You didn’t really want to keep that Egg McMuffin
down, did you? Good! Go read this Politico
story about media-progressives and their dearly re-elected
leader:
In conversations with POLITICO, some of the left’s most
influential voices in media said that, with the concerns of
re-election over, they intend to be more critical of the
president’s performance and more aggressive in urging him to pursue
a progressive agenda as the clock ticks on his last four years in
office.
“Liberals in the media are going to be tougher on Obama and more
respectful at the same time,” Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker’s
chief political commentator and a former speechwriter for Jimmy
Carter, told POLITICO. “He was the champion of our side, he
vanquished the foe….. [but] now liberals don’t have to worry about
hurting his chances for re-election, so they can be tougher in
urging him to do what he should be doing.”
Hendrik Hertzberg, you’re fired! At least from
any magazine I would edit. Seriously, even if the president is
on your team, the project of journalism is incompatible with
the bootlicking of power. I am trying to imagine a universe in
which President Gary Johnson is given a pass by Reason
over maintaining or strengthening federal penalties for
cocaine…nope, can’t do it.
Glenn Greenwald
argues plausibly that the “hurting his chances for re-election”
virus quickly becomes fatal in the host:
Once one decides in the name of electoral expediency to abdicate
their primary duty as a citizen and especially as a journalist -
namely, to hold accountable those who wield the greatest political
power – then this becomes a permanent abdication. That’s because US
politics is essentially one permanent, never-ending election. The
2012 votes were barely counted before the ;political ;media ;began
chattering ;about
2016, and MSNBC is already – as one of its prime time
hosts ;put
it ;- “gearing up” for the 2014 midterm. [...]
There is never any justification for those who work in media or
hold themselves out as journalists – as opposed to, say, those who
are party apparatchiks – to refrain from holding the nation’s most
powerful political leaders accountable. ;
You can view some artifacts of Hertzberg’s abdication here,
here,
here,
here,
and
here.
