{"id":36002,"date":"2010-07-29T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T00:45:18","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T00:45:18","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T00:45:18","slug":"parsing_politico_on_journolist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2010\/07\/29\/parsing_politico_on_journolist\/","title":{"rendered":"Parsing Politico on Journolist"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: Let\u2019s just do the Politico piece right now, because this may be one of the most embarrassing pieces I have ever read — and looking back on the things I have read, there\u2019s a lot of competition for most the embarrassing thing I\u2019ve ever read. This piece may be at the top. ‘Journolist Veers Out of Bounds,\u2019 by Roger Simon, Politico. Ahem. ‘This may be the most embarrassing thing I have ever written — and looking back on my writing, there is a lot of competition for that dubious distinction — but when I became a reporter, it was almost a holy calling.\u2019 Now, Roger, the thing about journalism is it\u2019s supposed to be objective, dispassionate, and skeptical. There\u2019s supposed to be a lot of curiosity in there. A ‘holy calling\u2019 implies none of that. A ‘holy calling\u2019 means you got all the answers, and you\u2019re out there to save something. That\u2019s what a holy calling is. ‘We really believed we were doing good,\u2019 he writes. ‘We informed the public and helped make democracy work.\u2019 <\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t say this, but go to any J school and ask the students running around the halls, ‘Why are you here?\u2019 <\/p>\n

(sniveling student impression) ‘I want to save the world! I want to right the injustices of the world.\u2019 <\/p>\n

‘Well, why are you here? This is not where this is supposed to happen.\u2019 <\/p>\n

‘I want to save the world.\u2019 <\/p>\n

This is basically what he\u2019s writing here. <\/p>\n

‘We really believed we were doing good. We informed the public and helped make democracy work.\u2019 (sigh) Folks, even I frighten myself sometimes with how right I am. For the entire history of this program — and dating back to even before this program when I was doing this program in Sacramento — people would ask about journalists, and I\u2019d say, ‘They think they are the personal guarantors of freedom. They are the personal guarantee. They are the last line of defense against the Constitution and the First Amendment.\u2019 They do believe they are our personal guarantors of freedom. What does he write here? ‘We really believed we were doing good. We informed the public and helped make democracy work. <\/p>\n

‘We exposed wrongdoing wherever we found it. We reported without fear or favor. As a columnist, I tried to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.\u2019 Well, even that\u2019s true! How do you rise through the ranks of journalism? Find somebody and destroy \u2019em, and then the Washington Post might hire you. ‘Afflict the comfortable\u2019? When\u2019s the last time you did that, Roger? When is the last time you ‘exposed wrongdoing wherever you found it\u2019? When\u2019s the last time you ‘reported without fear or favor\u2019? Why all the polls that prove journalists are liberal and vote Democrat with the regularity of a well-made clock? A journalist doesn\u2019t try to ‘comfort\u2019 anyone. They inform them! <\/p>\n

What is this ‘comfort\u2019 business, and when did becoming ‘comfortable\u2019 become a sin worthy of affliction? We\u2019re here to afflict…? I\u2019m comfortable right now. I guess that\u2019s why they come after me, \u2019cause I\u2019m comfortable. What in the world is sinful about being comfortable? Why is that an affliction? They inform, or are supposed to. Why be proud of afflicting the comfortable? That to me sounds like you enjoy attacking achievers, and you think that\u2019s a ‘holy calling,\u2019 to attack the achievers — and yes, as I answer my question. Yes, it is. Attacking achievers is a ‘holy calling.\u2019 He next writes, ‘I warned you that this would be embarrassing.\u2019 You\u2019re right, Mr. Simon, but not for the reasons you think.<\/p>\n

‘We loved what we did,\u2019 he writes, ‘and we did it with passion. We were proud. We felt — I am just going to go ahead and say it — honorable.\u2019 As far as I\u2019m concerned, honorable people don\u2019t do what journalists today do. Forget Journolist. Forget the listserv. Don\u2019t try to use that as a scapegoat for what journalism, et al, has become. Journolist (the listserv, those 400 activists) are a tiny, tiny story compared to what we know about the partisan hack media that is coast to coast. Rathergate? Rathergate? You circled the wagons, Roger, to protect a guy who used and forged fake documents to affect an election! This is honorable? You have mindless promotion of climate fraud? No curiosity whatsoever! There\u2019s a giant hoax that\u2019s been perpetrated on the world, and you\u2019re right there promoting it?<\/p>\n

You\u2019re honorable? Journalism was honorable? The things that you at Politico and others have done to Sarah Palin and Clarence Thomas and Robert Bork and George Allen are honorable? The politics of personal destruction advanced by phony journalists did not start with Ezra Klein, Mr. Simon. Honorable? What did remembrance Sarah Palin ever do to you? Best we can figure she threatens you somehow. Mr. Simon then writes, ‘There were wrongdoers. Fakers, plagiarists, those with private agendas who wished to slant the news. When found, they were often fired. Even when they were subjected to a lesser punishment, their sins were made clear as a lesson to the rest of us.\u2019 (snorts) When found? They weren\u2019t ‘found,\u2019 they were exposed! <\/p>\n

Nobody was looking for them on the inside. They happened to be exposed. By the way, if you\u2019re Laurence Tribe and you hire an assistant to plagiarize somebody else, you can still hold onto your job at Harvard — as can Doris Kearns Goodwin. A lot of you people have plagiarized and stolen. Honorable? You circle the wagons to protect each other. ‘There were … those with private agendas who wished to slant the news.\u2019 ‘Were…those with private agendas\u2019? Any and all of you perpetrating a hoax on global warming — any and all of you who fail to investigate and probe the power of this administration and how it\u2019s being used to govern against the will of the people… Slant the news? How about become part of the agenda? There is no news anymore, Mr. Simon. There\u2019s no more media. Nothing\u2019s real. <\/p>\n

‘Even when they were subjected to a lesser punishment, their sins were made clear as a lesson to the rest of us. (At a few papers, those who wished to slant the news were publishers or editors who wished to please their publishers. They were rarely fired. But their numbers were few.)\u2019 Oh. We\u2019re back to this: There aren\u2019t that many people slanting, and most of them were editors and publishers but they were close to the conservative owners. (That\u2019s how this is to be translated.) ‘The lines were not muddy. You played it straight,\u2019 he writes. ‘Even if you were a columnist and allowed to publish your opinions, you were expected to be fair and accurate.\u2019 Yeah, this is an embarrassing piece. ‘At the end of the day, you often went home feeling good.\u2019 <\/p>\n

When was that? Somebody\u2019s career had been destroyed? Somebody\u2019s life had been destroyed? Somebody had been lied about? Somebody been distorted, maligned, and impugned sufficiently that they were finished? Is that when you went home and felt good? ‘And when people asked what you did, you replied with pride, not shame.\u2019 The last time I think you went home happy is when you got Obama elected. <\/p>\n

‘What do you do for a living?\u2019 <\/p>\n

‘I got Obama elected!\u2019 <\/p>\n

‘What do you do for a living?\u2019 <\/p>\n

‘I got Democrat majorities in the House elected. I got Democrat majorities in the Senate elected, and I — I — I\u2019m helping Obama destroy the American capitalist private sector. I go home and I feel really good. That\u2019s what I do. I\u2019m…a journalist!\u2019 <\/p>\n

‘[A]s I said, almost a holy calling,\u2019 he writes. ‘(And often accompanied by a vow of poverty.) Somewhere along the way, things have gone terribly wrong. Journalism has become a toy, an electronic plaything. I do not blame technology. The giant megaphone of technology has been coupled with a new, angrier, more destructive age. (Yes, you can find extremely angry, extremely partisan times in our past, but I always thought the goal was to progress over the centuries, not regress.) Until recently, there was a semisecret, off-the-record organization called Journolist. It was a listserv, which is a bunch of people who sign up (if allowed) and then get the same e-mails and can reply to everybody on the list. ‘Journolist was founded by Ezra Klein [a 22-year-old kid] in early 2007, when he was 22 and working for the liberal publication The American Prospect. Klein continued running it when he went to The Washington Post in 2009. <\/p>\n

‘The Post is a mainstream publication…\u2019 <\/p>\n

No, it\u2019s not, Mr. Klein. It\u2019s a liberal, activist agenda-oriented enterprise. ‘[B]ut Journolist was limited to those ‘from nonpartisan to liberal, center to left,” and then he goes on to describe what Journolist was. ‘And yet some are still troubled\u2019 after the exposure. ‘Chuck Todd, political director and chief White House correspondent for NBC News, who was not part of Journolist, told me this: ‘I am sure Ezra had good intentions when he created it…\u2019 No, he didn\u2019t. Define good intentions. ‘[B]ut I am offended the right is using this as a sledgehammer against those of us who don\u2019t practice activist journalism. ‘Journolist was pretty offensive. Those of us who are mainstream journalists got mixed in with journalists with an agenda. Those folks who thought they were improving journalism are destroying the credibility of journalism. ‘This has kept me up nights. I try to be fair. It\u2019s very depressing.” <\/p>\n

F. Chuck Todd, NBC, is not an activist journalist. We just gotta make sure Obama wins the day every day, but we\u2019re not activist journalists. No! We don\u2019t have any of those at NBC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Let\u2019s just do the Politico piece right now, because this may be one of the most embarrassing pieces I have ever read — and looking back on the things I have read, there\u2019s a lot of competition for most the embarrassing thing I\u2019ve ever read. This piece may be at the top. ‘Journolist Veers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nParsing Politico on Journolist - The Rush Limbaugh Show<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2010\/07\/29\/parsing_politico_on_journolist\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Parsing Politico on Journolist - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: Let\u2019s just do the Politico piece right now, because this may be one of the most embarrassing pieces I have ever read — and looking back on the things I have read, there\u2019s a lot of competition for most the embarrassing thing I\u2019ve ever read. 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