Bob Woodward Hereby Sentenced To Remedial Journalism School For Treason To The Fourth Estate

When you are saying what we are saying, right up there in the headline what you just read, and which is that journamalism hero and staple of J-school classes but everywhere Bob Woodward is a worse hack than Ghost Andrew Breitbart's Little Goebbels sextivist James O'Keefe and Ghost Andrew Breitbart's very own Friend of Hamas Ben Shapiro and Ghost Andrew Breitbart's stinking rotting corpse, while we are at it, you are really saying something! And when Brit Hume, Erick Erickson, and the motherfucking Daily Caller are calling you out for lying on the White House, you have committed treason-crimes against the motherfucking Fourth Estate! GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY! MOAR GUILTY! Somebody hand us our powdered wig and gavel, there is sentencing to do!

So wha happen?

Well, Bob Woodward went on tellyvision to say the White House threatened him. He is very "uncomfortable" that the White House would try to chill reporters' speech with ominous horse heads and concrete shoes and sleeping with the fishes and whatever else Andrew Cuomo is doing today. (RACISMS!)

Here, let us watch!

Oooh, boy, those tyrannical despots and White House mafiosi have really stepped in it this time! Oh, what's that, Politico ? You have the email? Why thank you, yes, we will have some of that.

Bob:

I apologize for raising my voice in our conversation today. My bad. I do understand your problems with a couple of our statements in the fall — but feel on the other hand that you focus on a few specific trees that gives a very wrong perception of the forest. But perhaps we will just not see eye to eye here.

But I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying saying that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim. The idea that the sequester was to force both sides to go back to try at a big or grand barain with a mix of entitlements and revenues (even if there were serious disagreements on composition) was part of the DNA of the thing from the start. It was an accepted part of the understanding — from the start. Really. It was assumed by the Rs on the Supercommittee that came right after: it was assumed in the November-December 2012 negotiations. There may have been big disagreements over rates and ratios — but that it was supposed to be replaced by entitlements and revenues of some form is not controversial. (Indeed, the discretionary savings amount from the Boehner-Obama negotiations were locked in in BCA: the sequester was just designed to force all back to table on entitlements and revenues.)

I agree there are more than one side to our first disagreement, but again think this latter issue is diffferent. Not out to argue and argue on this latter point. Just my sincere advice. Your call obviously.

My apologies again for raising my voice on the call with you. Feel bad about that and truly apologize.

Gene

And Bob's cordial reply was all, nah mang, we cool? Awesome.

And now THE DAILY CALLER is not only calling Woodward out for being a liar liar pants on fire, but they also sort of apologized (well, not really, but THEY DID SAY THEY WERE MISTAKEN!!!!!!) for passing on his canard!

[T]oday, things look different. P0litico has posted the exclusive email from Gene Sperling to Woodward. It begins, “I apologize for raising my voice in our conversation today.”

(Frightening, I know!)

Sperling’s email eventually does say, “I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim.” But this is clearly not a veiled threat of retaliation, but rather a warning that the reporter was about to get the story wrong.

When Woodward tells of being warned he would “regret” challenging Obama, it sounds ominous. But if Politico’s reporting today is correct, it seems much more innocuous than that.

Looks like we were played.

Sorry, did we say the world was ending yesterday? We meant today.

Wonkette regrets the error.

[ TPM / TPM / Politico ]