That’s because you don’t make any substantive comments. You just type away because you like the sound of your words. A tempest in a teapot as it were.

Oooooh, what a slam – she is trying to imply that Flowers isn’t a journalist – what a subtle dig – do they teach that at the Society of Professional Journalists. No wonder the public has such respect for our media – such high values and standards.

Point 2 – Fowler provided a raw recording of the event, but nowhere in her piece on it does she mention that Obama was specifically asked by 2 volunteers who were headed to Pennsylvania to work on the campaign for him to give them the temperature of the place. Nor does she include a parallel discussion of African-American youth in her version. His motivation for discussing Pennsylvania voters before this “elite crowd” is relevant – because everything Fowler writes pushes the notion that these were dispassionate funders for whom he was dissecting some lower form of life – not that he was giving his on-the-ground assessment of some issues that were real in Pennsylvania as a strategist providing context to some campaign workers who would be canvassing there in a few days.

Point 3 – Fowler’s big journalistic catches got the play they did because there were mainstream media narratives ready and waiting for them – Obama the aloof elitist and Clinton the Crazed. To the degree that they fit these narratives they became big deals. So this “new media” was, as usual, in pure symbiosis with the old.

Point 4 – I complimented some work that Fowler and Marc did that was actually an innovation of on-line “citizen journalism” that the mainstream media would find difficult-to-impossible to match. That’s of no consequence because he’s (jusifiable, by “old journalism” terms) obsessed with the story that’s making it big in the mainstream press and sparring over the question of “off-the-record” – which in the SF-Obama case Bill Bradley has made a convincing case that Fowler did something only an amateur quasi-journalist using a bit of a swindle to gain access wouldor could try to get away with. If Marc is proud of that, fine.

Point 5 – This is small potatoes compared to the 2006 Georege Allen “caught on tape” episode – which was similiar to Clinton’s, not Obama’s, because it was a bizarre but telling gaffe before a crowd of people. So there’s nothing here we haven’t seen before – except the claim that it’s “transformative journalism” rather than political “gotcha” recycled with elevated rubric.

Pint 6 – Josh Marshall has, without a journalism degree incidentally, pioneered a kind of online journalism that is an expansion IMHO of what IF Stone did in newsletter form. He’s broken important stories during the AG Gonzalez scandals by mobilizing his readers into action. He periodically does this when there are large document dumps as well. TPM is a great example of the future of journalism that’s changed by the internet – of an individual using the new tools and doing breakthrough journalism. As I’ve said before – and I get a buzz every time I say this, of course – Mayhll Fowler would not likely get a job with TPM based on the turgid, self-referential stuff she churns out. She’s not a bad person. Just not much of a journalist in any sense that interests me. Unlike the mainstream media which has a fascination with her and her tape recorder.

“Note Obama’s delicate sentence constructions. Never a gender pronoun–a he or a she–anywhere.” M. Fowler”

Michael Balter: “And I am going to repeat what I said earlier, which is that people only complain about blogger or “citizen journalist” reporting when they don’t like what they report. ”

Balter – - – > Point, Set and Match!

“Note Obama’s delicate sentence constructions. Never a gender pronoun–a he or a she–anywhere.” M. Fowler

No shit ?

You’ve been touting this second-rate crap as some breakthrough. Guess it gives you a charge – ad nauseum. As for the fact that ordinary folk can now catch and disseminate newsworthy stuff, who knew ?

I think it’s actually petty of you. Belittling. Why dont u find someone more powerful to heap scorn on?

No one claims that she — or me — is a Serious Journalist. That is hardly the point. Nor is it that the stories she broke were of first rate substance (all in the eye of the beholder).

What counts is that — with all of its downs and mostly its ups– rather ordinary people can now gather and distribute information (substantial or otherwise) finally eroding the monopoly held by clown and gasbags like Jonathan Alter. That’s a good thing for democracy. And it’s good that people like Mayhill are willing to stick their necks out there and go get it, for little or no money, and then expose themselves to the sort of public trashing that you are gleefully participating in. You don’t have to agree with her or evev very much like or respect what she does. But it seems there might just be a few more worthier targets out there for your demeaning characterizations.

By the way, as the editor of her piece on Bittergate, I instantly understood the context of Obama’s remarks. Must mean you’re slow on the uptake, citizen. Which must mean, in turn, that we pros are lucky that slower folks like you aren’t out there getting in our way.

Jim, they’re both sleazy and in the tank for their respective causes and/or “sides”.

Nothing drives me crazier personally than when one side claims everyone speaking for the other side nothing more than a scheming money-grubbing sellout child molester, while those who speak for their own side are of course perfect, wonderful and honest in every way at all times.

No, there may not be any such real attribute to any human being as “objectivity”, but I respect those who at least try. (I would name names but I don’t want to start another flame war; I’m sure there are those here who believe Randi Rhodes is the very model of objectivity, while others believe Rush Limbaugh isn’t nearly mean and partisan enough.)

For the recording to be unlawful, at least in CA and I would guess in most jurisdictions, though, the speaker must have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the communication. I agree that Bill Clinton had no such expectation in the rope-line where he trashed Prudum.

Intelligence was not “wrong” about the Atta/Iraqi meeting in Prague…there was much evidence that it did not occur, but Bush/Cheney cherry-picked, and chose to promote the war on that sliver of rumor that it did, while burying the preponderant evidence that it didn’t.

The same is true about the yellowcake uranium from AFRICA, as Bush reported in the 2003 state of the union speech. A dollop of rumor that Saddam was looking for uranium in Niger, which was never confirmed and thus was not intelligence at all, was cited without any indication that the report could not be confirmed.

Ditto for aluminum tubes designed for centrifuges, mobile poison labs, etc, etc.

I believe that it is a bit strong to call what the administration did “lying,” but that does not mean Bush and Cheney did not entice the American (and British, and Polish) people into war under false pretenses.

And just because it is not a pure lie, Woody, does not mean it is not a high crime or misdemeanor. Bush and Cheney deserve to be impeached. Like Nancy Pelosi, though, I agree that the better policy is to end the politics of retribution, and to let the people speak through the ballot box.