Friday, July 25, 2008

The End of the Affair?

Thanks to Sid in the Phibian's comments

The New Republic
End of the Affair
by Gabriel Sherman
Barack Obama and the press break up.
Post Date Thursday, July 24, 2008

Around midnight on July 16, New York Times chief political correspondent Adam Nagourney received a terse e-mail from Barack Obama's press office. The campaign was irked by the Times' latest poll and Nagourney and Megan Thee's accompanying front-page piece titled "Poll Finds Obama Isn't Closing Divide on Race," which was running in the morning's paper. Nagourney answered the query, the substance of which he says was minor, and went to bed, thinking the matter resolved.

But, the next morning, Nagourney awoke to an e-mail from Talking Points Memo writer Greg Sargent asking him to comment on an eight-point rebuttal trashing his piece that the Obama campaign had released to reporters and bloggers like The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder and Politico's Ben Smith. Nagourney had not heard the complaints from the Obama camp and had no idea they were so steamed. "I'm looking at this thing, and I'm like, 'What the hell is this?' " Nagourney recently recalled. "I really flipped out."

Later that afternoon, Nagourney got permission from Times editors to e-mail Sargent a response to the Obama memo. But the episode still grates. "I've never had an experience like this, with this campaign or others," Nagourney tells me. "I thought they crossed the line. If you have a problem with a story I write, call me first. I'm a big boy. I can handle it. But they never called. They attacked me like I'm a political opponent."

There's more, go read it.
Hehehe! My other favorite line is "So much for "Obama Love."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Here's another one Maggie.

Seems to me that the world should be a bit concerned about some guy getting up in front of German multitudes and claiming he will "Change" the world...

You can still find skulls bubbling up every Spring.

sid