WOODWARD: It was said very clearly, you will regret doing this.We mock you because of your pretence to be an intellectual, a man of letters - and yet not only do you not know history, you don't know current events.
BLITZER: Who sent that e-mail to you?
WOODWARD: Well, I'm not going to say.
BLITZER: Was it a senior person at the White House?
WOODWARD: A very senior person. And just as a matter -- I mean, it makes me very uncomfortable to have the White House telling reporters, 'you're going to regret doing something that you believe in, and even though we don't look at it that way, you do look at it that way.' I think if Barack Obama knew that was part of the communication's strategy, let's hope it's not a strategy, that it's a tactic that somebody's employed, and said, 'Look, we don't go around trying to say to reporters, if you, in an honest way, present something we don't like, that, you know, you're going to regret this.'
Oh well, at least he knows how to write using correct English language, funny cases and everything.
ME, pro. The objectionable case of I. The personal pronoun in English has three cases, the dominative, the objectionable and the oppressive. Each is all three.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
4 comments:
Three things: First, assuming Woodward is telling the complete truth about this (more on that below); Second, given the immediate response from Obama-enablers in the media to vilify Woodward and defend Obama - and note, defend, not disavow; Third, Rachael Maddow's on-air statement that MSNBC actually did edit McCain's statement in a deliberate attempt to make him look bad (not to mention all the other deliberate editing NBC/MSNBC has done - see "Zimmerman 911 tapes").
A thinking person can only make the judgment that not only can absolutely nothing from any American media have any basis whatsoever in truth, it is active and deliberate misinformation intended to deceive.
As far as accurate information goes, we're on our own from here through the end of the revolution.
White House not only releases email thread, but miraculously all journalists agree--in a weird harmony--that Woodward overstated the case and it wasn't threatening at all.
'Cuz you know how Woodward likes to make stuff up.
They're ugly when they eat; they're uglier when they eat their own.
I don't particularly care if the intent was threatening or not. Even if it was entirely friendly in every single way - they had absolutely no business whatsoever contacting a journalist and attempting to pressure him into changing his story.
None.
That they did so is highly inappropriate and makes me wonder how often this sort of thing is happening, and how much the White House is using its intrinsic power of intimidation to drive the narrative that we are fed. I don't care if they didn't intend to threaten or intimidate Woodward - just calling him on the phone from teh White House was intimidation simply because of the power of that position.
Besides, how can you spin "if you don't change the story, it's going to go very badly for you" into non-threatening and something positive?
I dunno, but I think the WH is kicking the Wrong Bear.
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