Decoding The Note: Nose Knows
Monday, November 28th, 2005
A reader writes in to alert us to some truly impressive sycophantic gymnastics in today’s Note. This massive, gaping suckfest jimmies four distinct feints of flattery into one apparently prosaic event listing:
Tomorrow, Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy and the Center for New York City Affairs and its Dean Fred Hochberg play hosts to a star-studded post-election roundtable exploring the 2005 New York City mayoral election with that perfect 20/20 hindsight. ABC’s Mark Halperin moderates the discussion which will occur in two pieces — the primary and the general — and include campaign operatives and strategists from each of the campaigns as well as members from the New York City political press corps who covered the race.
We fell asleep after “roundtable” until the wooshing sound of someone sticking their nose into at least four separate behinds woke us. Those being flattered include: New School prez Bob Kerrey, Fred “Who?” Hochberg, Hochberg’s circle of fundraisers, and, er, “ABC’s Mark Halperin.” And we thought the press just gazed into their own navels. MORE »
A reader writes in to alert us to some truly impressive sycophantic gymnastics in today’s Note. This massive, gaping suckfest jimmies four distinct feints of flattery into one apparently prosaic event listing:
Tomorrow, Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy and the Center for New York City Affairs and its Dean Fred Hochberg play hosts to a star-studded post-election roundtable exploring the 2005 New York City mayoral election with that perfect 20/20 hindsight. ABC’s Mark Halperin moderates the discussion which will occur in two pieces — the primary and the general — and include campaign operatives and strategists from each of the campaigns as well as members from the New York City political press corps who covered the race.
We fell asleep after “roundtable” until the wooshing sound of someone sticking their nose into at least four separate behinds woke us. Those being flattered include: New School prez Bob Kerrey, Fred “Who?” Hochberg, Hochberg’s circle of fundraisers, and, er, “ABC’s Mark Halperin.” And we thought the press just gazed into their own navels. MORE »
In her article on the issues raised by Howie Kurtz’s CNN gig allowing him to comment on his other gig at the Washington Post, where he also comments on CNN, Kit Seelye interviews Kurtz critics Mickey Kaus and Jack Shafer. Shafer reaches for a metaphor: “This is the duck-billed platypus of journalism, an egg-laying mammal with fur - it’s just something very bizarre.” An egg-laying mammal with fur and perhaps a meth problem, as these critics of Kurtz writing about his employer both work at Slate, which is owned by the Washington Post. As a Corner reader has pointed out, this is something Seelye doesn’t mention. 
In this White House pool report: too much information.
In this White House pool report, the President conquers his demons, and gets another scooter out of the White House:
PRWeek recently surveyed some reporters and public affairs specialists in an attempt to help White House spokesman Scott McClellan out of his credibility hole. One excellent piece of advice: “[When reporters] come up to him after a press briefing, pat him on the back, and say, ‘Hey Scott,’ they do that because they still need him. He should not mistake that for respect.” 
Usually, the White House just puts words into Scott McClellan’s mouth. Last week, the press office tried to wrench them into the transcripts of White House briefings provided by CQ and the Federal News Service. At issue: McClellan’s uncharacteristically candid affirmation of a statement by NBC’s David Gregory, set forth by CQ and FNS as: 
Covering the White House sounds like an important and exciting career, but in many ways, it’s like any other job: There’s a lot of busy work, your bosses make unreasonable demands, and when things get slow, you gossip about who in the office you’d have sex with. Thus we were not surprised to hear that a recent journalist confab, talk turned to WHSILF (”White House Staffers I’d Like to Fuck”). The verdict: Pickings are slim, and surely there are some kinks. Bush, opined one, would be fine, but “he would probably slap your butt with a towel like you were in the locker room.” And Scott McLellan? “He would just cry afterwards.”
From high above the Southern Hemisphere, an operative on Air Force One espied the Time scribe’s fledgling literary effort: