Mark Sanford and the Great Media Suck-Up

"...a cautionary lesson to all of us in the journalistic profession."

Not to mention people who work for Fox News or the Washington Times.

Well, whenst attemptin' t' be gainin' access t' th' great, powerful, specially blessed in 'is mission King David II, a certain amount o' suckin' up be required o' th' loyal subjects, ri', mateys???

YARR!

Just to reiterate what I posted on the Politico thread:

I'm glad Jake Tapper is gracious enough to admit he screwed up. But for an allegedly 'investigative' reporter he certainly has a peculiarly tuned sense of propriety.

A Villager though and through.....

You should have offered Glenfiddich KT. You would have been in like Flynn!

KT, you forgot to specify the olives must be in brine, thus allowing the "dirty" option. For penance you must post your martini recipe.

The only screw up "Smokey" Tapper seems to feel he made was insulting NBC and Gregory.
He seems unconcerned about the sucking up to Sanford part.

A really good (I can't use the word "perfect" because it's a technical term in mixology) way to make a very dry martini is to use olives stored in vermouth instead of vermouth itself.

KT:

I find no fault in your messages. There's a clear difference between a personal expression of sympathy (even if distilled) to a stressed press sec and an outright offer of bias in a requested interview.

I'm frankly surprised to see Tapper's acknowledgment of his fallibility. I'm guessing that's a first, and unless he's caught again I'd expect it to be the last.

wordplay / word association
women in media...media suck up...Mark Sanford...
(esp. Argentinian women)

sorry, I'll take my penance

@dwnourgeois The email reflects a clumsy attempt to harm a competitor's chances of getting an interview, nothing else

That's Tappers explanation. Again, for Tapper this is all about hurting a fellow media type not about Sanford.

KT, if you had offered to fix a (James Bond) vesper martini, you might have sealed the deal. That drink is sooooo good, esp. when ice cold (note today's recipe is slightly different from Fleming - lillet back then no longer exists, Gordon's gin changed its formula, etc.). Skoal!

http://cocktails.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_vesper_martini

deconstructiva, there's a nice bordeaux lillet on the market now and it goes very well with hendricks or bulldog gin to make a tasty vesper.

KT, you're hilarious!

KT - quietly proud to know you. You kept it classy, and of course will continue to do so.

It's funny how Tapper didn't think his own emails might ever be disclosed via FIA. Let's hope it gives him and a number of other investigative reporters a little more sympathy for those whose private thoughts they've outed.

Quite a number of pundits have been making clear publicly that they sympathize with Sanford.

KT, great post, as usual. Embrace the serendipity. You didn't get the interview but did avoid this (whew)….

From: Maria
To: Mark Sanford
Subject: re:

My beloved,
I decided to rent a car this morning by myself. After pondering last night's, I mean, yesterday's…interview, yes that's it…I needed to ride up and down the coast. But after all the ins-and-outs of traffic made that impossible, someone named Amy warned me too late you can't do this (?), I checked into a hotel. One of your colleagues, Spitzer, no? recommended this place. I sat on a palm and ate a green salad and drank a vesper martini that reminded me of you. I'm sorry my love that those TIME reporters won't go away and leave you alone to think about me. Sometimes you don't choose things, they just happen. And if Jenny happens to be tied up for a week with those TIME reporters and a flight to me! me! me! is available for another, uh, exclusive interview then you will bring such happyness and love to my life. I'll dream with you.

Miss you so much… sweet kisses.

Actually, KT, if I were you I would be rather miffed that The State didn't bother to mention the booze prod. Something like that would be a sensation down in the drier parts of South Carolina!

Rove: "How does our country continue to produce men and women like this?"
.
Ron Fournier: "The Lord creates men and women like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight."
.......................................................................

What is the prime motivation of the media? What is 'the fight' about? To maintain the status quo, to protect the corporate interest and further it's agenda. The Republican party is good for corporate America, so the media sells it's talking points relentlessly. The Iraq War was good for corporate America, and the media sold it. The Bush admin was good for corporate America, so the media protected them. GOP style laissez faire, anti regulatory economics was good for corporate America, so it became Beltway conventional wisdom, and one day Americans woke up and were completely surprised to learn that the economy had essentially collapsed.
What wasn't good for corporate America was the left, and for 30 years the left's point of view was silenced and denigrated as sport by the corporate media.

If we can find ourselves in a ruinous war and on the brink of economic collapse with the corporate media, I'm sure we can't do too much worse without the corporate media. Here's hoping that KT and her colleagues find themselves out of work and without health coverage, but alas, there is not justice in the world. I'm understanding Robespierre more and more these days. GFY.

KT-I believe there is a big difference in finding empathy (there is that word again) with what Mr. Sanford's press guy/gal was having to go through and sucking up and offering to help in not so appropriate ways like some in the media did.

I read that the Gov didn't return 15 of his staff's calls to find out WTF was going on with him.

Having said that there have been some very distrubing things in my mind coming to light lately about the media and how close they are to the subjects they cover. Its not good for anyone.

KT is truly classy. I am not saying this just because she bought me a drink once either.

COLUMBIA, S.C. – South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford headed out of state Wednesday for personal time with his wife, as the two try to reconcile, and skipped a meeting with a top economic adviser ahead of what's expected to be more bad economic news including rising joblessness.

Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer refused to say where the Sanfords were headed or how they were getting there, but allowed they won't be traveling with their four sons. Sanford is in the midst of trying to reconcile with first lady Jenny Sanford after a tearful confession of an affair with an Argentine woman, Maria Belen Chapur.

The folks at the State have done us a tremendous service with this article. They're also demonstrating what seems to have become a lost art -- journalism.

I lost interest in the Sanford soap opera a while back (although I'd certainly still care if I lived in South Carolina). But here we have an excellent article that exposes some of the dirty secrets about how the modern media operates. Finding out how the sausage is made is fascinating and enlightening.

Exposing the hypocrisy of the partisan media outlets that promise Sanford “friendly ground" and then deny it when they're caught is journalism at its finest. I would love to see the State receive the well earned awards and acclaim that they deserve. Instead, I expect that they've made so many enemies that we won't hear much more about them. I hope I'm wrong though.

Not to put too fine a point on it but here's how Glenzilla describes the cautionary lesson (relative to the <a href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/Todd kafuffle"):

...[blank] doesn't cover them as a reporter, adversarially scrutinizing what they argue and do. Instead, he becomes their spokesman. He not only describes what they believe, but he adopts it and advocates it himself…

If one wanted to be generous, one could say that a [blank's] political strategists should be thinking in such terms -- about how to keep [blanks] approval ratings as high as possible. But that, quite obviously, isn't [blank's] role. Yet the distinction disappears. That is how [blank] thinks because it's how those on whom he depends think. He's not a journalist wanting to impose accountability or find out the truth of what [blank] did. Instead, he serves as an advocate for the agenda of the political strategists [or politicians] who determine his access.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/15/todd/index.html

From the Washington Times, Pox News and that side: no surprise. Jake Tapper: he is a supercilious dolt, yet his friends in the Village will cover for him. It is his gang, after all. All this shows is that at one level our Villagers have refined the Art of the Grovel. And their competitive instincts and their desire to Break Wind oops News overcomes their more careful instincts. They leave the High Road when it comes to wanting to be the first...

KT: I read your exchange: I think you were trying a little cultivation. I guess it has become a necessary evil. Border line suck up?

The folks at the State have done us a tremendous service with this article. They're also demonstrating what seems to have become a lost art -- journalism.

The State is shedding editors and staff, and the paper is smaller every week -- yet somehow, dedicated people can still pull this kind of thing off. Meanwhile, Drudge, Tapper, and other assorted asscl0wns get by with stuff that wouldn't have made the Weekly World News back in the day.

Sucks.

I'm reminded of Don Henley's "Dirty Laundry."