We've been pulled off course by the disinformation and we're spinning our wheels. Our time is wasted on casting aspersions in wild directions.
But if you are going to cast aspersions, Jim Messina, Deputy Chief of Staff, seems to be the one who should take that hit. He's a political operative, so that may explain how these outrageous incidents keep happening over and over to the Obama administration. This is simply the worst one so far.
pelagicray made an outstanding comment that needs to be read far and wide concerning the deliberate malicious use of a disinformation specialist on the propaganda network FOX that reaches 40% of Americans in their home.
pelagicray went on to clarify the necessity of a tight organizational "chain of command" with subordination to the "command need" and not to politics at the CoS office in order to offset these incoming vicious attacks upon the administration and its viable functionality.
Continued on the jump...
I witnessed a decline in the type of staff actions that would have avoided or mitigated this situation more than a decade ago in military/civilian organizations. It seemed cultural, perhaps generational, with far too much free lancing for healthy organizational actions.
In only one organization, a large one, did I personally see truly effective staffing in the last few decades. It was mandated from the top and woe unto one not following staffing rules for coherent agency decisions...
A lot of that type of staffing came from military and the wide exposure to that in WW II and later experience and is now diluted with many never having experienced the serious staffing to a command decision in which lives are likely at stake. Sadly, my impression is that even our modern military has lost some of those skills. It may be the result of far too much emphasis on individuals even when an organizational response is required, the result of way too much coddling of self esteem when it is not conducive to organizational success.
...It is also absolute knowledge that there was a serious, damaging staffing flaw that resulted in the abhorrent fast track firing that is now an issue even diverting attention from the foul attack. I've been reading some interesting "how it happened" reports and many carry clear indicators of a major flaw in decision making and due process...
With all that said and it's only one part of the solution... we still need to address the deliberate public deception and fraud committed by FOX and News Corp in their continued efforts to destroy what is left of journalistic integrity.
It's not a game of tit-for-tat anymore. This is war... like Olbermann said... and by gawd the media had better sit up and make a reckoning of this before it consumes them and any integrity that they may have left.
Over at TPM, Josh Marshall stepped back for a moment this morning from his vacation to comment on this.
Still, you just have to back up from that and realize that as disappointing as Tom Vilsack's first crack at this was, the idea that he or Obama is the bad guy in this story is not only preposterous but verging on obscene. It's like the NYPD as the bad guy in the Son of Sam saga because they didn't catch David Berkowitz fast enough. Or perhaps that the real moral of the story is that the woman with the stalker should have been more focused on personal data security. Not for some time has something so captured the essential corruption of a big chunk of what passes as 'right wing media' (not all, by any means, but a sizable chunk along the Breitbart/Fox/Hannity continuum) and the corruption of the mainstream media itself as this episode.
Let's review what happened here. And for the sake of conversation, let's assume that Breitbart and his crew didn't edit this thing and hadn't seen any of the rest of the highly exculpatory video. (I'm willing to assume that for the sake of the conversation. And I think it may even be true as a matter of fact.) That's by far the most innocent explanation. And that means that Breitbart got a piece of video he knew nothing about and published it with a central claim (that it was about Sherrod's tenure at the USDA) that he either made up or made no attempt to verify. No vetting, no calls, no due diligence, not the slightest concern to confirm anything or find out what was true. Even setting aside the fact that, as Josh Green ably notes, most of Breitbart's scoops center on race and/or race-baiting, for anyone else practicing anything even vaguely resembling journalism, demonstrated recklessness and/or dishonesty on that scale would be a shattering if not necessarily fatal blow to reputation and credibility.
Short take... Breitbart and his accomplices have committed a deliberate public fraud and it should be a fatal blow to their reputation and credibility. Instead, we have Kurtz putting up a whitewash defense of FOX while ABC will run an "exclusive" puff piece tonight on how Breitbart got his start in yellow journalism.
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Long story short... someone in the Chief of Staff's office... Jim Messina?... needs to shape up or ship out.
The foul playbook of FOX and News Corp will no longer be accepted as business as usual. Journalistic integrity is at a crossroads with this one. Too much water under the bridge has flooded the public realm. We're drowning from the sewer waters emanating from FOX and News Corp.