(2 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
At the end of each year Salon’s Alex Pareene gives us his list of his top ten journalistic hacks. This year Alex has ranked the columnists that are President Barack Obama top reads. As, he points out in the article, the Internet has made the conversation more “democratized” than in the past when everyone relied on the print media. Today it isn’t so much how many people read a columnist, it’s who.
But as a Politico editor could tell you, it’s not how many you reach, it’s who. Among Friedman’s readers: much of the nation’s executive class. Among Allen’s? Nearly everyone who works in any capacity for every member of Congress. That’s why it’s necessary to criticize them. They really do “drive the conversation,” to use a particularly odious Politico-ism. Both what is considered politically possible and politically desirable in this country depend in large part on what a handful of mainly older, mainly white and overwhelmingly male columnists and pundits say. Who is let into that conversation and who is left out of it has consequences for all Americans. That was made clear 10 years ago, in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, which the nation’s premier political opinion makers (what we once called “Thought Leaders”) almost universally supported. The Bush administration was aware of this, too, and devoted more efforts to convincing them than to trying to win over what we vaguely call “the people.”
President Barack Obama. Barack Obama loves newspaper columnists. He reads them, because he thinks they offer smarter commentary than one hears on cable news, and he invites them to the White House regularly, so he can influence their writing.
There in lies the problem, as Alex lays it out. Of the columnists that Pres. Obama has said are his favorite reads and who he has invited to the White House, none are women, all but one is black, most are older than 50 and most supported the Iraq war in 2003.
These are the men whose opinions the president “favors”
12. Eugene Robinson, Washington Post.
11. Jonathan Chait, New York magazine.
10. Josh Barro, Business Insider.
9. Ezra Klein, Washington Post.
8. E.J. Dionne, Washington Post.
7. David Brooks.
6. Gerald Seib, Wall Street Journal.
5. David Ignatius, Washington Post.
4. Jeffrey Goldberg, Bloomberg View.
3. Joe Klein, Time.
2. Thomas Friedman, The Davos Herald-Register.
1. Fred Hiatt, Washington Post Editorial Page editor.
Who do you think the president should be reading more? Why?
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Author
Krugman – The Conscience of a Liberal
Yves Smith – naked capitalism
emptywheel
digby – Hullabaloo
Crooks and Liars
Charlie Pierce – Daily Politics Blog
lambert – Corrente
Last but definitely not least
The Mom Cat, ek horn beck etal – The Stars Hollow Gazette
The president needs to get out of his bubble. His current reading is restricted to columnist who are cheerleaders and who willingly float his trial balloons under the guise of reporting. Those who support his rightwing agenda items and encourage and promote his bullshit theme of bipartisanship to adopt even more 1% and Republican legislation. Thrown into the mix are tried and true conservative who can provide him with conservative wish lists for him to use as giveaways up front in his “negotiations.”
I read more papers and blogs even some of those on the President’s list but the addition of my recommendations above would provide him with a much more balanced look at what is important to the citizens of this country.
As an aside, it is interesting but not surprising that Daily Kos is not included in his daily reading.
David Brooks? And Fred Hiatt…
I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.
Hang on – I gotta take a moment…
…
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Okay, well, there isn’t a single challenging voice on that list. Not one person whose occasional timid questioning can’t be brought into line by a nice lunch in the White House.
Who should he be reading? How about Charlie Savage? Barton Gellman? Dana Priest? How about the many writers from McClatchey? Charlie Pierce could provide some real food for thought, as could Yves Smith and Marcy Wheeler.
But I don’t think he’s looking for things to think about – I think he’s looking for a Greek chorus, one that tells the story he wants told, or can write about events the way he perceives them.
[I don’t, frankly, know why anyone with any intelligence at all would read Joe Klein or David Brooks. I wouldn’t read their grocery lists.]