"Gregory had no intent to commit a crime; he was committing journalism instead."

"Gun owners often say they want the government to leave them alone; why then are some clamoring for Gregory to be prosecuted?"

Asks Howard Kurtz, with amazing naivete. The implied argument is quite weird and perverse.

First, he's got this either/or premise: If you're doing one thing, you're not doing something else. If you're doing journalism, you can't also be doing something else. That might make sense if the crime in question had a required mental element that would be negated by the intent to "commit journalism," but it doesn't. Mere possession is enough. The most virtuous individuals with the best intentions get stuck with this law applying to them. If you don't like that, then you don't like this law. You've got an objection to the law, and yet, ironically, Gregory was arguing for more laws like that! That was the nature of the "journalism" he was "committing." He ought to be the first one prosecuted, not the last.

Second, Kurtz, a journalist himself, is mired the same sense of entitlement that people are objecting to in Gregory. He thinks journalists are special people who float above it all, who don't live in reality. You are the very people who are supposed to be observing reality, understanding it, and explaining it. But you don't even see that you are part of it. You have less awareness of it than the people you're getting paid to inform. Maybe you think you're just too important to have your time wasted by consequences that would befall ordinary people. You need to be free to continue to sit there mouthing outrage about the next terrible thing that befalls some ordinary person out there in the real world.

Third, Kurtz thinks he's caught others in hypocrisy. If gun owners want the government to leave them alone, why would they want Gregory to be prosecuted? It's like Kurtz wants us to laugh in his face. Yet he seems to think he's being quite clever. Why would he think that? Puzzling, isn't it? My only answer is that he does not believe in the rule of law. It doesn't occur to him that what gun owners who "want the government to leave them alone" want is for legislatures to refrain from passing laws and to repeal existing laws and for courts to declare laws null under the Second Amendment. Why should these people like it if one privileged, prominent man escapes prosecution? The laws remain, affecting everyone else, even as the oppressiveness of the laws is falsely minimized.

Obama didn't "fall flat." He went low key on purpose. Here's the reason.

Politico is all "Obama fell flat."

A surprisingly long parade of Democrats and media commentators who didn’t think much of the speech described it less as a failure than a fizzle—an oddly missed opportunity to frame his presidency or the nation’s choice in a fresh or inspirational light.

Blah blah blah. But here's Howard Kurtz with the response Pee-Wee Herman made famous: I meant to do that.



Kurtz says Obama's speech was the result of careful focus-group testing.

Strategists felt they were in a box, unable to meet the twin goals of style and substance at once. To be sure, Obama wanted to excite the party’s liberal base. But his brain trust was convinced that they would have gotten killed by going with a red-meat speech that simply bashed Republicans without detailing what Obama would do in the next four years....

Dial-twisting focus-groupers, strategists-in-a-box, a brain trust. Where is the man himself, the candidate, the President? I don't see the excuse here, Howie. It's like you're saying he is the empty chair.

"The Rupert Murdoch tabloid loves to package other people’s reporting in World War III headlines."

Writes Howard Kurtz, mocking the New York Post article that has the headline "Mary Kennedy pummeled RFK Jr., ran over family dog and threatened to kill herself for years: court papers," which begins: "Robert Kennedy Jr.’s wife, Mary, beat him up, tried to blackmail him, killed the family dog and, finally, told a servant she needed rope for a new couch — then hanged herself with it, according to a bombshell report.”

The "other people’s reporting" used by the NY Post is in Newsweek/Daily Beast, which is Kurtz's employer. That article is headlined "Exclusive: The Last Days of Mary Kennedy," with a subtitle: "She was the love of Bobby Jr.’s life. Then everything unraveled. In Newsweek, bestselling Kennedy historian Laurence Leamer reveals the heartbreaking story of Mary’s long decline." Heartbreaking. Love of his life. That goes to a different extreme, trying to appeal to a different audience — presumably women who adore bestselling Kennedy historians.

It's not surprising that the Post — like a blogger — would pull out the most lurid details and state them plainly, for readers who don't want the romance and don't need their suicide porn swathed in the pretense of respectability.

From the hardcore Post:

“Mary’s violence and physical abuse toward me began before we were married,” Bobby said in confidential court papers that surfaced yesterday.

The bestselling Kennedy historian Laurence Leamer obtained the papers. That's the basis for the "Exclusive" in the Newsweek headline. Continuing with the Post, because I don't want Kennedy romance speed bumps in my access to the lurid facts:

“Soon after Mary became pregnant with our first son, Mary — in a sudden rage about my continued friendship with my ex-wife — hit me in the face with her fist,’’ Bobby said in an affidavit filed as part of his then-custody battle with his estranged wife.

“She was a trained boxer, and I got a shiner,’’ Bobby said. “Her engagement ring crushed my tear duct, causing permanent damage. Mary asked me to lie to her family about the cause of my shiner.”

Domestic violence. (Of course, the suicide — done at home — was also domestic violence.)

Bobby said that at one point after they separated, Mary “said she intended to kill herself unless I called off the divorce and unless I promised to recommit to the marriage.’’

Psychological abuse. (Of course, the suicide itself was psychological abuse.)

[Bobby said] to the judge that despite years of her abusing him, “she repeatedly says she will call the police and say that I beat her if I threaten to leave her."...

In his confidential affidavit, Bobby had claimed that Mary continued to physically attack him even after he moved out, recounting a May 2011 incident in which Mary asked him to come console the kids over their dead dog.

“Mary ran over and killed the dog, Porcia, in the driveway,” he said in the affidavit. Arriving at her house, he found her drunk, with their son Aidan in the room.

“I opened the door, and she leapt out of her bed and hit me with a roundhouse punch that, had I not blocked it, would have undoubtedly broken my face,” Bobby claimed.

She was “raining blows down on me as I backed down the hall,” landing about 30 blows in all, he said.

“She screamed at Aidan as she hit me, [saying, I’m] ‘a demon. He is the most evil man in the world. Everything he does is evil and a fraud. He is a philanderer, an adulterer, a sex addict.’ ”

This, culled from an article with the subtitle "She was the love of Bobby Jr.’s life."

According to the affidavit, during their marriage, Bobby would awaken in the middle of the night to find Mary beating him, and he said that he once had to escape through a second-floor window.

One time, she threw a plate of spaghetti at him in front of the kids and another, attacked him with scissors while he was in the bathtub, according to the report....

According to Newsweek, Bobby “pleaded” with Mary’s brothers and sisters to do an intervention, and e-mailed them in June 2011 that she was “sinking into terrible darkness.”

Mary’s siblings — who, along with many of her friends have contended that the Kennedy clan is trying to save face over Bobby’s mistreatment of Mary by making her look mentally ill — allegedly told him to take a hike.

So... what do the sisters say now that she's hanged herself? Was she mentally ill or did she rationally and intentionally commit suicide (and if so, why? To torture and punish Bobby?)?

"Why publish the story then when you couldn't answer the essential question: What precisely is Herman Cain alleged to have done to these women?"

Howard Kurtz asks Politico's Jonathan Martin. Martin flails desperately, and Kurtz keeps going after him.

MR. KURTZ: I think at a lot of news organizations an editor would have said... you don't have the details of the sexually suggestive behavior that made them angry. Go back and get more. You could have waited, there was nothing forcing you to publish this last Sunday.

Martin blabbers. Kurtz makes him suffer. Watch the video at the link.

Meanwhile, on "Meet the Press," David Gregory had a chance to interrogate Maggie Haberman, whom he identifed as "Politico's reporter covering the Cain story." Gregory asked her absolutely nothing about Politico's behavior. He put up a quote from Cain, saying he'd like to leave the story behind and "get back on message," and asks her "So how does he really do that when there are more questions, which are primarily what?"

MS. MAGGIE HABERMAN: Well, I think among the questions are does he remember the second woman who we reported on? He says he has no memory of her whatsoever. Other media outlets have confirmed that there was another woman who had made some kind of complaint about sexually inappropriate behavior.

MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

MS. HABERMAN: And Mr. Cain's campaign last night not only said they don't want to talk about this anymore, but they, you know, said they were going to email people the code of ethics from the Society of Professional Journalists, and did to one of my colleagues. I think this is where you're going to see the pivot. They are going to say the media is out to get him. I think that it has served them well this week.

MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

MS. HABERMAN: I think that's how he's gotten around some conflicting answers about what's happened. I don't know that he's going to be able to not answer or at least not get asked them anymore, going forward.

At that point, Gregory moves on to another guest. That is, he lobbed Haberman a question that she was able to use to place the burden on Cain to come forward with the details, and Gregory asked nothing. Unless you consider "Mm-hmm" to be something. Haberman mentioned the code of ethics from the Society of Professional Journalists, but that did not rouse Mr. Gregory from his slumbers. Tim Russert would have grilled her. She needed grilling. Why have her on the show and not interrogate her?

"As a plain-vanilla candidate, Romney is never going to win the excitement primary."

"A telling moment occurred when Sarah Palin stole the spotlight by taking her bus tour to New Hampshire on the day that Romney was officially kicking off his candidacy there. He lost the battle of the headlines as the Manchester Union Leader splashed Palin on the front page and ran Romney’s announcement inside the paper. But he remains the front-runner—though his staff recoils from the term—and she remains a long-shot celebrity with high negatives."

Howard Kurtz. The article is called "Mitt Romney, Boring Genius?" I think the suggestion is not that Romney is a genius but he's boring. It's that he's a genius at being boring.

"I could not have imagined doing this five years ago, as a guy who just plain likes paper."

Howard Kurtz, on leaving The Washington Post to join The Daily Beast.

Reporters [have] asked me what this meant for the death of print or the decline of The Post. I pushed back, as I happen to believe that newspapers are going to be around for a long time. Let's not get carried away here.... Still, there's an awful lot of energy and excitement in the Web world.

Yes, there is.

"Sarah Palin rips non-Muslim Obama over mosque while Lady Gaga remains silent."

Sorry. I'm just trying to rip off Howard Kurtz.

"We have the nirvana that people are looking for."

Says Rick Stengel, the managing editor of Time Magazine.

Eh... I think I'll look for the nirvana that you can't look for. That seems more nirvana-y. 

"I don't think you can be a journalist and carry water for a politician, and that's what they were doing: 'Here's the line on Palin.'"

"These are political hacks, and I think they should stop calling themselves journalists. It discredits the rest of us."

So said Tucker Carlson, quoted in a Howard Kurtz analysis of the Journolist leaks on The Daily Caller.

Kurtz concludes: "None of this quite adds up to a Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy, and there is no reason to believe that some conservative commentators don't have similar discussions. But there is no escaping the fact that some of the list's liberal literati come off sounding like cagey political operatives."

"Sherrod may be the only official ever dismissed because of the *fear* that Fox host Glenn Beck might go after her."

Notes Howard Kurtz:

As Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack tried to pressure her into resigning, Sherrod says Deputy Under Secretary Cheryl Cook called her Monday to say "do it, because you're going to be on 'Glenn Beck' tonight." And for all the focus on Fox, much of the mainstream media ran with a fragmentary story that painted an obscure 62-year-old Georgian as an unrepentant racist....

The administration's concern about Beck stems in part from his campaign last year that prompted the resignation of White House environmental official Van Jones over divisive remarks -- a controversy that some news organizations acknowledged they were too slow to cover. Ironically, Beck defended Sherrod on Tuesday, saying that "context matters" and he would have objected if someone had shown a video of him at an AA meeting saying he used to pass out from drinking but omitting the part where he says he found Jesus and gave up alcohol.

"Jon [Stewart] has always been a crypto-neocon."

"Could he be coming out of the closet? ... A neoconservative is a liberal mugged by reality."

Bill Kristol comments to Howard Kurtz who's trying to figure out what it means that Jon Stewart is making fun of Barack Obama.

I'd say it mainly means that Barack Obama is President of the United States. "The Daily Show" isn't going to work unless it makes fun of the powerful.

"It was meant to be funny and insightful and translate the superb journalism Chris and Dana do in print and online into a new format."

"I don't think the series worked as they intended."

LOL. Cringe.

The withering and often personal criticism of Milbank and Cillizza exploded Friday afternoon after the liberal Web site Talking Points Memo posted and criticized the latest video. Both men, who frequently appear on television, became high-profile targets, particularly among left-leaning bloggers but also on such outlets as Twitter.

"It's a brutal world out there in the blogosphere," Milbank said. "I'm often surprised by the ferocity out there, but I probably shouldn't be."

Yeah, and you shouldn't be such a pussy either. You don't have the monopoly on public discourse that you would like, so you whine that it is "brutal" and "feroci[ous]." But you were given a huge mainstream media platform for a comedy routine and you did bad comedy. You wanted to be big professionals and big amateurs at the same time. You deserved a takedown and you got it. Man up. It was you not the bloggers who lacked standards.

The Nico Pitney/Dana Milbank confrontation on "Reliable Sources" — about that seeming planted question.

Pitney comments: "The only thing that surprised me was when Dana turned to me after our initial sparring and called me a 'dick' in a whispered tone (the specific phrase was, I believe, 'You're such a dick')."

What the NYT did completely differently from the Wall Street Journal...

... and the different fates of David Rohde and Daniel Pearl.

Perez Hilton thanks Miss California for giving him the chance to make gay marriage a big news topic all last week.

Oh, and of course, he lets President Barack Obama off the hook for having exactly the same "hateful" opinion that infects the feeble mind of the pathetic Miss U.S.A. contestant. This is all a big media performance. Don't you understand that, Howard Kurtz? Don't you get Perez Hilton? I don't know if you've read his website before....



(Via Newsbusters, via The Rhetorican, via Instapundit.)



And I love that new word "espew," which I take to be a portmanteau of "spew" and "eschew." I'm not going to espew it. I mean, I'm going to espew it everywhere. Use it in a sentence today.

"When the novelty of the first African American president wears off, the sight of Obama talking on television might have less impact..."

"For now, though, the White House is cranking up the volume, staging Obama's first presidential news conference [Monday night] -- in prime time."

How long does it take people to get something through their skulls? The Prez is black. I've been used to it since months before it happened. (And it seemed normal to me back when he was a long shot.) Are people really still going around dumbfounded, marveling that this — this! — happened in America? What is wrong with you? Get up to speed, people.

And yes, I'm very interested in the first big press conference. But that's because the country seems to be going to hell, and I want to see some competence and accountability. If Obama's people think they are "staging" some feel-good diversity show — it's "the first African American president ... talking on television"! — they must be crazy.

The media's gone mad for Obama.

Howard Kurtz is agonizing over the adulation of Obama. (Oddly, he illustrates his column with the cover of the new issue of The New Republic, which I think has one of the worst pictures of Obama I've ever seen.)

Each writer, each publication, seems to reach for more eye-popping superlatives. "OBAMAISM -- It's a Kind of Religion," says New York magazine. "Those of us too young to have known JFK's Camelot are going to have our own giddy Camelot II to enrapture and entertain us," Kurt Andersen writes. The New York Post has already christened it "BAM-A-LOT."

"Here we are," writes Salon's Rebecca Traister, "oohing and aahing over what they'll be wearing, and what they'll be eating, what kind of dog they'll be getting, what bedrooms they'll be living in, and what schools they'll be attending. It feels better than good to sniff and snurfle through the Obamas' tastes and habits. . . . Who knew we had in us the capacity to fall for this kind of idealized Americana again?"...

"Obama is a figure, especially in pop culture, in a way that most new presidents are not," historian Michael Beschloss says. "Young people who may not be interested in the details of NAFTA or foreign policy just think Obama is cool, and they're interested in him. Being cool can really help a new president."

Let's adulate Obama for the sake U.S. interests in international trade and foreign affairs?

Anyway, obviously, at some point, Obama will start governing, and the giddy/inane enthusiasm will end. Whether these high expectations will help in the long run, who knows?

So is Franklin Raines an Obama economic advisor or not?

The Obama campaign does not like this ad:



And it's denying that Raines is an advisor. But then the Washington Post would have to be wrong. You can't bash McCain for basing the ad on the info in the Post and specifically identifying the Post as the source.

Here's what the Post has today:

The McCain campaign cited a July Washington Post profile of Raines as the source for his connection to Obama. In that profile, it was reported that he had "taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters." In a statement issued by the Obama campaign late Thursday, Raines strongly denied having provided counsel to Obama, saying: "I am not an advisor to Barack Obama, nor have I provided his campaign with advice on housing or economic matters."

That's all, which I take to mean the WaPo stands behind its original reporting. If the original reporting is true, then Raines is an Obama advisor and a liar.

AND: WaPo's Howard Kurtz says:

The commercial's main charge is based on an April story in The Washington Post that said Raines has "taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters." Reporter Anita Huslin says Raines told her that during an in-person interview....

Whether viewers will somehow hold Obama responsible for the Fannie Mae collapse because of what is at best a slight association with its former head is open to question. The commercial seems intended as a response to an earlier Obama spot charging that McCain can't clean up Washington because seven of his top campaign officials are former lobbyists.

MORE: Time's Karen Tumulty says "McCain Plays the Race Card"!

This is hardly subtle: Sinister images of two black men, followed by one of a vulnerable-looking elderly white woman.

2 black men: Obama and Raines!

AND: Tumulty makes much of the fact that the ad doesn't mention Jim Johnson: "Why? One reason might be that Johnson is white; Raines is black." But the campaign does have an ad based on Johnson:



UPDATE: WaPo says it's a stretch to make much of anything out of the Obama-Raines relationship:

I asked [the author of the Raines profile Anita] Huslin to provide the exact circumstances of that passage. She said that she was chatting with Raines during the photo shoot, and asked "if he was engaged at all with the Democrats' quest for the White House. He said that he had gotten a couple of calls from the Obama campaign. I asked him about what, and he said, 'Oh, general housing, economy issues.' ('Not mortgage/foreclosure meltdown or Fannie-specific?' I asked, and he said 'no.')"

"If you were really savvy, you'd 'manipulate' the media into a stampede of lurid drivel deriding her as a Stepford wife and a dominatrix..."

"... comparing her to Islamic fundamentalists, Pontius Pilate and porn stars, and dismissing her as a dysfunctional brood mare who can't possibly be the biological mother of the kid she was too dumb to abort. Who knows? It's a long shot, but if you could pull it off, a really cunning media manipulator might succeed in manipulating Howie's buddies into spending the month after Labor Day outbidding each other in some insane Who Wants To Be An Effete Condescending Media Snob?"

Mark Steyn is particularly amusing lashing at what WaPo's Howard Kurtz has to say about the McCain campaign trying to manipulate the media. Power Line has something to say too.

I'd say something about it myself too, but I simply haven't got the time this morning. Please carry on without me.

ADDED: I have a few minutes now, so let me read Kurtz closely:

The McCain camp has already accused the MSM of trying to "destroy" the governor of Alaska. So any challenge to her record or her veracity can now be cast as the product of an oh-so-unfair press. Which, needless to say, doesn't exactly please reporters.....

As for the sudden insistence that Palin is a delicate flower who must be shielded from harsh rhetoric, take this example.

She doesn't need to be shielded. Bring on the "harsh rhetoric." It's made her the most popular politician in America. We bloggers ravenously await your next nugget of harsh rhetoric. And we will make you look bad when it's sexist or unfair. If that makes you mad... well, who cares if you're mad? But it's not going to win you back the respect that you lose when your "harsh rhetoric" is biased.

The lipstick imbroglio is evidence that the Drudge/Fox/New York Post axis can drive just about any story into mainstream land. Does anyone seriously believe that Barack Obama was calling Sarah Palin a pig? What about the fact that McCain has used "lipstick on a pig" before? What about the book by that title by former McCain aide Torie Clarke? Never mind: get the cable bookers to line up women on opposite sides of the lipstick divide and let them claw at each other!

Blah! I'm sick of the lipstick thing, but please. The fact that there is an old expression isn't enough. What if Obama opponents took to saying "pot calling the kettle black" or "call a spade a spade." There would be no end to the outrage... and rightly so. I don't what to hear the "old expression" argument from anyone who won't say they'd make the same argument if the tables were turned.

And Howard... "line up women on opposite sides of the lipstick divide and let them claw at each other..." Now, you're using the image of the catfight! You're trying to say that Obama didn't mean to refer to a pig, and you're clearly referring to cats and doing so in a way that is traditionally used to diminish women.

Ah, enough of this for now.

"At Off the Bus, because they're not part of the professional gaggle, they can come up with their own views of what's happening..."

About that blogger who got Bill Clinton to call Todd Purdum a "scumbag"... and 2,500 other blogger-reporters boosted by Huffington Post.

Mayhill Fowler says she never planned to ask Bill Clinton the question that unleashed a decidedly unpresidential tirade....

Fowler had her tape recorder going when [Barack Obama] made his ill-fated remarks about frustrated small-town residents turning to guns, God or anti-immigrant sentiments....

Mary Katherine Ham, a conservative blogger, says that while she would insist on identifying herself, "politicians need to learn that anyone can break news, and citizens who run into you -- even if you're not writing for the Huffington Post -- can post it anywhere."

In an e-mail, Fowler says she has come to realize that her presence "flummoxes some longtime journalists -- because suddenly here I am, unpaid but as a consequence with much more freedom to find out what's going on out there, and writing for a new and encroaching media that is a Wild Wild West of lawlessness."

A Wild Wild West of lawlessness — otherwise know as a marketplace of ideas.