The Washington Post editors notice that the economy is a mess and getting worse. And they sound miffed:
And yet for the past several days, Washington has been consumed by the point-scoring possibilities of a flap over commentator Rush Limbaugh. It is almost unbelievable that grown men and women in government, of either party, are spending time and energy on this. The whole world is watching, counting on Washington for leadership. The president and lawmakers of both parties must provide it.
Let’s put aside the naked hypocrisy for a moment and ignore the number of stories the Post ran on this subject, (and on page one no less). The editors use a passive voice — “Washington has been consumed” — which deserves further scrutiny. Wasn’t it Obama’s political hit men who cooked up the scheme to Limbaugh-ize the GOP? Wasn’t it Gibbs and Rahm Emanuel who egged on reporters? It is not the Republicans who are claiming Limbaugh should be crowned head of the party. To the contrary the GOP’s elected leaders have been imploring the media to get back to the economy, the grotesque omnibus spending bill, and, frankly, the president’s cluelessness about the market crash.
So if they had wanted to be accurate, the editors should have written:
And yet for the past several days, the Obama administration has been consumed by the point-scoring possibilities of a flap over commentator Rush Limbaugh. It is almost unbelievable that grown men and women in government, are spending time and energy on this. The whole world is watching, counting on Washington for leadership. The president and lawmakers of both parties must provide it.
That’s plainly what is going on. Obama’s bear market, the embarrassing budget, spend-a-thons, and the beginnings of Red state senators’ defections from the Obama agenda are not what the Obama administration wants people to think about. So they cooked up what even the Post concludes is a juvenile and “counterproductive” (Gibbs words) plot. (The Post’s own Jackson Diehl has it exactly right.)
In the era of responsibility, we should be clear about who is responsible for this one. It does the Post’s readers no good to mask the White House’s culpability here. And, yes, it is “unbelievable” that this is what the White House is spending its energy on.
Excellent.
” We are trying out the economics of Fascism without having suffered all its social or political ravages” George Soule New Republic
yes, i understand scott beauchamp was thrilled!
Now that Peretz is over his Obama infatuation.
I had to stop taking TNR when Marty drank the Obama Kool-Aid. And Leon L. has become just too pompous for words.
The New Republic? “serious magazine”? surely you jest.
“Obama will get no argument from me when it comes to Bush’s disaster socialism. But this new he-did-it-too argument does run counter to another, Hendrik Hertzberg-applauded narrative that Obama has been running with since before inauguration: That his administration’s economic policies represents a sharp break from the policies of his predecessor.
OMG, the irony, the irony.
I stopped my subscription when Peretz fired the late great Michael Kelly simply because Mike kept exposing Gore as a pompous hypocrite.
Perhaps if they brought back Fred Barnes and Charles Krauthammer. But as it stands, TNR is unreadable, an echo chamber of adolescent, collegiate journalism and economic ignorance. And the online blogs are the same seven people having an endlessly repeated conversation with each other. Yuck.
I stopped my subscription when Peretz fired the late great Michael Kelly simply because Mike kept exposing Gore as a pompous hypocrite.
That’s when I quit. I used to send subscriptions to my kids and I sent Vanity Fair subscriptions to a number of female relatives, including my mother who enjoyed the gossip. All those subscriptions got dropped over the past few years. VF still sends me a copy every month in spite of a rude word I wrote on the renewal notice when I returned it.
There is probably only one reason to read TNR: John McWhorter. Of course, he too drank the Obama Kool-Aid after years of railing against the hypocrisy of “black leaders” (I’m still waiting for the day when there are “white” leaders, “Jew” leaders and “Asian” leaders) and their constant exploitation of blacks for personal gain. Well, I think the biggest exploiter got what he wanted this time around, no?
Due to the corrupting influence of Marty Peretz, there is no place more than than TNR where money and ownership have more clearly expressed themselves in the idiosyncratic corruption and distortion of the journalistic process.
booo!
I’m glad to see that Scott Beauchamp was remembered in these comments. Scott was the soldier who was married to a TNR staffer and wrote two editorials about how vicious the military was in Iraq, driving over dogs in Hummers for fun. Scott recanted, TNR didn’t.
Then when the whole story was shown to be lies upon lies by the blog world, the editor, Franklin Foer wrote an endless, devious and pathos ridden report on his study of the Beauchamp fiasco. Foer found it to be a minor misunderstanding.
Let us also remember that Leon W. aside from being pompous has sometimes claimed to be a friend Israel but always publicly supports the candidate who most closely resembles Jimmy Carter.