Calame's Calumny

Let's start with Jack Shafer's description of New York Times Public Editor Byron Calame:

"Calame possesses a mandate that would allow him to boil the journalistic ocean if he so desired, but he usually elects to merely warm a teapot for his readers and pour out thimblefuls of weak chamomile.... Perhaps Calame spends so much time swinging his club in the weeds because he can't hit the ball when it's on the fairway."

Now, with that in mind, read this ...if you have the stomach for it: Hillary and Bill: A Relationship Too Political to Be Ignored.

Calame tries to defend Patrick Healy's sorry excuse for political reporting that ran in last week's Times. Healy's awkward attempt at tabloid journalism has already been sliced and diced. I'll add one more point I made on MSNBC last Wednesday, a point that Calame conveniently ignores: where on earth are the juicy stories about John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, let alone George and Laura? Oh, sorry, the Times is too busy digging up pro-Bush quotes in Provo, Utah. My bad.

One thing is clear in this ongoing struggle between progressive bloggers and the establishment media: GOP-propping and Dem-trashing is an addiction that won't be relinquished without a fight. It's not a stretch to think that Deborah Howell, Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, The Note, David Broder, and other stalwarts of the DC media elite share Joe Klein's disdain for the online community. We are the hated enemy and, truth be damned, they won't let a bunch of creatures from the fever swamp dictate who and what they should write about.

Fine. If it's a fight they want, it's a fight they're surely getting. But as netroots power grows and reality continues to undermine the Bush-loving fantasies of these so-called 'journalists', it isn't hard to guess who will come out on top.

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P.S. If your appetite for New York Times sycophancy is still unsatiated, read Elisabeth "I'm in awe of W" Bumiller's vacuous 'inside' view of the White House beat. Maybe this explains her penchant for administration stenography:

"Laura Bush once excoriated me during an interview for something I had written in the last paragraph of a story that you needed a St. Bernard to find in the paper. Scott McClellan, the former press secretary, was after me every day for a week to get my editors to correct a factual error. The mild-mannered Mr. McClellan was acting like a terrier because one of his superiors was on his case. More recently, Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser, got so mad about an article that he told me he was putting my e-mail address in his spam filter."

P.P.S. To put this all in context, read Jamison Foser's razor-sharp analysis of the media's relentless Dem-bashing. Excerpt:

"The recent media treatment of Rep. John P. Murtha (D-PA), Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) illustrate this point: No matter who emerges as a progressive leader, or a high-profile Democrat, they're in for the same flood of conservative misinformation in the media. Too many people chalk up outrageous media treatment of, say, Al Gore or John Kerry to the men's own flaws, pretending that if they were better candidates, they'd have gotten better press coverage. That's naïve. The Democratic Party could nominate Superman to be their next presidential candidate, and two things would happen: conservatives would smear him, and the media would join in. To illustrate this, we look back over the last dozen or so years."

UPDATE: Via Atrios, I see that Greg Sargent has posted his take on Calame:

"It's awfully tiresome that this needs to be pointed out yet again, but note the same old refusal of the media to acknowledge its own role in shaping voter perceptions of our political figures. Calame says the relationship will be "on many voters minds," but if anything, the roar of criticism of the article shows quite clearly that voters don't want it to be on their minds. It will be forced onto their minds by the big news orgs, who have been feasting on the Clintons' marriage for well over a decade with all the restraint of belching guests at a Roman feast while rarely doing more than nibbling daintly at the edges of Republican unions."