So, did you hear? The Bidens had a barbecue beach party over the weekend! (Squeal!)
Of course, you weren't there. And I wasn't there. No, no, no. It was a very special party.
But Ed Henry from CNN was there! Mrs. Biden hid behind him during a water balloon fight! And then she tried to shoot Henry with a water gun! It was a blast!
The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder was there too! Rahm Emmanuel sprayed him with a Super Soaker! (Squeal!)
Wolf Blitzer was there! With an official dateline and (CNN) after his unbylined "report" that made it look all official and everything! But good old Ed Henry caught Wolfie grinning ear to ear with a fellow CNN'er, kids and squirt guns! What a hoot!
Who else got to play? Why, look! It's David Sanger! So funny! He's "bantering" with Rahm Emmanuel in a home movie shot by Marc Ambinder that I didn't have the stomach to sit through!
Yeah, that's right, the David Sanger whom the New York Times has tasked with explaining to the rest of us (those who don't get asked to Biden beach parties!) the administration's stand on - and Joe Biden's speeches about! -- nuclear weapons! So cool! I bet he'll get down really soon to tough questions and hard-hitting critical analysis about all this shit that can blow the world up. I mean, right after he sneaks up on the Biden grandkids and ….
Oh, hell. This is just too awful to continue.
Sad thing is, they don't see a problem with it. Really. To which Glenn Greenwald thankfully unleashes his inner hound:
I personally don't think that these types of interactions "violate journalistic ethics" because I don't think such a thing exists for them. Rather, all of this just helpfully reveals what our nation's leading "journalists" really are: desperate worshipers of political power who are far more eager to be part of it and to serve it than to act as adversarial checks against it -- and who, in fact, are Royal Court Spokespeople regardless of which monarch is ruling. That's why they're invited into the heart of Versailles to frolic with the King's most trusted aides: it's their reward for loyal service as Court courtiers. Just marvel at the self-abasing joy in which Ed Henry wallows by virtue of getting to play water sports with Emanuel and the Bidens. He sounds like a gushing pre-adolescent who just met his favorite boy band idol and got his water gun signed.
Forget (if you can, ever) the giddy, undignified, shameful tone of it all. Concentrate on this: These "professionals" are the ones standing in for us, for citizens, to ask the hard questions, to dig behind the scenes, to not take what's said at face value, to find out what the most powerful people in the world are doing in our names, with our money. It is their job to be skeptical and, frankly, obnoxious from time to time on our behalf. They are supposed to make themselves persistent and occasionally unpleasant. Yet here they are, on display in all their glory: licking hands, wiggling in delight, wagging their tails. Darting around with squirt guns with the White House chief of staff. Yukking it up with the vice president and his grandkids as they duck water balloons. I.F. Stone would be vomiting in the rose bushes if he were tied up, dragged to the scene, had his eyes propped open with toothpicks and was forced to witness it.
It was atrocious when they were having sleepovers with John McCain. And it's morally bankrupt when they're doing it with "our guys" too -- the ones we on this site worked our asses off to elect.
I'd say, Make it stop! but it won't. Not even as old models of journalism come crashing around their privileged, self-satisfied heads. They're a class totally unworthy of the First Amendment protections the Founders created for them. America deserves so much better.
