When A Haircut Is More Than A Haircut
Politico's Ben Smith has, alas, confessed, more or less, that the Obama Campaign was his source of the John Edwards $400 haircut scoop. Back in March of 2007, I wrote a story for Salon.com about the role of opposition research in shaping the primary news cycle, which I termed the "Matt Drudge Primary." At the time, Smith, a fine reporter loyal to his sources, declined to admit what was then fairly obvious--the news of Edwards' silly haircut had been fed to him from a rival campaign.
But Smith's source eventually outed himself. As Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe writes in his book,
We did much less of this [opposition research] than other campaigns did, but there were times we indulged — it was our researchers who found John Edwards's infamous $400 hair cut expenditures.
As Ice T put it, "Don't hate the player. Hate the game."
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None of this should come as a surprise. After all, number of Obama's closest advisors, including David Axelrod, had worked on Edwards' 2004 presidential campaign.
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Remember, BO was all set to accept Edwards' help until the creep showed what a true Richard he is.
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So it is official: Everyone save for Rielle Hunter hates John Edwards' guts.
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"Smith, a fine reporter loyal to his sources"
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Unbelievable. Honor among thieves...
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Journalists are the new lawyers.-
3.1
Is this a demostration of loyalty or a fine example of how reporters are routinely played by their sources.
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Notice Michael does not even seem to question the granting of "Anonymity" by Smith to a source for a story about a freaking haircut. Sad state of affairs indeed.
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Well, Ice-T is wrong, there's plenty of hate to go around, including gossip whores like MS or Ben Smith.
This really seals it for me--I mean the ramp-up in Afghan, the comastose approach to HCR, all of that pales in comparison to this tasty dish.
As someone who supported Obama throughout, I have to say the list of alternatives looks more intriguing all the time. I always preferred Dean's fire, but Hillary's tenacity seems more appropriate to the times, and in the era of the teabaggers' reign, Edwards' two Americas sounds like a good chord to play. Particularly given the dems utter fail to engage in even the mildest of populist critiques.
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4.1
In fairness to the Obama team, why wouldn't they exploit the unscrupulousness of journalists more loyal to their sources than to their reading public, if they knew every other team was working the political press corps' abysmal lack of ethics?
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Oh, right...it's because they were supposed to be "Change We Can Believe In".
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They weren't supposed to be dirty tricksters, because the people were behind them, and they had faith in us.
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They weren't supposed to exploit the sick system they were running against.
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They weren't supposed to be trying to get elected by secretly feeding the amorals employed by Beltway rags to dish dirt. -
4.2
SZ, in case it was unclear, I can give absolutely 2-sh!ts about this. What it reflects, tragically, about the Obama campaign/admin (thus far), is they are capable of being lethal to gain "victory." The question remains if they're ever going to use such means to achieve anything for the American people.
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4.3
Well Stuart I sure hope this is sarcasm because otherwise I gotta say get a grip. Obama is not the second coming of Jesus Christ, he's a politician. Who ran a campaign using professional campaign consultants. He didn't walk on water or part the seas to get elected and people need to stop putting the man on a pedestal so high that he can't help but fail to live up to a standard than no human being can possibly live up to. In 2007 the press didn't give Obama's campaign the time of day. If they put something out there to reduce the appeal of the front runners then they did what they had to do. It's not like we give awards to also rans.
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4.4
Dee:
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Perhaps you might wish to use another term than "get a grip". -
4.5
I am really ticked off about this, because this is what effects profound changes in people's lives. It's not a game to most people.
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Whatever you think of Obama or McCain, they had some serious differences in policy moving forward. If the election is not decided on that, but on scandal, then shame on us.
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We are to blame as much as the journalists. I just could imagine how screwed we could have been if Roosevelt was brought down by the press because of his zipper problems and lost in 1932.
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Or how would Republicans feel if Reagan lost in 1980 due to some scandal thrown out there? This is just a pony show, with horse races, who is up, who is down. It stinks. -
4.6
Sad, sad day when our friends on the left beat up on each other over a haircut of all things.
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This is what gets you upset? A haircut or the exposure of such by the media?
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Perhaps during the entire election, when the media was so warped in their loyalties to Obama and his campaign, they neglected to report on ANYTHING of substantial news about Obama. Factual news which could have made a difference in the election.
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Face it, you all allowed them to throw poor Hillary to the curb. Edwards a trial lawyer (corrupt), turned Senator (more corrupt) gets bad press for a $400 dollar haircut. That is news? This is what the voters needed to know in order to decide who would be the next President of the United States of America?
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Give me a break already. Obama played Chicago-style politics. Ruthless and coniving Chicago-style politics. Nothing more, nothing less.
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Where were the news reports on his inexperience? His lack of judgment? His loyalities to subversive individuals? A review of his beliefs, values and ideals? Where were all the reporters asking the really tough questions to Obama before he was elected?
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Oh, they were all too busy getting that "tingling sensation up their legs". That's where.
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Who put together the "I Feel Pretty video"? That was the killer.
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All I can say is, if their oppo guys were looking for dirt to dish, they really--to use the journalistic phrase--missed the lede.
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This kind of harps back to jcapan's opinion: Looking back to the campaign, BO needs to stop playing so nice and push some stuff through. Being the pretty boy (and, sadly, some people voted for him based simply on skin pigmentation) gave him the presidency but his SOS had, and prolly still has, the ones of brass needed to govern.
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"Don't hate the player. Hate the game."
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OK.
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Screw you, Michael. -
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What? No "Read More"??
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Did anybody else read Scherer's linked piece "The Matt Drudge Primary"?
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We should have a contest: who can find the most unintentionally hi-larious quote.
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My nominee:Journalists long ago learned how to play the game. "Reporters will often call and ask proactively, 'What kind of dirt do you have for me?'" said one senior official at a presidential campaign who asked not to be identified.
Too f-ing funny...
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"The mainstream media prides itself on being objective, yet they often run like lemmings to whatever is up on Drudge," said a senior Republican campaign aide, who asked to remain anonymous.
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You may have just surpassed the hilarity of mine with that one, Cliff, bravo.
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It seemed appropriate to the topic.
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I think it's perfectly reasonable to use information like that if you believe it can give you an advantage. If everybody played nice and just ran on the issues without resorting to distortions, innuendo or outright fabrications, of course that would be prefferable. But that isn't how things are at all. Reality bites, but you have to be real.
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Agreed sacred, I only wish they were equally inclined to direct such politics of personal destruction towards Lieb, Snowe, Lincoln...
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John Edwards is not our enemy, but the above 3 and so many more in the village are. -
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I with you on that jcapan. I really want to see Lieberman taken down a few pegs. If he follows through on his threat to filibuster I think he should be stripped of his chairmanship, thrown out from caucusing with the dems and let him see how anxious the republicans are to welcome him. He's far to liberal on social issues to be welcomed into anyone but McCain's offices. This bipartisanship crap is starting to make me sick. It's not going to happen, so why even try?
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It is not as though the revelations about Edwards' haircut can be said to have pulled the rug from under him.
Or from over him, for that matter.
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I'm not proud of the Obama campaign for trying to get a story like this placed. It really sucks.
But the problem is that the journalists never should have run with this tip. Or, the story should have been "Look at this load of baloney an Obama guy wants me to write about..."
Nobody had their arm twisted into reporting this as an actual controversy.
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Looks like Plouffe was able count on the hatefulness of the playas (don't try to be hip), like Ben Smith, and the game.
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This is exactly what is wrong w/ journalism. To be fair, I get excited every time some GOP congress critter gets caught with a hooker, in Argentina, tapping their toes. Because this is how the game is played.
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John Edwards ended up being a very flawed human being and a flawed candidate. But what disturbs me about the campaign in retrospect was that ideas took a deep back seat to issues.
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If Edwards didn't get fancy hair cuts and didn't shtoop another woman, does this mean his ideas about poverty were decent? It's profoundly upsetting that this is what our political system has turned into. Gore likely wouldn't have won Florida if all votes were counted if the Bush DWI didn't surface right before then. Elections are not about ideas, they are about focus polls, scandal, messaging, and crap.
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Shame on Obama, shame on the press corpse. -
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Are you people kidding me, what are you people alter boys? It's our fault. If the public doesn't want these things to be the focus then they ought to stop basing judgements on this ridiculous crap. Unfortunately, regardless of what most voters tell you in polls and focus groups, they don't read about candidates, they don't do any research. They don't know crap about the issues. The reason that this country is in such a pickle is because public sentiment is so easily captured by balloon boy and $400 haircuts. And how did the Obama team know this? Because a few years ago reporters got bent out of shape by a $200 Clinton haircut. And he made up for the lower price by holding up the flight while he got it. But this nitpicking everything Obama is just freaking absurd. Everyone keeps wanting Obama to get tougher, and as soon as he does he becomes the angry black man. He's doing what he needs to do behinds the scenes where he needs to do them. Remember when all of you were saying he needed to get tougher against Hillary. Well she isn't president is she so maybe he might know a thing or two. god, Democrats ion congress are not the only people who need to grow a set.
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I'm with you, Dee. I'm sure there are some people who thought Obama walked on water (Rush said so) but I haven't met any. I think he's a brilliant politician which, by rules he didn't invent, means he's got to play to adolescent beltway-media sensibilities (hi Michael) but, at the end of the day, the only people who care about certain haircuts are the same ones who care about bi-partisan "centrism" for its own sake. F@ck them.
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Wow, maybe I'm missing something based on other people's comments, but I really don't get what the big deal is about this. People are shocked, shocked I tell you, that the Obama campaign knew how to play hardball and kneecap their opponents? For real? This is news at 11? Maybe people weren't picking up on the things that I was picking up on during the primaries, because Obama's campaign, and Obama himself, made it plain to all that they knew how to be ruthless when they felt it was necessary. Which is one of the reasons I voted for him.
I think this is freakin' hilarious. The story was hilarious, the fact that "journalists" thought that it was newsworthy enough to be printed is hilarious, and people's shock and surprise is hilarious.
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Not shocked they did it. More disgusted about the game. People in the press eat this stuff up. of course, Obama would do it. Just general revulsion about how crap like this decides elections.
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We all knew Obama could play hardball. Heck, we knew he'd done it before. And some of us were worried he'd go too easy on McCain so we wanted some hard playing.
But this? A haircut? From the "new kind of politics guy?" I can get over it but it's annoying.
Not as annoying as the fact that Time shows no respect towards Edwards supporters with Scherer even now seeming to claim that it really was "more than just a haircut." The same Scherer who doesn't get why Levi J. is famous and why he's a story but who has pushed the Edwards affair story on us at every turn.
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@trifecta55: But maybe that's where we disagree. I really don't think that the haircut thing decided John Edwards' fate, he was just outdone by two other superior candidates. Both Obama and Clinton had several gossipy, damaging things thrown at them throughout the primaries -- but the test of a good candidate is how they handle those things. For me, and this might not be true for other voters, I didn't give a rat's butt about Edwards' haircut, but what I did care about was the fact that he never seemed sincere. He just was not the type of guy that I thought should be leading the country. My reaction to him had nothing to do with how much he paid for a haircut or people trying to throw the hypocrite label at him. So while I'll concede that doing this kind of oppo research is silly and petty, in the big scheme of things, it's really not that big of a deal.
@destor23: Again, maybe we have a different perspective on things. First, when Obama said and says that he is the "new politics guy," I kinda don't believe him. Because to really be that guy, you have to be as pure as the driven snow -- and that's not Obama. Granted he tries, and makes sincere efforts, but I did not think for one second that he wouldn't go after his opponents. Now, I did think that he would avoid the personal attacks and character destruction we have seen in the past, but totally pure? No way. So that's why I'm not shocked or annoyed by this. I didn't expect Obama to be a saint, so I can't criticize him when he lives up to those expectations. That's just me. As for Scherer, I really don't know what he means when he says "more than just a haircut," he needs to explain that one.
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Big news here—the Obama campaign did what they could to stymie John Edwards' Presidential bid. Wowzersss! Just a jab because this is not at all surprising. Yawn
LM
http://theblindspotsofgod.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/i-fully-support-gun-ownership/ -
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MS may be a dope but he is no fool.
He posts this and everyone-from the one who says he voted for BHO in the primary but hasn't had a decent thing to comment about him since to the ones who feel the need to push back against complete nothingness that is this-plays their parts.
"Journalists" aren't the only dancing monkeys.
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the public loves a scandal of any kind, Smith knew it, the Obama team knew it. They knew, and didn't care, that they were putting out only part of the "story" --that any effort to push back on the non-story would feed the hungry mass more eager for blood than policy.
The saddest part of this is what you aren't talking about: our politics are so twisted that haircuts count for more than policy.
Shame on everyone involved: Obama's "pure" team, Ben Smith and the rest of the gossip mongers, and the public for feeding on the garbage they are fed.
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[...] media sources are reporting that Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe admits in his new book that Obama campaign opposition [...]
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Other than Jimmy Carter, I can't think of a single President in my lifetime that was a goody-two-shoes. I'd always thought that Jimmy was a decent human being, but I also felt that he was the worst President in modern times until Bush lite hit the stage. You have to have a little bit of the cut-throat in you to be President. How is it possible that anyone thinks otherwise?
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[...] Ben Smith of Politico years, and a promotional confession in a book from a Barack Obama Thug, to admit/disclose what we told our readers on Fathers Day [...]
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