As Greg mentioned last night, Politico—or, you know, “the POLITICO”—has published a particularly Politicobnoxious piece entitled “7 stories Barack Obama doesn’t want told.” (One such ‘story’: Obama suffers from “what the French call amour-propre.” A phrasing, at any rate, “that the French might call full of merde.”)
In response to the Politico piece, certain White House staffer(s) crafted a mocking response—“7 narratives politico [sic] is fighting in their efforts to get an interview with the President”—which Atlantic reporter-blogger Marc Ambinder got his hands on and posted in its entirety:
7 narratives politico is fighting in their efforts to get an interview with the President
1. They are more interested in readers than accuracy
2. Its okay to be wrong everyonce in a while, if your are the first to break the news
3. More interested in gossip than news
4. A spouter of the worst sort of insider conventional wisdom
5. Their analysis about obama has been wrong more than any one
6. Click … period
7. More obsessed with personality than policy
So, yeah. ZING? Or something?
While some of the accusations leveled against Politico by Anonymous White House Satirical Email Writer(s) may be true (yeah: Click is awful, and, yeah, Politico is more obsessed with personality than policy, etc., etc.)…the bulk of these accusations apply equally well to, you know, any news organization in existence. Which is particularly surprising given that, Politico being pretty much the Tareq and Michaele Salahi of the political press, it is ripe for criticism of a much more biting variety than “More interested in gossip than news.”
And while I’m sure there’s something to be said, by somebody else, about The Meaning of the Email—the increasing influence of Politico in the press-political landscape, the Web-engendered collapse of media/government authority barriers, the ironies of the Obama administration biting the narrative hand that feeds it, etc.—I, for one, can’t get past the simple and utter inanity of this particular White House publication. Casual and internal though it may be. Perhaps it is a product of my preference to believe that anyone working at the White House is marginally competent…or of my continued affinity for the earnestness porn that is The West Wing…but, seriously: this is the best you can do, guys?? Typo-addled, cliché-ridden insults? If you’re going to stoop to Politico’s level, at least do so with what the French might call “some dignity.”
Anyhow…here is a more accurate version of the e-mail:
7 narratives politico [sic] is fighting in their efforts to get an interview with the President
1. They are more interested in readers than accuracy
2. Its [sic] okay to be wrong everyonce [sic] in a while, if your [sic] are the first to break the news
3. More interested in gossip than news
4. A spouter of the worst sort of insider conventional wisdom
5. Their analysis about obama [sic] has been wrong more than any one [sic]
6. Click … period
7. More obsessed with personality than policy
Yeah. Sam Seaborn would be horrified.
Megan Garber is an assistant editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. She was formerly a CJR staff writer.