Posted on 03/04/2013 9:19:20 AM PST by Kaslin
Not being one to jump on the current topic du jour, we could not pass up this one. The Obama Administration picks a major fight with the most famous journalist in America -- and we are not speaking about Bill O’Reilly or Ron Burgundy. It is rarely a good thing for political leaders to jump into hand-to-hand combat with the press.
Bob Woodward has been a liberal icon for forty years. After all, Woodward and Bernstein were the principals in bringing down the all-time boogie man of the left – Richard Nixon. How can you question a man played by Robert Redford in the movie about the whole escapade? How could anyone ever envision anything that would damage his reputation short of kidnapping Susan Sarandon? This guy could have driven a Hummer and never been questioned by the intellectual left. That is, until he decided to take on the Obama Administration.
As you are properly aware, Woodward had the goods on Obama. As the President was running around screaming fire in a movie theater about the dreaded sequester and blaming the whole thing on his political enemies, Woodward pointed out that Obama and his aides had told Woodward two years ago that they were the brain trust behind the plan. Back then Obama and his crew thought it was a brilliant way to box in the Republicans regarding the ever-growing federal expenditures. (We would refer to it as the “budget,” but Obama and his team have not allowed one to be passed in four years.)
Once Woodward tells the truth he begins to experience an Obama backlash. He has a 30-minute discussion with Gene Sperling, Director of the National Economic Council, which by even Sperling’s description turned into a screaming match. As part of an email exchange, Sperling writes “I think you will regret staking out that claim.”
There has been a lot of discussion and analysis of the email exchange and whether it was a threat. The left and even some mainstream and conservative commentators concluded Woodward’s reaction was out of line. That is not the way we see it. We are not going to analyze the word play. We are going to ride with Woodward. Here is a man who confronted the Nixon Administration and brought it down. He has reported on all aspects of our federal government and presidential administrations for forty years. He has written over fifteen books on such matters. He has had a relationship with Gene Sperling for twenty years. If Woodward says it was an attempt to intimidate him, we should take him at his word. He was the one there and he should know.
It goes deeper than that. We are not one month into the second term of the Obama Administration and their heavy-handed methods. After four years of Fox News being the only ones investigating the Obama Administration and being bullied, the rest of the press is finally speaking out about the anti-press methods of this Administration. Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Clinton, came out and told of how his editor was advised to stop running Davis’s columns or the paper’s White House credentials would be pulled. In his interview on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, Woodward stated “I am flooded with emails from people in the press saying this is exactly how the White House works. They are trying to control and they don’t want to be challenged or crossed.”
Make no mistake; Bob Woodward is still a man of the left. After being taken to task by Gene Sperling, he still made this statement: “I think if Obama himself saw the way they’re dealing with some of this, he would say, “Whoa, we don’t tell any reporter ‘you going to regret challenging us.’” Mr. Woodward, on this point you are delusional. This comes straight from Obama. That is why we read and reported on Saul Alinsky’s book Rules for Radicals. These tactics and the ones the President is embracing on a daily basis come straight from the book – threaten your opponent, demonize your opponent and if need be pulverize them. This has Obama written all over it. This is what they did in the campaign and, now free from having to face voters again, this is what appears to be their plan for the second term.
The redeeming factor of this matter is that the national press may have finally come alive. They ignored Benghazi. They ignored Obama’s fundraising peccadillos. They helped to get him re-elected by swooning over him. Now maybe they might actually do their job and expose this President as the inept bully he has become.
I have no sympathy for this jerk. Isn't he the onewho used stolen documents to trash Nixon? And isn't he the one who interviewed a DEAD William Casey who said that Casey (after he was dead) revealed that J. Edgar Hoover was a closet homosexual and cross dresser . . . after he was already dead?
Why are we spending 2 seconds on this worthless lefty libtard jackwagon?
It may be possible for a nation to return from Communism, we'll see how Russia does if they can accomplish it, but journalism never will.
Woodward enabled the very cult that will destroy him. Lenin didn't call them Useful Idiots for nothing.
You didn’t read beyond the title, did you?
In short, the lib media will do nothing to harm Obama. He is their all-time hero...more so than the Clintons. He is not to be thrown overboard just because some senile, grouchy lib from the old days gets his knickers in a twist about some menial thing like the truth. All Hail The Great King Barack, and phooey on Woodward.
As far as the press is concerned, Woodward is now a former liberal—also called a Neoconservative. Neoconservatives are the most hated conservatives of all, because they’re traitors to the Cause. He’s dead to the left.
You can be a liberal idol for fifty years, but if you just make one mistake—you’re dead. And no chance of a revival.
You are right.
Next week Woodward will be back on his knees in front of Obama.Nothing has changed except he got a new 15 minutes.
“It is rarely a good thing for political leaders to jump into hand-to-hand combat with the press.”
Apparently this guy has not noticed that the MSM is backing Obama. No chance they will dump on him.
Woodward himself isn’t the story — the reflexive “palace guard” attitude the press took the second he deviated from the party line is the real scandal and tragedy.
Though, make no mistake about it — critique of Obama, while rare, is allowed among this group as a means of establishing some form of “objectivity” veneer. Woodward’s heresy is that he went right after the central thesis of the current political operation, which was to turn the sequester into a “crisis”, and blame it on the GOP. A “disagreement” over a policy position or tactic is one thing, but a frontal assault on the strategy was what was unforgivable.
Bobby already rolled over.
“Bob Woodward Invites President Obama To His House.”
Some of those 'email' writers should have been putting this information in their columns years ago. If Obama and crew are totalitarians and it looks that way more each day - the press needs to expose them. If they don't there might come a time soon when they won't be allowed to...
Pardon me if I don't hold my breath.
“You can be a liberal idol for fifty years, but if you just make one mistake—you’re dead. And no chance of a revival.”
I had to laugh reading that on a site where conservatives are regularly excorciated for straying on one issue or another.
Also, make no mistake — Woodward is neither a conservative warrior nor a lefty. He is for Woodward above any ideology. If it gets him talked about, he’s for it.
In 1972 Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, two unknown Washington Post reporters, covered the failed burglary of the Democratic campaign headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in D.C. by White House operatives. Their subsequent reporting was a key factor in the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974. Two cub reporters had brought down a president and most of his lieutenants. These events persuaded thousands of young American leftists to enroll in journalism school and flood newspapers, TV and radio stations with job applications. Eventually these activists displaced more traditional journalists and in time they moved into management. Today they control most of American news media which means they control the message. Intentional or not, this is the legacy of Bob Woodward.
The sap-happy cockeyed president said "tens of thousands of parents will scramble to find child care, and hundreds of thousands will lose access to primary care and preventive care.”
His horrifying predictions never came to fruition.
His WH Brain Trust had convinced obama that his reelection, his tax cut deal, and those namby-pamby Repubs made him invincible in these budget battles.
Hopefully the MSM may be getting bored with propping up the cool, progressive, taintless Messiah.
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Obama's WH Brain Trust made a HUGE mistake sending Michele on a fool's errand---to the Oscar ceremonies. She was roundly criticized for appearing lavishly gowned and bejeweled, flanked by uniformed military guards---ala totalitarian South American regimes.
Post-Oscar reports do not even mention her, or her sap-happy comments about the Best Picture winner. Nor do they comment on her designer gown---even as they went giddy over the stars' wardrobes.
DONNY DEUTSCH SAID IT BEST: "As far as I'm concerned, she was an uninvited guest. Now what I mean by that is, you have to give the consumer, the viewer, the ultimate respect. They have tuned in to watch movie stars, to watch movies. And all of a sudden, politics is thrown at them," television personality Donny Deutsch said about First Lady Michelle Obama delivering the Best Picture award as last night's Academy Awards.
"If I want to watch Jimmy Fallon, and I know she's on, that's okay. But, that was an intrusion, and I have a feeling that three out of four Americans -- forget politics, if you're a Democrat or a Republican -- don't want to see the First Lady. I wanted more Jack Nicholson."
" And I think you have to respect your audience enough to not impose----she's the First Lady----but that's not a moment we're looking for (at the Oscars)---the President or the First Lady," Deutsch said on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight."
"On top of that, the tone of it, it was almost a monarch quality. She was sitting there and there was an elitist flavor to it. I was watching as a viewer and was going, 'huh?' and I'm a Democrat," Donny Deutsch told host Piers Morgan.
"I just thought it was very very tone deaf and I was really surprised they did it," Deutsch concluded.
Donny Deutsch's showing empathy here - and seems to understand he and Hollywood have acted irresponsibly using their medium to harangue conservatives (because our ideas are different) and that at some point they crossed the line into 'unethical'...and 'hateful'...
I'm a conservatives who actually likes Michelle Obama. In years to come I believe she'll be seen as one of our most elegant First Ladies... a good mother, role model and wife... but like Donny Deutsch I don't believe she should have been invited to be a presenter. Hollywood is climbing out of a situation where they picked winners and losers based on party affiliation... where they pushed one group at the expense of the other... and used their medium to lie about both groups.
Hollywood needs to distance themselves from their own biases. That's not Michelle Obama's fault - it's Hollywood's fault. She didn't create the mess - they did.
Hollywood created the disaster by making dems look much better than they are - and making conservatives look much worse. If they had done the same with Jews and Gentiles it would be anti-semitic. Had they done the same with blacks and whites it would be racist... In any case it's been an example of prejudging a group of citizens - and lying to support that prejudiced position. Something that borders on evil.
Hollywood is feeling the heat - as they should.
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