of evil and the evil of banality.

And Mike Allen, it should forever be remembered, was the original "source" of the unattributed "gossip" about "White House vandalism". If the man does not go to bed every night sweat-flecked with dread of prison rape he's either a sociopath or there's no justice in this life.

ArtSparker said...

It's interesting, the backing down on gay marriage could be the sign of a return to sanity. I would like to have two parties in this country which seemed mostly made up of grownups.

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