If you can judge a man by his friends, surely you can judge a president by the complaints he cares about most. By that rule, it is revealing that President Obama, beset by scandals and anger across the land, is making the care and feeding of the media his first priority.
The president ordered Attorney General Eric Holder to meet with journalists upset over prosecutors seizing Associated Press phone records and labeling a Fox News reporter a potential “co-conspirator” in a leak case. Obama also ordered Holder to solicit proposals for changing the rules governing such cases — and did it publicly to demonstrate his concern about “government overreach.”
Leave it to the media barons to miss the irony — and the joke at their expense. The president who has made government overreach the defining issue of his tenure is now concerned about it when it gores their ox. Aren’t they special!
Even more telling, Holder’s demand that the meeting be off the record didn’t bother some of the credulous people normally regarded as cynics. The Washington Post, one of the few organizations to attend, reported in breathtaking fashion that Holder “completely endorsed the president’s statement that reporters should not be at legal risk for doing their job.”
Holy scoop! If journalists are good children, next week the president and the attorney general might deign to say they believe in the First Amendment — off the record, of course.
No wonder the mainstream press is about as popular as an undertaker. It covered for Obama while the economy tanked and millions lost their jobs. Its loud outrage over American losses in Iraq under George W. Bush went mute when losses in Afghanistan soared under Obama.
You would think the snooping on them would alert journalists that their biases had betrayed them, and that because Obama came after them, he would be absolutely ruthless with those who opposed him.
But their callous indifference to other cases of government abuse of power reveals why much of the public correctly views the media as just another special-interest group. You’ve heard of crony capitalism — crony journalism is its grubby twin.
Instead of being the watchdog that holds the government accountable, much of the Washington press corps plays lapdog and falls into a deep swoon as soon as Obama rubs its belly. To hell with their fellow Americans whose rights were also violated.
The White House knows the press is easy to seduce and uses that knowledge for its own benefit. So while telling journalists he feels their pain, Obama knows he can safely force the IRS and Benghazi scandals to the back of the bus, if they’re allowed on at all.
Jay Carney, his press secretary, answered “yes” when a reporter asked whether Obama is satisfied with how IRS bosses responded to findings that agents targeted groups that might oppose his policies.
That means the president is fine with Lois Lerner invoking the Fifth Amendment and refusing to answer questions. It means he is fine with other officials saying they couldn’t remember anything about targeting conservative groups, pro-life organizations and pro-Israel groups — except that they had nothing to do with it.
Notice, too, that Obama didn’t order the new tax man to follow the Holder model and meet with the groups singled out. Nor did he demand the new boss offer assurances to all taxpayers that they would all be treated fairly without regard to their politics, and he certainly didn’t solicit public ideas about improving the IRS.
Then there’s Benghazi, where our Libyan ambassador and three other Americans were killed on the 11th anniversary of 9/11. Carney called congressional probes “political” and said it was “a fake controversy” that “happened a long time ago.”
The message for Americans concerned about the other abuses of power is clear — no presidential soup for you! The media get it all.
That doesn’t mean Obama likes the media — it’s just that he needs them. If they get off his bus, there will be nobody left to hide the truth.
Spicing up a bland Dem race
The news in the mayoral race is that there is finally news. Council Speaker Christine Quinn and former Comptroller Bill Thompson are locked in a nasty spat, with Quinn accusing him of supporting “environmental racism” policies and he taking offense.
“I have to tell you, as a black man, to be accused of racism by Speaker Quinn is insulting,” Thompson shot back.
The exchange itself, over a garbage-transfer station in Manhattan, won’t have a lasting impact, but it could signal a welcome end to the sleepy season.
Because they are all courting the big union vote, the Democrats have downplayed any major differences among themselves.
The result has been a snooze, with no candidate willing to be honest about the vast financial problems coming down the pike. To do so would mean taking on union sacred cows, such as retroactive pay and health-care costs. Ditto for education reforms — no one wants to rile the teachers union.
The omerta pact is one reason the disgraced Anthony Weiner has risen. He pulled 19 percent in the latest poll, second only to Quinn at 24 percent. Thompson is stuck at 11 percent.
“It’s all about excitement,” says a savvy insider. “Weiner is a talented nut and what he did with texts showed a serious character flaw. But he has a spark that gets people’s attention.”
Lacking sex scandals of their own, Weiner’s rivals need to find other ways to create buzz.
Here’s a suggestion: Try being honest with taxpayers. That would be different.
Big difference, Hill!
“What difference at this point does it make?” a furious Hillary Rodham Clinton demanded to know in January when she was quizzed about the Benghazi attack. Well, we now have a partial answer: It makes a difference of 15 points.
That’s the swing in Clinton’s poll numbers, with her favorable ratings dropping by nine points and her unfavorable ratings climbing by six. Peter Brown, who supervised the Quinnipiac survey, offered that “one reason for her drop may be that 48 percent of voters blame her either a little or a lot for the death of the American ambassador.”
The only head scratcher is that the other 52 percent don’t blame her.
Taxpayers ‘share’ burden
Mayor Bloomberg, at the launch of the bike-share program, declared that “we now have an entirely new transportation network without spending any taxpayer money.”
How true — unless you count the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars spent to build bike lanes, construct traffic barriers and spread an ocean of white paint, signs and new traffic lights to turn streets into cluttered mazes. And that doesn’t count the taxpayer gold that tort lawyers see in the inevitable mash-ups to come.
Any more freebies like this one and the city will go bust.
How ‘tweet’le dumb!
Technology, in any language, is becoming indecipherable. Dick Costolo, the CEO of Twitter, told a digital conference that “Twitter is the social soundtrack for TV.”
Is that gibberish or genius? You decide — because I can’t.