Chuck Todd Gives a Masterclass in Beltway Non-Journalism

[mcar]

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a38332/chuck-todd-beltway-journalism-masterclass/

by the great Charlie Pierce:

...Basically, all modern political ratfcking involves creating distractions, also called knocking Candidate X "off-message." It can be argued that every Red Scare was in part a distraction used to discredit organized labor and destroy political liberalism. When Donald Segretti put out fake letters about Scoop Jackson's bastard child, that was creating a distraction. Ask Al Gore sometime about the political utility of "genuine distractions. Love Canal. Inventing the Internet. Where he grew up. Naomi Wolf. The fcking buttons on his fcking pants. Examples are not hard to find. Oops, look. Here's another. The "questions" about where the current president was born.

To use a more relevant, example, TravelGate was a distraction. FileGate was a distraction. The disgusting use of Vince Foster's suicide was a distraction. Castle Grande was a distraction. The cattle futures were a distraction. The billing records were a distraction. Webster Hubbell's billing practices were a distraction. Hell, the entire Whitewater part of the Whitewater affair was basically a distraction, as was the pursuit of Bill Clinton's extracurricular love life. Kathleen Willey was a distraction. The monkeywrenching of a settlement in the Paula Jones case was to make sure that the distraction that was that case survived. All of these were distractions created to make it difficult for a Democratic president to govern, and the reason I know that is because the people creating distractions were not shy about admitting what they were all about to each other...

Anyway, then came my man Chuck Todd, who always has been the caretaker, and who invited both HRC and the publicly truthless Carly Fiorina over to the Overlook Hotel for Sunday brunch. His interview with the former consisted of two subjects – the e-mail "scandal" and some horse-race stuff about new polls and Bernie Sanders....

...Please explain to me why this "discrepancy" is relevant to a campaign for the presidency. (And, no, "It's relevant because we've ginned it up sufficiently so that it will have an effect on the polls," is not enough.) And then, this morning, my man Chuck Todd, who will be opening the Overlook Hotel for business five days a week now, talked with the crew from Squint and the Meat Puppet about how HRC's "tone" in that interview was different, and my man Chuck Todd actually said, "I had a critic of hers actually e-mail me yesterday and say, 'Gee, if she had used that tone three months ago, we might not be here.'" This is another Clinton Rule in play that states that, if the Clinton in question "just comes clean," then the distraction manufacturing machine will cease operations. If my man Chuck Todd, or his source, actually believe that this would have gone away in June had HRC been less "defiant," neither one of them should be allowed to handle their own money.

[leftofcool]

1. No shit, Charlie!

[mcar]

2. I know, right?

These people are shameless.

[mcar]

3. Kick for the night crowd