What do you get when you bring together a water slide, Wolf Blitzer (among other journalists), water guns, and Rahmbo (among other senior Obama administration officials)? You get “the Bidens’ first beach party for journalists,” in the words of party-goer Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic (who promises to later today explain his “different view” on the question of whether “an afternoon of leisure with senior administration officials violate[s] journalistic ethics” — a “view,” he writes, that could be “a way to rationalize my own decision to attend.”)
What else do you get (as host of or attendee at such an event)? For starters, CNN’s Senior White House Correspondent, Ed Henry, got something to Twitter about:
Mrs Biden trying to shoot me and @savannahguthrie at ‘Biden Beach’ party at the VP’s mansion
Ha!
When socializing with sources, I guess traditional hostess gifts are out?
UPDATE: Ambinder has posted a longer musing on this topic, including:
Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.[A] bunch of really good, hardened, news-breaking, interest-accountable holding reporters are in fact able to share more comfortable moments with people they cover…
Am I fatally compromised?
Well, I walked out of the Naval Observatory Saturday afternoon. I carried a view of the Vice President I hadn’t before seen, a few tips from senior administration officials about a variety of subjects, a wet shirt from Rahm Emanuel’s water gun, and that’s about it.
Perhaps that warm feeling will lead me to somehow subconsciously cover the vice president less aggressively…
