In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.And they didn't like it - so did something about it.
The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public – to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”
Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists.
According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.Calling a political opponent a racist ? Hmm, worth a try. Not been done before.
In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — call them racists.”
Michael Tomasky, a writer for the Guardian [my emphasis] also tried to rally his fellow members of Journolist: “Listen folks–in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn’t about defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people.”
"Discourse that serves the people". Very Soviet. But as Andrew Breitbart puts it : 'the reporters at Pravda weren't such insufferable ******* !"
4 comments:
You are right to say how Soviet it is. If you ever wonder how totalitarian powers managed to recruit so many lickspittles, censors, investigators, judges interrogators and even executioners from the ranks of once-eminent intellectual classes, you need wonder no more. They are all present in larval form on the Journolist.
Given the way Obama's standing is plummeting (do I get a little shiver of pleasure at the thought of the opportunity to say 'I told you so'? Yes. Yes, I do..), it might just backfire on them.
*gets popcorn*
Warning!
Journolist - straying close to redline territory.
You left out the part where one of them took a disgusting delight in a fantasy about Rush Limbaugh dying a horribly painful death from cancer.
I don't much care for Limbaugh, a loud mouth radio personality. But these are the same people who are constantly trying a push through a "diversity on the radio" bill. Apparently they know how to use diversity to censure those they don't like.
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