Joan Walsh: the Politico-Breitbart mind meld [View all]

[Enrique]

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/31/the_politico_breitbart_mind_meld/



Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen have a really nice gig at Politico, so I don’t know why they’re trying out for a job with the Andrew Breitbart media empire. But that’s what their deeply stupid piece decrying media bias against Mitt Romney, particularly at The New York Times and Washington Post, reads like. It could be the latest installment of Breitbart’s whiny, posthumous “Nobody Vetted Obama So We Have to Do It, By Printing Stuff We Know is False!” investigative series.

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The ultimate moral vacuum at the heart of the story is its failure to care that just two days after its “expose” of Ann Romney’s fondness for seven-figure horses and the silly costumes that goes with them, the Times ran a chilling investigative piece about Obama’s “kill list” process, with damning details about how the president decides on drone strikes and other methods of killing suspected terrorists.

The Times piece revealed that the administration has minimized its reported civilian casualties by counting all males killed, including minors, as “militants.” It contains the detail that echoes George Zimmerman’s thoughts about Trayvon Martin – that any young men in the vicinity of suspected terrorists must be “up to no good.” The single most haunting revelation, to me, was the fact that political guru David Axelrod sits in on the “Terror Tuesday” meetings, evidence that the president’s process is at least partly political. Oh, and “Terror Tuesday” isn’t my juvenile label for the meetings; according to the Times, that’s how they’re known in the White House. I hope they got that detail wrong. It even quotes Bush CIA director Michael Hayden praising the president, but urging a little more transparency in his process. When a Bush-Cheney intelligence operative is telling you you’re keeping too many secrets, you maybe ought to think about it. (I’m going to write more about Obama, the Democrats, national security and “kill lists” next week.)

Politico’s only mention of the piece comes within Times editor Richard Stevenson’s email rebuttal to its charges. Clearly, VandeHei and Allen think a story about the president’s controversial drone policy is less grave and potentially damaging than a close look at Ann Romney’s dressage hobby. I can’t think of a better example of the mindset that drives trivial, democracy-degrading political coverage. Politico didn’t create that world, but it’s the news outlet that was most deliberately invented and perfected to make sure we continue to live in it.