Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Mike Allen puts a New Gambit in His Playbook: Useful Morons Reply

POLITICO has removed its nose from Obama's nethermost orifice [note reference to tiny Schwannstueke] and sent their masterminds to decry the terrible treatment this White House is giving them---and after all they've done for HIM! His Most High Solipsist has benefited from the Band of Brothers/Sisters who avoided Solyndra, Fast and Furious, Benghazi [during the election, no less] and [and many other gaffes too numerous to name] not even the NYT can get access to a one-on-ONE with His Most High Narcissist. Of course, sniveling sycophants like Brian Williams, Scott Pelley, Diane Sawyer and the House Poodle from 60 Minutes, Steve Kroft, all get their face time with The Emperor Jones.
"The balance of power used to bemore in favor of the mainstream press,” said Mike McCurry, who was press secretary to President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Nowadays, he said, “The White House gets away with stuff I would never have dreamed of doing. When I talk to White House reporters now, they say it’s really tough to do business with people who don’t see the need to be cooperative.”

McCurry and his colleagues in the Clinton White House were hardly above putting their boss in front of gentle questions: Clinton and Vice President Al Gore often preferred the safety of “Larry King Live” to the rhetorical combat of the briefing room. But Obama and his aides have raised it to an art form: The president has shut down interviews with many of the White House reporters who know the most and ask the toughest questions. Instead, he spends way more time talking directly to voters via friendly shows and media personalities. Why bother with The New York Times beat reporter when Obama can go on “The View”?
Piers Morgan has adequately replaced Larry King, but his reputation as a fugitive from a British newsie scandal would tarnish the shining armor of the Commander of the Faithful,[Rais al-Mu'mineen to his Arab confreres whom he bows and kowtows to as much as it isn't seen as dreadfully impolitic]. The usually compliant Ann Compton bleats thusly:
“The way the president’s availability to the press has shrunk in the last two years is a disgrace,” said ABC News White House reporter Ann Compton, who has covered every president back to Gerald R. Ford. “The president’s day-to-day policy development — on immigration, on guns — is almost totally opaque to the reporters trying to do a responsible job of covering it. There are no readouts from big meetings he has with people from the outside, and many of them aren’t even on his schedule. This is different from every president I covered. This White House goes to extreme lengths to keep the press away.”
No more interviews of nominees when there might be a chance to slip up and ask a real query:
When Obama nominated Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court, she gave one interview — to White House TV, produced by Obama aides.
The GREAT ONE or is it WON still has a choir of clowns like the alcoholic whore Charles H. Pierce over at the unread broadshit called Esquire roars that POLITICO has always been unreliable. The WaPo's in-house sod hole Greg Mitchell calls Vandehei and Allen "Crybabies" when he himself is a victim of perpetual buggery and submission by the White House, the DNC, and the far-left conclave of covert communists like little Ezra Klein. But there's more:
“They use every technique anyone has ever thought of, and some no one ever had,” New York Times White House reporter Peter Baker told us. “They can be very responsive and very helpful at pulling back the curtain at times while keeping you at bay at others. And they’re not at all shy about making clear when they don’t like your stories, which is quite often.”
Peter is actually the very best foreign reporter in the NYT stable. In the past, the "newspaper of record" was given special treatment. But now Twitter, Facebook, Google+, legacy lefty TV broadcasters like NBC, CBS, ABC and especially 60 Minutes along with many other communication outlets are employed by this White House to undermine the GOP and ignore the traditional media. Some of Obama's techniques are:
* There’s the classic weekend document dump to avoid negative coverage. By our count, the White House has done this nearly two dozen times, and almost always to minimize attention to embarrassing or messy facts. “What you guys call a document dump, we call transparency,” the White House’s Earnest shot back. If that’s the case, the White House was exceptionally transparent during the Solyndra controversy, releasing details three times on a Friday.

* There is the iron-fisted control of access to White House information and officials. Top officials recently discouraged Cabinet secretaries from talking about sequestration. And even top officials privately gripe about the muzzle put on them by the White House.

* They are also masters of scrutiny avoidance. The president has not granted an interview to print reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, POLITICO and others in years. These are the reporters who are often most likely to ask tough, unpredictable questions.Kumar, who works out of the White House press room and tallies every question a journalist asks the president, has found that in his first term Obama held brief press availabilities after photos ops or announcements one-third as often as George W. Bush did in his first term — 107 to Bush’s 355.

* While White House officials deny it is intentional, this administration —like its predecessors — does some good old-fashioned bullying of reporters: making clear there will be no interviews, or even questions at press conferences, if aides are displeased with their coverage.
And the press had a good time with an old pic of Obama shooting a skeet shotgun, but got slapped on the wrist by Carney and Plouffe, demonstrating the essential silliness of the sandbox toddlers in the West Wing when someone criticizes their toys.
A number of these techniques were on vivid display two weekends ago, when the White House released a six-month-old photo of the president shooting skeet, buttressing his claim in a New Republic interview that he fires at clay pigeons “all the time” at Camp David.

Obama and his team, especially newly promoted senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer, often bemoan the media’s endless chase of superficial and distracting storylines. So how did the president’s inner circle handle the silly dust-up about whether the president really did shoot skeet?

Pfeiffer and White House press secretary Jay Carney tweeted a link to the photo, with Pfeiffer writing that it was “[f]or all the skeeters” (doubters, or “skeet birthers”). Longtime adviser David Plouffe then taunted critics on Twitter: “Attn skeet birthers. Make our day - let the photoshop conspiracies begin!” Plouffe soon followed up with: “Day made. The skeet birthers are out in full force in response to POTUS pic. Makes for most excellent, delusional reading.”

The controversy started with an interview co-conducted by Chris Hughes, a former Obama supporter and now publisher of The New Republic. The government created the content (the photo), released it on its terms (Twitter) and then used Twitter again to stoke stories about conservatives who didn’t believe Obama ever shot a gun in the first place.
Methinks that David is delusional.

And I'm sorry Neil Monroe of the Daily Caller wasn't mentioned when he supposedly "heckled" THE MOST HIGH during a sheeple only exposition in the Rose Garden.

The brave White House reporters literally and figuratively chased him out of their cozy coterie. Look where that got the herd of suck-ups....

1 comment :

GW said...

Good post. Obama's strategy of press engagement - and disengagement for critical coverage - is cynical beyond measure.