Debunking Some Serious Concern Trolling

UPDATED, 8:52AM, to correct some errors:

With thanks to commenter GHFarber, let me correct some aspects of this post and make it a little clearer.

I am criticizing the tone and the subject of a "forum" post by William Arkin, who, according to some research I did this morning, has actually done some good work that I agree with. I just take exception to what I feel is concern trolling or giving stupid advice to Barack Obama with the way he kicked off this forum. His work on this forum likely is not under the control of any editor at the Washington Post but is likely managed by an online editor at the washingtonpost.com.

My original statement: The unhinged and misinformed crowd at the Washington Post finally gets a new editor soon--hopefully one that actually understands the world. I've had enough of the Len Downie era. I've had more than my fair share of Fred Hiatt. And in checking their ridiculous "forums" section, I find this:

...was wrong--Downie was, and Hiatt is currently, part of a chain that answers to management, but they are likely considered co-equals or near co-equals because the Washington Post keeps OpEd separate from News. I have high hopes that the tenor and tone of the content at the Washington Post will improve, but my high hopes, like this post, are probably going to crash by noon today.

The intended goal of the Washington Post company is to more closely meld their online edition with the print edition and trim costs; that's why they are cutting staff, getting rid of Downie, and trying to update their business model. Their coverage during the primary and over the last few months has been dismal in my estimation and has always been rather awful when it comes to the war in Iraq or issues like the outing of CIA employee Valerie Plame. I was making a clumsy effort to criticize that history when I should have been more specific. I apologize for the generalities when specifics would have been better.

---back to original post:
Arkin starts the discussion with:

Is Barack Obama already shooting himself in the foot as commander-in-chief?…

That's how moderator William Arkin proposes to kick off a discussion about Obama's sit-down interview with the Military Times group of newspapers. By engaging in some serious wankery and concern trolling.

Let's go point by ridiculous point:

In a long interview by the Military Times newspapers, the candidate shows a deference to the uniformed military, a humility that he associates with his lack of service in uniform but one that could also backfire as Clintonian weakness – Bill Clinton that is.

Blatant wankery, that statement. Get this--Barack Obama is being criticized for showing "deference" to the uniformed military. Can you imagine a similar criticism of President Bush? Of President Reagan? Of the first President Bush? Men who deferred to their military advisors on a daily basis. Can you imagine a first President Bush calling out Colin Powell and saying "he's wrong, and I'm not deferring to him--we're going to do this MY way." Can you imagine Ronald Reagan standing up in the Rose Garden and saying "the Joint Chiefs are idiots--I say, we bomb the Soviets tomorrow!" I can't imagine President Bush the younger saying anything at all--I've blocked out the nightmare of the syntax. You get the drift.

And how did Clinton's record turn out? How many fucking quagmires did he lead us into?

“I have always said that as commander in chief, I would seek the advice and counsel of our generals,” Obama said in the interview. “Great. The inmates will be running the asylum,” an insider tells me.

How denigrating. Someone, anonymously, says that the senior leadership of the US military are "inmates" running an "asylum." If that's the case, why isn't anyone doing anything about it? Why is there not panic? Could it be that those "inmates" rightly rebelled against Don Rumsfeld--a man not known for showing deference or humility to people who demonstrated they knew better--got in line behind Bob Gates and stopped a foolish war with Iran? Could it be that the "inmates" saved America without anyone realizing it? Tune in 25 years from now to find out.

Talk about concern trolling--asking Obama to not be deferential to the uniformed military is asinine. Well, if he isn't deferential, then the next thing you'll say is that he's a loose cannon who is ignoring the experts and conducting unilateral military operations without benefit of their wise counsel. Which is it then? Defer or seek counsel? How about--shut the fuck up?

Withdrawal from Iraq, his own surge in Afghanistan, dealing with the Bush legacy on Iran and Pakistan, missile defenses in Europe, increasing the size of the Army and Marine Corps despite his Iraq withdrawal pledge, a bloated and voracious defense budget, the outsourcing of defense, the intelligence mess, China and Russia:

Funny--where's the criticism of THIS administration? Where's the criticism of John McCain and his inability to tell the players apart from one another? Where's the criticism of his "tell people to knock this shit off" clown-cowboy approach to problem solving? Where's the realization that these weren't issues in 2000. You know. When Clinton was President? I mean, if Clinton was such a bad Commander in Chief, how the fuck did he have none of those issues on his plate, peace in the Balkans, a framework for dealing with North Korea, Saddam contained, Iran as a non-issue, Israel and the Palestinians talking, China talking to Taiwan, Russia in a coffin militarily and impotent, Europe ready to meet its NATO obligations, and Osama Bin Laden running like crazy from Sudan to Afghanistan, trying to evade capture? Today, we have Russia and China surging, no diplomacy in the Middle East, Bush's campaign promise in 2000 to get us out of the Balkans unfulfilled, North Korea contained solely because of Christopher Hill's efforts to undo the damage of the Bush Administration, Pakistan providing safe haven for Bin Laden and the Taliban, and 140,000 US troops trapped in Iraq while Afghanistan spins out of control?

When Clinton left office, we still had a military. When Bush leaves office, we won't have but a hollow shell of what once was, with hundreds of thousands of men and women needing medical and mental care that no one bothered to provide for. Which was the Commander in Chief and which was the idiot savant, minus the savant part?

What does the candidate tell us that is his new innovation? He says he wants to allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military. Yeah, let’s spend the first year of a new administration fighting about this again

It's about time--hey, the military needs all the men and women it can get. Obama has a plan to increase the number of men and women who can serve their country. McCain has a plan to put them in Iraq for a hundred fucking years. Who's more qualified to be Commander in Chief? Especially since fat, pink, young Republican males simply haven't stepped up and asked to join the military.

Concern trolling and wankery. Hopefully, the Washington Post can eliminate some of that, and soon.

Conflict of Interest? At the Washington Post? You Don't Say...

While we tend to avoid talking about the media when it talks about itself, there was a curious disclosure this past week about concern troll extraordinaire David Broder and his practice of giving speeches to people in exchange for money.

The propriety of David Broder and Bob Woodward taking fees or having expenses paid for speeches to special-interest groups was raised recently by Ken Silverstein, Washington editor of Harper's magazine, in his Washington Babylon blog. Silverstein found the fees unseemly and asked whether editors had approved them.

Broder, 78, has worked at The Post 42 years, been its premier political writer and is probably the country's best-known political columnist. Woodward is the rare print reporter who became rich and famous on investigative journalism.

Both took an early retirement buyout last month. Broder continues as a columnist on contract. (Disclosure: I have known Broder for more than 25 years and consider him a professional friend.) Woodward has ties to the paper going back to the Watergate scandal, and he still consults for the paper. He has a token contract for $1,200 a year, and he said he is available for consultation and assignment.

The Post Stylebook's ethics and standards section says only: "We freelance for no one and accept no speaking engagements without permission from department heads." Broder and Woodward did not check with editors on the appearances Silverstein mentioned.

Thanks for the disclosure. It's always great to kick off a blog post by quoting an ombudsman. The problem is, everything Howell wrote is fairly self-serving and glosses over what really went on. Silverstein responds:

Howell acknowledges that Broder and Woodward broke the Post’s own rules and “did not check with editors on the appearances Silverstein mentioned.” She extracts an apology from Broder, and says the Post “needs an unambiguous, transparent well-known policy on speaking fees and expenses. . . . Fees should be accepted only from educational, professional or other nonprofit groups for which lobbying and politics are not a major focus–with no exceptions.”

But Howell goes very easy on Broder—who has been flagrantly dishonest with his own employer and with Howell–and Woodward, who is allowed to glide away from some very embarrassing matters. Also, Howell deals with only a few speeches by Woodward and Broder, even though Woodward gave dozens and Woodward gave roughly a score. I understand that she could not deal with each instance individually (nor did I), but she could have mentioned prominently the fact that the two men, and especially Woodward, are regulars on the talk circuit and that the problem is not restricted to the few speeches she discusses in her column.

Broder first told Howell, “I have never spoken to partisan gatherings in any role other than [that of] a journalist nor to an advocacy group that lobbies Congress or the federal government.” That turned out to be false, as Howell discovered, so Broder came back to say, “I am embarrassed by these mistakes and the embarrassment it has caused the paper.”

Broder told Howell he attended an event at the American Council for Capital Formation, “but did not give a speech.” So apparently someone at the ACCF made up this account of Broder’s speech to the group?

I reported that Broder gave a speech at a meeting of the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors (which paid him, he now admits, $7,000), which was a PAC fundraiser. Howell writes: “Mary Beth Coya, the Realtors’ senior vice president for public and governmental affairs, said the event was not a fundraiser but was attended by elected officials ‘to promote our government affairs programs’.” The event in fact was clearly promoted as a PAC fundraiser. And by the way, “government affairs program” is Washington-talk for lobbying.

I also reported that Broder spoke to the Gartner Healthcare Summit in 2007. “He was advertised as a speaker on an Internet site, but Broder said he canceled the engagement,” Howell reported. That’s possible, but since Broder has been so dishonest about all of this I wouldn’t take it to the bank. (I did note in my earlier posts on this topic that I could not confirm all details, in part because neither Broder nor Woodward replied to requests for comment about their speaking gigs.)

Howell doesn’t mention this—Post reporters, it seems, will call people to ask about their actions but won’t take calls about their own. More outrageous is that Broder specifically denied to Howell that I had sought comment from him (which I know only because Howell told me during a phone conversation), even though I contacted him several times, by phone and email, beginning forty-eight hours before posting the first story.

[SNIP]

Finally, Woodward told Howell “all his speaking fees — which range from $15,000 to $60,000 — go to a foundation he started in the 1990s.” He added, “It’s a straight shot into the foundation that gives money to legitimate charities. I think that’s doing good work.”

St. Woodward can don his halo and gaze in the mirror all he likes, but he really shouldn’t treat Post readers with such contempt. The facts are clear. He reaps significant tax savings by giving the fees to a “charity” that gives away a small fraction of its assets, and by far the biggest beneficiary of his foundation is Sidwell Friends, the elite private school sitting atop a reported $30 million endowment and attended by his own children.

How can we believe anything that David Broder or Bob Woodward publish after this? Both got caught with their hands in the cookie jar and both got caught by Silverstein's legwork and reporting. They got caught, they lied, they twisted in the wind, and then they were nailed for what they had done.

The Washington media elite does whatever the hell it wants, and who are we to judge? These people are the serious people, after all, and what's a few hundred grand here and there between the elite and the rabble who are to hang on their every word? If you ever want to get to the "why" about things--as in, "why are we in Iraq?" and "why did the press let Bush get away with destroying the Constitution?" and "why do they tell us it's raining when they're all pissing on our legs?" you need look no further than the system which allows a David Broder to become America's concern troll and Woodward to become the insider with inside information that makes people like Bush look one way when, if the "insider" had done his job, he would have revealed a mountain of evidence that would have shown every single American that Bush had no idea what the hell he was doing when he ordered US troops to invade Iraq.

Broder and Woodward may have come to Washington to write stories that would challenge the status quo, but here at the end of their careers they have become the status quo, they have become the so-called elite without having risen by a merit system but having risen by arranging to never seriously challenge the power structure, and they have become people who need to be brought down because of their arrogance and their corruption. In short, they became the people they were supposed to stop. They sold out. They allowed themselves to become corrupted. Hey, I hope you've made a great living out of it. Enjoy your retirement. Hope the cash doesn't run out on you.

Don't worry--there are no 'young Broders and Woodwards' out there looking to really bring down Broder and Woodward. There are bloggers out there, but who would ever listen to anything a smelly blogger would say? How uncouth. They say fuck too much. And they're not sending their kids to the right school, you know.

As much as I would like to believe Silverstein's work has made all of this possible, it's more likely that, years from now, both Woodward and Broder will still be churning out their tired insider-laden crap.

How'd we get through all of this without saying something awful about Howard Kurtz? Beats the fuck out of me.

Looking Beyond the FISA Bill

You didn't really expect them to do the right thing, did you?

That's okay. I was naive once. We've all been a little naive. The issue with telecom immunity boils down to this--there was no way that the telecom companies that illegally assisted the government with an illegal warrantless wiretapping program that did nothing to protect the American people were ever going to face true legal jeopardy. There was no way they were going to pay the penalties. No way were the decision makers going to face the music. There was no chance of a perp walk similar to the one we saw yesterday with the people at Bear Stearns. There was no way their cadre of lobbyists was going to allow legislation to come out of the Congress that would eviscerate these companies and cost them billions in liabilities.

With Fred Fielding in the White House and Michael Mukasey at the Justice Department? Forget it. Only a naive, pie-in-the-sky worshipping bobble-eyed hippie would have hoped it would all turn out right. Have we been able to set aside the freakout and accept such a bummer outcome all along? Did we know it was all going to turn to shit?

We may never know the full extent of what happened--nor should we care to. Someone waved papers at someone else across a table and someone had more intestinal fortitude than someone else. Someone got beat, and beat badly. That's all there is to it.

You can go read Jessalyn Radack and you can go read Glenn Greenwald and I will tell you--everything they're saying is correct.

But there is one thing no one knows--and that is, how bad was the thing that was used to threaten the Democratic Party to roll over on this issue? How bad was the thing they were threatening to use against anyone who opposed them? Was it the fact that there are archives on every Democratic politician kept sealed away--archives of their personal conversations, archives of their monetary dealings, details of their sex lives?

Here's one thing I do know--nothing is outside the realm of possibility. Nothing is too crazy, too paranoid or too outlandish to rule out. Did someone threaten to destroy the careers of a few prominent Democrats? Did a few lobbyists band together and threaten to have someone's dog shot and killed on a suburban street? Did someone produce photos of a lawmaker pressed naked against the headboard of a cheap hotel bed?

Something had to have been done to produce this result. Something awful.

You are never going to beat these people with outrage. You are never going to beat them with righteous indignation. You are never going to beat these people by citing the US Constitution as proof they do not respect the rule of law.

Because that's a fool's paradise in America, circa 2008.

No, you're only going to beat these people by quietly and purposefully organizing strong opposition to their efforts by backing candidates for office that have a chance of defeating them in primary races or in general election races. We need better Democrats now, not necessarily more Democrats, just better ones. We need to get rid of the Steny Hoyers, Jay Rockefellers, and the concern trolls like Harold Ford Jr. and James Carville. Their time is over. Not one thin dime, to any of them. They are craven fools who have sold us out.

The only way to beat them is to assume that, for the next ten years, you're not going to win anything. Assume that it will take that long, or longer, to find grassroots candidates who believe in what is right and are willing to fight against the people who are selling us out. Assume that there's a good possibility you'll never get there. Assume you'll get half way there and your candidate will sell you out.

That's how it works in the grown up world. You take what you can get. You fight to get whatever you can. But if you toughen up and learn to expect disappointment and frustration, those times when you do win and when you do make a massive impact will be all the more fulfilling. If you're up against tight-fisted, mean and nasty people who will say or do anything to hold on to what little they have then you've got to get just as mean and just as nasty and be willing to go where they won't--like, door to door in the rain signing up voters or being the only person you know who cares.

It is time to grow up--we're not going to get what's right. We're not going to get what's fair. We're going to get a cold, hard, bitter tasting pill to swallow. The question is--do you give up? Do you fight harder? Do you take this as a legitimate grudge against the people who sold you out and use it against them when they are weak and vulnerable and damn them to hell with it? When you're both exhausted and on the ground, and when your opponent reaches out to you for mercy, do you slap their hand away and stomp them into the ground and remember back to this moment and savor the victory?

The next fight is forming. They're not sitting there feeling sorry for you. They're celebrating. They popped corks last night and drank themselves silly because they won and we lost.

Are you going to take that?

Timothy Shriver, Concern Troll

Timothy Shriver says Hillary Clinton should just "do nothing" now that she's suspended her campaign. Hey, I'm sure that she thanks you for the advice, but it really wasn't necessary:

Hillary Clinton’s amazing campaign is over. Regardless of what one thinks of her, we can all appreciate the model she has set for women and girls. She’s redefined the possible in politics, and our country is forever changed because of her.

Pundits have already begun to evaluate her next political move. Senate leader? Legislative powerhouse? New York governor? None of the options seems exactly right.

At times of transition, when people don’t know where to turn, the spiritual world has an answer: Do nothing. Do nothing every day. Do nothing at all for several days and then continue doing nothing at least once a day for the rest of your life!

Sorry, Timothy. She's free to do whatever she damned well pleases, and your concern troll pleading to soothe her battered spirits underlies the fundamental reason why no one in your line of work understands her: doing nothing is what got us where we are today.

Doing nothing allowed George Bush to wreck the fucking country. Hillary was in there, every single day, trying to do something to stop it. You can complain about her vote for the war, but she was lied to like everyone else, and we're getting to the bottom of that, so you and everyone else can stop bitching at her for it. If she were to come out and say that it was a mistake, you and everyone else would bitch at her for that, too.

[If you want to comment, and bitch about the war, please do. But the point has already been made--voting to authorize the war was a mistake. Hillary was willing to do whatever it took to fix the problem, and she wasn't the one who suggested we stay there for a hundred years. So STFU.]

Now, the concern troll suggestion that she drop out of public life is all well and good, but I thank God for Hillary Clinton, because that's the last thing she's going to do. She's already back at work, fighting like crazy for the good of this country, and here's why:

For the next twenty or thirty years, a whole hell of a lot of us now get to work extra hard to un-fuck the country so that our grandkids can have something.

Hey, thanks for playing. Now, please go shut your fucking piehole and let us get to work.

--WS