The Financial Times‘ Edward Luce (2/3/10) had a report last week that blamed some of the Obama administration’s problems on the president’s overreliance on four top advisers—particularly chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who “in addition to hurling frequent profanities at people within the administration…has alienated many of Mr Obama’s closest outside supporters.”
More illuminating than the article itself may be the Washington press corps’ reaction to it, as described by AlterNet‘s Steve Clemons (2/9/10):
Mark Schmitt, executive editor of the liberal magazine the American Prospect, wrote that “Luce has written what seems to me the best and most succinct rundown of what’s gone wrong in the White House, with particular attention to the role of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.” But some of the big aggregators out there—Mike Allen at Politico and ABC‘s the Note among others—didn’t give Luce’s juicy and lengthy essay any love.
Why not? Allen is a good friend of mine and tries to keep a good balance between tough-hitting political stuff, but also goes out of his way to give strokes to those in the White House he can—particularly “Axe”—who is a regular in Mike’s daily Playbook….
But this Luce piece is unavoidably, accurately hard-hitting, and while many of the nation’s top news anchors and editors are sending emails back and forth (I have been sent three such emails in confidence) on what a spot-on piece Luce wrought on the administration, they fear that the “four horsepersons of the Obama White House” will shut down and cut off access to those who give the essay “legs.”‘
In other words, Washington political journalists can’t tell you what’s going on inside the White House because then they would lose access to what’s going on inside the White House.
I believe most that human beings have instinctive reactions to other human beings. Good, bad, and otherwise. No doubt residual of the ancestral ‘fight or flight’ judgement process.
After the struggle endured to elect President Obama ‘we’ stood behind the man awaiting the reasoned appointments to follow. Instead we’ve been disappointed by a combination of a lack of proper vetting, dumb decisions and, what is no-doubt, purposeful sabotage by big money.
In my opinion, the worst appointment by leaps, is that of Rahm Emanuel. Aside from the obvious allegiance to a reactionary Israeli element, there is, to me, a terrible sense of pure evil in the man.
In the fleeting media coverage of Emanuel this glowering face presents nothing good.
While observing the Nixon Administration from the Health and Human Services Administration in 1971, I heard someone in a high-level meeting say, “When Americans are more concerned about putting food on their tables, they will have little time or inclination to protest in the streets or question what we do!”
Is anyone surprised to hear this? I am surprised it took more than 30 years to make this a reality.
So whether it is driven by fear, money or rabid ideological fanaticism, the mind-set of the 21th Century journalist appears to be under new management.
This managed perspective along with our impacted Congress may be two of the necessary ingredients of an impending internal terror, the likes of which only American immigrants over 75 years of age can imagine in this country.
The slopes from America’s peaks may be more slippery than we think.
This week, leaders of the American Right gathered to declare that Barack Obama would be a “one-term President,” that Americans are “special people,” that we need to fight against the “socialism” of the present Administration, and speak out for “the individual and the return of liberty” in America. It was a gathering in which former Vice President Cheney made a “surprise appearance” to announce that he was “a big supporter of water boarding” (torture, as defined by the rest of the world) during his Administration.
The Right appears to be fanning a flame that has been burning in the throats of many angry southerners and some fanatical middle-class Americans since the Civil War. Although coded and presented as fiscal conservatism and resistance to socialism, it has a darker essence. And most intelligent Americans know what it is about.
In another time and country, feelings of victimization, economic insecurity and passionate patriotism drove aggressive behavior toward a perceived defective group of fellow citizens and the rest of the world, with declarations of individual and national superiority.
But since America, today, continues to focus on the present and the future with an inclination to view history through an uncritical, nationalistic lens, it may be in grave danger of repeating some of the socio-political mistakes of the past while it tries to recover from its present compromised state.
Although the times call for intelligent, critically thoughtful cooperation in the name of national survival, it would appear that violent rhetoric and adversariality are leading America onto a dangerous course that does not bode well for its citizens.
Let us support those who have the clarity and wisdom to develop the courage to help rehabilitate American journalism by distinguishing truth from propaganda wherever they may find them.
Ange Lobue, MD, MPH, BSPharm
American Board of Psychiatry & Neurology
Academy of Television Arts & Sciences
trinidadca@gmail.com
I don’t think the msnbc political reporters are too afraid-yet.
Thanks Ange, I agree that our national survival requires “intelligent, critically thoughtful cooperation.”
Politics is of course very annoying, politicians do annoy me because of their bad performance .**