The Kicker

The Times parses Clinton’s Beer Factor

Outlets miss the holes in McCain’s Russia rhetoric

Just after 8 a.m. today, a crane doing construction work at a high-rise building on the corner of 91st Street and First Avenue, on New York City’s Upper East Side, snapped. Its top half—over 100 tons’ worth of steel—fell twenty stories down, tearing into the facade of the apartment building across the street, ripping into […]

“Pity the poor word ‘elite,’ which simply means ‘the best’ as an adjective and ‘the best of a group’ as a noun,” begins Susan Jacoby’s New York Times op-ed today. The piece goes on, perhaps unsurprisingly given both its lead and its author, to justify and celebrate the “elite”—not elitism, mind you (“an elitist is […]

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Scott McClellan’s memoir, of all things, (and specifically, McClellan’s assertions that the press didn’t do its job in the run-up to the Iraq war) is forcing some reporters to get reflective (and, in some cases, either confessional or defensive). There was last night’s Jessica Yellin-Anderson Cooper exchange on […]

Keith Olbermann’s “Special Comment” last Friday regarding Hillary Clinton’s RFK remark prompted this special comment from Time blogger James Poniewozik: “Every time [Olbermann] turns up the volume to 11 like this lately, he sounds like just another of the cable gasbags he used to be a corrective to.” Poniewozik’s larger point, however, about Olbermann’s “outburst” […]

Everyone’s in tell-all (confessional?) mode, it seems. An on-air exchange last night between CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Jessica Yellin (now at CNN, formerly of ABC News), prompted by discussion of Scott McClellan’s memoir and his assertion that White House reporters didn’t do their jobs in the lead-up to the war in Iraq: YELLIN: When the […]

More on the topic of my previous post: lessons one might draw from Clinton’s campaign. Over at Slate‘s XX Factor, Dahlia Lithwick explains to “naysayers” (people quoted in –and authors of– other recent articles and columns about lessons one might draw from Clinton’s campaign) that: “Yes, Virginia, There Will Be Another Woman Candidate in Your […]

More of that “reckoning.” Today, The New Republic asks: “As Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign approaches its end, what are the implications for feminism of the first major presidential campaign by a woman?” and “asked senior editor Michelle Cottle, who has been covering the Clinton campaign, and Amanda Fortini, a New Republic contributor who recently wrote […]

From a Washington Post readers chat this morning with the Post‘s National Political Correspondent, Anne E. Kornblut. SW Nebraska: Will any future president be able to do the job on the press, Congress and the public that George Bush has been able to do? What about the politicization of the Justice Department, science, etc? It […]

Politico’s Mike Allen

As if the New York Times didn’t deem a 12-page memoir-slash-essay in Sunday’s magazine enough space for Emily Gould’s pressing confessions and innermost feelings (see my colleague Megan’s take on the piece

Oh, the Characters of Cable. They sure know how to fill air. They don’t just pontificate about a candidate’s apology for (or expression of regret for any offense taken from) a She-Said-What? sort of remark. They — in the process of doing the aforementioned — make their own She-said-What? remark for which they must then […]

Well, if journo-scolds are going to tut–tut news organizations for trivializing the election, treating a candidate’s choice of a running-mate like some sort of parlor game (Veepstakes!), why not exceed the critics’ expectations with… an interactive parlor game? “Think of this as March Madness for politics,” David Gregory urges anyone who clicks on MSNBC’s “Veepstakes” […]

Today, the Times has a front-page profile of Barack Obama’s “body man,” Reggie Love. Seems like just yesterday I was reading the Times‘ piece on John Kerry’s personal campaign trail sherpa, Marvin Nicholson, Jr., although that piece didn’t come with an US Weekly-like side-bar list of the candidate’s “Likes” and “Dislikes” (Obama Likes Nicorette and […]