Talking Points and the Major Media
All posts in this series may be found here.
This story has everyone up in arms at the ethics (or lack thereof) displayed by The Washington Post in attempting to sell (for $25,000.00 a pop!) private dinners with the publisher of The Washington Post, Katharine Weymouth, and her top-flight, inside the beltway, powerful-doesn't-begin-to-describe-it journalists. See, for instance, this bludgeoning of the Post by Roger Kimball of PajamasMedia.com.
I dunno. Katharine Weymouth is pretty big stuff, and her average dinner parties are undoubtedly quite exclusive things, but $25,000.00 for the privilege? As for the A-lister journalists in attendance, my outside-the-beltway feeling is that such journalists would tend to dumb down the event, social status wise.
What is not emphasized in all the outrage I've been reading is the fact that the Post promised contact with high-level Administration officials. How high-level? Well, as high as $25,000.00 worth of level, at least. Is Joe Biden worth that to your average lobbyist? Probably not. Rahm Emmanuel? Undoubtedly, if not more.
How does a private company like the Post get the ability to sell, for cash, intimate dinners with the likes of Rahm Emmanuel? And would any of that $25,000.00 have flowed back to the Administration? If not in actual cash, then in favorable headlines? I think these questions answer themselves.
This is Washington back-scratching at its most outrageous. Or to put it another way (as I have in this series of posts), what we have here is evidence of one more "major tributary of Washington politics," this time involving the Administration and The Washington Post.
Or to put it still another way, without metaphor, this is further evidence of the rank corruption of both the Major Media and the Obama Administration.
Posts
Rahm says he wasn't included. And it's Weymouth, not Weymuth.
Ah, the perils of blogging without an editor. Correction to Ms. Weymouth's name made. Thanks.
As for Mr. Emmanuel, I mentioned him as a counter-example to the Vice President, to indicate the range of officials that might be available for these dinners-for-pay. The main point, as I said, was how on earth would a private organization like The Washington Post have the ability to offer, for money, contact with high Administration officials like Rahm Emmanuel. It was not important to the point whether or not Rahm Emmanuel himself would actually attend these dinners.
I cannot believe the Post would advertise such dinners if there was not some positive contact with the White House authorizing such things. If Rahm Emmanuel was not involved, okay. Someone else, quite high up in the White House, must have been involved, and my point remains.
But then again, now that the whole scheme is public, Ms. Weymouth apparently was not involved either. Since the dinners were to be held at her house, I find this quite a stretch.
By the way, in the course of correcting the spelling of Ms. Weymouth's last name, I discovered her first name is spelt "Katharine" and not "Katherine." Corrections made.
Take it easy, Easy. This is blogging, not the Masorete transcription of texts which had only just recently (4 centuries) been popularized as the Old Testament. A missed jot or a smudged tittle here and there could usually wait for correction until after the Independence Day holidays. If it needs correction at all.
I am more impressed that you got the name right of the man most just call "Rambo." Undoubtedly because Rham Imanuel is too hard to remember. What were his parents thinking?
Whitman
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