The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, in one of his first columns in a self-imposed Palin-free month—though he has a very odd definition of “Palin-free,” if this interview is anything to go by—is offering a counterintuitive take on the White House’s appointment of former Time-man Jay Carney to the position of press secretary.
You see, apparently Carney sent Milbank a none-too-kind e-mail while serving vice president Joe Biden. Here’s Milbank’s lede (you have to appreciate the Hacks Anonymous honesty of the second line):
The e-mail, coming from the Executive Office of the President and addressed to me, had a catchy subject line: “You are a hack.”
This was tough—but accurate. I read on.
The body of the message began with the phrase “shamelessly misrepresented,” continued on to refer to “your hackneyed storyline” and concluded: “Fabrication is a legitimate tool—for fiction. You should try it; it suits you.”
The sender was one James F. Carney, then a spokesman for Vice President Biden, now the incoming White House press secretary. I mentioned the e-mail to colleagues and was surprised to learn that some of them, too, had received the occasional nastygram from Carney, sometimes graced with a barnyard epithet. Happily, these official White House correspondences will be stored for eternity in the National Archives, along with the Declaration of Independence.
The incident is a kickoff to Milbank’s consideration of how Carney may behave in his role as press secretary. While admitting that he has the advantage of following Robert Gibbs—“surpassed only by Ari Fleischer as the most unpopular press secretary of recent decades”—Milbank points out that Carney’s press background may in fact prove a disadvantage for his former colleagues.
On paper, the 45-year-old Carney fits the part. He doesn’t come from the war rooms of political campaigns, and his long career with Time, some of it on the White House beat, means he’ll know how to do the care and feeding of reporters that his predecessor neglected.
But those who think the former Moscow correspondent will usher in an Obama glasnost could be disappointed. Carney, if he feels pressure to prove his loyalty to Obama, may be even more guarded with information. In fact, the preferred candidate of many in the press corps was Bill Burton, Gibbs’s deputy. Burton, because of his unquestioned loyalty to Obama, may have been looser.
While a potentially guarded press secretary could chill the easy flow of information in the White House—and that’s really as speculative an assertion as those being made by the pundits who think Carney’s appointment will reset WH-press relations—I can’t help but partly admire the moxie of this man who pens such critical and blunt “nastygrams.” And I’d encourage any and all who have been on their receiving ends to come forward, bravely as Milbank has, and show us your own mean-spirited missives.
If it turns out he’s a decent enough media critic, he might just be great for the job he’s lucked into. Heck, if he’d take the pay cut, CJR might just hire him to write this blog.
Well, Milbank IS a fabricator and a hack. So Carney was being "frank," not nasty. And I think it's rather silly to think that Carney is going to usher in a New Era of Glasnost with the self-obsessed prima donnas of the White House Press Corps. But he will be a vast improvement over Gibbs. Unlike Milbank, in my opinion, Gibbs surpassed Fleischer in horribleness and unpopularity. However, I think that Carney, who has been a WHPC, will at least return messages and show up to work on time.
As for Milbank's fabrications and hackery, you should ask other journos about nasty, unhinged phone calls they have received from Milbank. You'd get an earful, but off the record, of course.
Milbank fabricated the following Obama quote: "This is the moment . . . that the world is waiting for," adding: "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."
He then went on to write a particularly nasty column about the "presumptuous" nominee.
What's with that ellipse? And the removal of the word "just" without an ellipse.
Sara Lueck of the Wall Street Journal used the same material in a more ethical way:
The Democratic presidential candidate told the group that the positive response he received in Germany and the rest of Europe was “not about him,” said House Democratic Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina. Rather, Obama said he was a 'symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.'
Thankfully, he was taken to task by -- yes! -- Postie ombuds Deborah Howell over that egregious, fabricated lapse of journalism.
You recall he fabricated a "collusion" between the White House and Nico Pitney where none existed, and fabricated a story about David Plouffe "suddenly" declaring his speech off the record. With the latter outright lie, Milbank idiotically wore a sandwich board to protest at the National Press Club.
Milbank's friends have become embarrassed for him. He's been unhinged for several years now. What a relief for Milbank's colleagues, after the "Bitch Beer" episode, that they finally discontinued that atrocity.
#1 Posted by James, CJR on Wed 2 Feb 2011 at 01:23 PM