Veep Debate Moderator Page Hosted Party Honoring Pence Protege Verma

[octoberlib]

In circles of journalism far from my own, particularly within the Beltway, it’s considered appropriate for journalists and the power brokers they cover to see each other socially, particularly if they are perceived as needing each other’s help to climb the slippery slope to fame. That is apparently the rationalization for the otherwise very fishy discovery that the moderator for next month’s vice-presidential candidate debate, veteran journalist (now with USA Today) Susan Page, hosted a party late in 2018 in honor of Mike Pence’s powerful protégé Seema Verma, who runs the Medicare and Medicaid programs for the Trump administration.


The party, dubbed a “girl’s night,” came to light as part of a U.S. House report (made public by Politico) on pretty heavy taxpayer-subsidized spending by organizer and Republican public relations type Pam Stevens as part of an effort to raise Verma’s profile or improve her brand or whatever euphemism for aggrandizement of the already-powerful you prefer. Turns out Page, not John Q. Public, paid the four grand or so for Verma’s party, but perhaps Stevens separately billed the feds for her consulting work on the event. In any event, the controversy isn’t really about who paid for the party, but whether a working journalist at Page’s level who has been hobnobbing with Mike Pence’s best-known associate in the Trump administration ought to be moderating his debate with Kamala Harris. Matt Yglesias thinks the answer is clearly “no.”

The taxpayer-funded party in Verma’s honor was held at the home of @SusanPage, who is scheduled to moderate the VP debate this fall but will hopefully be removed. https://t.co/w0Wi2vrMbj

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) September 10, 2020

The question isn’t whether Page should have hosted this particular gathering, but whether journalists should be “routinely” hosting social events for the kind of people they are supposed to be covering. Yes, Old Girls Networks like this are more understandable and less ethically objectionable than the Old Boys Networks they emulate, but they still promote the very idea of insular Beltway elites that helped feed the rise of Verma’s and Pence’s mutual boss Donald Trump. Indeed, one of the few Trump accomplishments I truly applaud is his successful effort to sabotage the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner (a.k.a. the Nerd Prom), wherein journalists and Washington officialdom gathered to lightly tease each other in ways that signaled they had more in common than their very different roles might suggest.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/09/veep-debate-moderator-hosted-dinner-honoring-pence-protg.html



This article is from Sept. 10th. Just a reminder, since everyday there's new outrages and it's hard to keep track of everything.

[LiberalFighter]

1. I just don't like or trust her.

[Me.]

2. A Farewell Bash For Sanders, Now THis

is it all just a big joke to them? TAXPAYER funded...wth?

[octoberlib]

7. I forgot about that.

[LiberalFighter]

3. Kamala should consider asking Susan Page about her hosting parties with Pence.

[ananda]

4. This is why we are so lucky to have Biden and Harris!

They can both handle any kind of debate format or moderator.

[SheltieLover]

5. Revolting!

Kamala should not do this for safety concerns.

[elleng]

6. the current Washington Bureau Chief for USA Today.

a 1973 graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, where she was editor-in-chief of the Daily Northwestern, and has a master's degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she was a Pulitzer Fellow.

Page has covered six White House administrations and 10 presidential elections, and interviewed the past nine presidents. She founded and hosts an award-winning video newsmaker series for USA Today, "Capital Download." She appears frequently on cable news networks as an analyst and often guest-hosted The Diane Rehm Show, which was syndicated on National Public Radio. She was the first woman to serve as music chairman of the Gridiron Club show and was the president of the club, the oldest association of journalists in Washington, in 2011. She was president of the White House Correspondents Association in 2000. She also served as chairman of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards and has twice been a juror for the Pulitzer Prizes.

Her first book was published in 2019, a biography of former First Lady Barbara Bush titled The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty.[3] Also in 2019, she signed a deal to write a biography of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, tentatively titled Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Arc of Power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Page

[ihas2stinkyfeet]

8. ya know. i live just over the border from evanston. i have been interviewed

by their j-school dopes.
i have a little urban farm, and a fb page, so a few of them have found me.
they are idiots. gotta be the worst school in the system.

[BComplex]

9. Glad you posted this. I hadn't seen it the first time around.

[octoberlib]

12. There's so much crap every day of this administration, it's easy to miss things.

[BComplex]

13. True that. It's like outrage overload every day. My adrenals can't take another 4 years of this.

[BSdetect]

10. What went wrong in her rise to the top? USA Today? Hardly a pinnacle.

[GeorgeGist]

11. Oh great ...

The taxpayer-funded party.

The corruption is everywhere the GOO treads

[crickets]

14. K&R for visibility.