by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n Today\u2019s Washington journalists are like J. R. R. Tolkien\u2019s ring wraiths, petty lords who wanted a few shiny golden Obama rings \u2014 only to end up as shrunken slaves to the One.<\/p>\n The Bob Woodward\/Ron Fournier\/Lanny Davis psychodrama is another small reminder that the Obama administration continues to assume that the press should be little more than a veritable Ministry of Truth. Its proper duty is to serve the White House and promote the progressive agenda of Barack Obama. Any were considered suspect who questioned whether those exalted ends should really be achieved by any means necessary \u2014 but they were so few and far between that it mattered little.<\/p>\n Woodward, Fournier, and Davis, in their surprise at the general paranoia of the Obama administration, must think that freelancing White House zealots are tarnishing the reputation of their president, who, given his own predilections, would otherwise not countenance such clumsy intimidation of journalists.<\/p>\n In fact, there are plenty of reasons to assume that Barack Obama has established the tenor and methodology of press relations from the very outset of his administration, characterized by expectations of unfailing support, coupled with a general vindictiveness toward his few critics among the press corps. In the past, Obama\u2019s habit of leaking the divorce records of opponents, his calls for supporters to confront opponents and \u201cget in their face,\u201d petty threats in St. Louis by prosecutors against any who might say untrue things about Obama, and successful pressure to keep unpublished the Obama speech praising the radical Palestinian-American Rashid Khalidi were not even news, but usually written off as the normal pro-Obama zeal. Obama alone could not have elevated\u00a0The View<\/em>\u00a0to a supposedly serious\u00a060 Minutes<\/em>-type news show \u2014 and reduced 60\u00a0Minutes<\/em>\u00a0to the inanity of\u00a0The View<\/em>.<\/p>\n The former White House communications director, Anita Dunn, once (among other astounding declarations) denounced Fox News as essentially an illegitimate news network, \u201cObviously [the president] will go on Fox because he engages with ideological opponents. He has done that before and he will do it again. . . . When he goes on Fox he understands he is not going on it as a news network at this point. He is going on it to debate the opposition.\u201d<\/p>\n But that was not freelancing on Dunn\u2019s part. Obama himself later went after Fox directly, in a manner that might be characterized as preemptive bullying: \u201cI think what we really have to do is change some of the incentive structures so that people feel liberated to pursue some common ground. One of the biggest factors is going to be how the media shapes debates. If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you\u2019ll see more of them doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n Note the key phrase \u201cis not punished.\u201d \u201cPunish\u201d is a favorite word of Barack Obama\u2019s (as in \u201cpunish our enemies\u201d), and he assumes both that his opponents have the same mindset that he does, and that there is a way to stop a news organization from doing something he does not like. You see, in the Chicago organizing mind of Barack Obama, elected officials never act on principle, but only adopt positions in relationship to the likelihood of being punished or not punished. And note too that \u201ccommon ground\u201d is always defined by Obama as his own ideological turf.<\/p>\n Presidential example filters down the chain of command. Have we forgotten that, in the first year of the Obama administration, Yosi Sergant, then \u201ccommunications director\u201d of the National Endowment for the Arts, in a conference call to artists who were to participate in government-subsidized programs, urged them to use their influence to further the Obama agenda? If the NEA was to be politicized, what federal agency would not be?<\/p>\n Do we remember \u201cAttackWatch.com,\u201d whose website offered \u201cfiles\u201d on potential Obama critics? Its spooky, pseudo-intelligence red-and-black format offered names and pictures, and asked readers to report critics with the invitation, \u201cHave you seen or heard this attack?\u201d \u201cYes\/No.\u201d<\/p>\n Long before Rahm Emanuel went after Chick-fil-A (\u201cChick-fil-A\u2019s values are not Chicago values. They\u2019re not respectful of our residents, our neighbors and our family members. And if you\u2019re gonna be part of the Chicago community, you should reflect Chicago values\u201d), he had, as White House chief of staff, warned states and their congressional representatives that they would be punished should they criticize the president\u2019s stimulus.<\/p>\n At various times Barack Obama has derided the Chamber of Commerce, and, on the eve of the 2010 midterm elections, he tried to suggest that it was corrupt. In 2008, candidate Obama told us that doctors, in an endless search for profits, needlessly cut off limbs and yanked out tonsils.<\/p>\n The president of the United States has often demonized his opponents as those who need to be punished, or who seek to arrest children on their way to ice-cream parlors, or who are content with dirtying the air and water and shorting autistic children. For four years, those who have argued that more taxation is not the cure for serial trillion-dollar annual deficits have been reduced to fat-cat bankers, corporate-jet owners, and millionaires and billionaires, and have been lectured on when they have made enough money.<\/p>\n I\u00a0do not recall any member of the White House press corps reminding the president that to lump millionaires and billionaires together is to suggest that being worth a million dollars is as culpable as being worth 1,000 times that sum. More commonly, the press corps asks the president why he can\u2019t just force his opponents to come over to his side. This plea from his media ministers usually elicits from a wistful Obama something like, \u201cI\u2019m not a dictator,\u201d or emperor, or king \u2014 or fill in the blank. When Press Secretary Robert Gibbs simply pulled the 2,500 targeted assassinations by Predator drones off the table, DC journalists nodded, and they stayed off the table. When a US ambassador is murdered, it used to be news; now the news is the scoundrel who dares to think it is news.<\/p>\n That presidential model explains why the attorney general adopts the bipolarity between \u201ccowards\u201d and \u201cmy people,\u201d or why the vice president warns blacks that Republicans wish to put them \u201cback in chains.\u201d Joe Biden\u2019s faux black accent was no better and no worse than Barack Obama\u2019s own manufactured cadences when the occasion demands. Following the Obama example explains why the EPA chief adopted phony email personas to distort discussion of issues. Or why Department of Justice communication flacks coordinated with Media Matters to attack critics of Eric Holder\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n What was the purpose of the 2008 faux-Greek columns, the Latin motto, the promises to cool the earth and calm the rising seas, if not to create a divine persona, soon be reflected on cue in everything from JournoList to Chris Matthews\u2019s tingling leg to Evan Thomas\u2019s \u201cI mean in a way Obama\u2019s standing above the country, above the world, he\u2019s sort of God.\u201d How many times can a Washington toady invoke the Gettysburg Address to supersize another mediocre Obama speech?<\/p>\n In the same way that the operatives of the Nixon White House once channeled the character of Richard Nixon, so too the Obama administration reflects the manner in which Barack Obama has always campaigned and viewed politics. His 2004 Senate run and two presidential campaigns all shared the same\u00a0modus operandi<\/em>\u00a0of unleashing surrogates to tar opponents, bully critics, romance the mainstream media, and caricature the shrinking number of journalistic kulaks \u2014 all while deploring the politics of personal destruction.<\/p>\n The Woodward fiasco is different only in that a few liberals now feel that, given that Obama need not face election again, they should be allowed to salvage some journalistic integrity by mild cross-examination and pathetic eleventh-hour confessions of past White House pressure. Or, in the words of journalist Mark Halperin, writing of the Woodward affair, \u201cIt\u2019s a little embarrassing none of the rest of us was as aggressive as he was.\u201d Four years ago it was a little embarrassing; now it is only predictable.<\/p>\n Cannot Obama be somewhat magnanimous and give our modern-day Nazg\u00fbl a few face-saving measures after they have sold their souls on so many occasions when it counted? Of course not; emaciated wraiths remain wraiths. Dissent is equated with a sort of disloyalty among the supposedly kindred minds of fellow culture warriors. By questioning motives, they have earned justifiable rebuke \u2014 or worse.<\/p>\n You see, in the worldview of Barack Obama, he has only so much time to protect the helpless and, for the first time in our history, transform us into a fair and just America \u2014 a monumental task that can brook no reactionary dissent, especially among those who certainly should know better and had so long ago pledged their fealty.<\/p>\n \u00a92013 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Today\u2019s Washington journalists are like J. R. R. Tolkien\u2019s ring wraiths, petty lords who wanted a few shiny golden Obama rings \u2014 only to end up as shrunken slaves to the One.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[145],"tags":[12,181,321,1044,88,1024,447,298],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-nK","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9730,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/9730-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1472,"position":0},"title":"From an Angry Reader: Your\u2026","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 10, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"From an Angry Reader: Your opinions are about as nutty as the incoming administration and fake news as well as Trump's constant spins\/basic lies. Let mainstream media and journalism in general do their job and ask the hard questions that need to be answered. We are just plain lucky the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6176,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-press-and-dr-faustus\/","url_meta":{"origin":1472,"position":1},"title":"The Press and Dr. Faustus","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 5, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Too late, American journalists realize their mistake. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online In the old Dr. Faustus story, a young scholar bargains away his soul to the devil for promises of obtaining almost anything he wants. The American media has done much the same thing with the Obama\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mainstream Media"","block_context":{"text":"Mainstream Media","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/mainstream-media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7114,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/following-the-trail-nixon-blazed\/","url_meta":{"origin":1472,"position":2},"title":"Following the Trail Nixon Blazed","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 18, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Obama shows the same Orwellian disregard for the Constitution. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 What would a president do if he were furious over criticism, or felt that his noble aims justified most means of attaining them? Answer that by comparing the behavior of Richard Nixon to that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5973,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/reap-what-you-sow\/","url_meta":{"origin":1472,"position":3},"title":"Reap What You Sow","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 21, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner In the next few weeks, we will probably hear more stories about journalists whose correspondence was monitored, and more creepy details about the corruption of the IRS. The fault, however, is not Obama\u2019s alone; he is what he is \u2014 a take-no-prisoners tough Chicago\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mainstream Media"","block_context":{"text":"Mainstream Media","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/mainstream-media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1295,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-derangement-syndrome\/","url_meta":{"origin":1472,"position":4},"title":"Obama Derangement Syndrome?","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 29, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media I\u2019d say if you live in the United States of America and you vote for George Bush, you\u2019ve lost your mind. \u2014 John Edwards When does the legitimate \u201cI oppose Obama\u201d descend into the illegitimate \u201cI hate Obama\u201d? It is popular now to suggest\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9917,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/talk-radio-cable-news-the-mainstream-media-and-the-news-revolution\/","url_meta":{"origin":1472,"position":5},"title":"Talk Radio, Cable News, the Mainstream Media, and the News Revolution","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 8, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The Corner The one and only. by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review In the hubbub over Trump\u2019s attack on the media, we sometimes forget that Barack Obama et al. customarily went after talk-radio and cable-news conservatives \u2014 whose job, after all, was opinion journalism \u2014 as biased, whereas Trump went\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1472"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1473,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472\/revisions\/1473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}