It’s easy to make fun of Politico, but Jim Newell does it particularly well:
It’s not fun, having to apply a therapeutic reading to some of the Washington press corps’s most inscrutable minds. We really don’t want to know—and don’t have the requisite time to learn—about the fears haunting Politico senior writer Mike Allen, a man in his 40s who refuses to show or tell any of his friends where he lives. But it is the only reading that lends any sort of sense to this three-page dumping of tribal insecurities and resentment that Allen and Politico editor Jim VandeHei blasted out to the world in this latest, most cringeworthy episode of “Behind the Curtain.”
The column is an early and ham-fisted attempt to preemptively smear an upcoming book from well-regarded New York Times Magazine features writer Mark Leibovich. This Town: The Way it Works in Suck Up City, set for release in mid-July, has been in the works for a couple of years, and promises to tell all about the “incestuous ecology” of D.C.’s social scene of media and political elites—coming from an author who’s put in his time as a member of said scene, and may finally be experiencing the sort of spiritual awakening that now allows him to share freely.
Part of what made the old New Yorker a great magazine was the fact that editor Harold Ross “believed the only two people everyone in the English-speaking world was familiar with were Harry Houdini and Sherlock Holmes” and would write “Who he?” in the margins next to any other unexplained name. Politico is quite different:
The targets are the worst-kept secrets in this town, an overused expression of D.C. insiders: Robert Barnett; Tammy Haddad; the people transacting or showboating at Tim Russert’s funeral; the warring factions in Obama’s campaign and White House; former Obama aides who try to cash in; and Kurt Bardella, the House aide who was fired when POLITICO reported that he had been forwarding reporters’ emails to Leibovich. Oh, and POLITICO broadly and Mike Allen specifically.
How many Politico readers can have heard of Tammy Haddad and Robert Barnett?
Boots Day
Dave Weigel, who normally doesn’t transact in cross-press bashing, also had a nice takedown of this.
I have no idea who Tammy Haddad is. I think I might know who Robert Barnett is, though.
PsiFighter37
Sounds like they are worried this book tells those outside The Village that The Villagers have no clothes. God forbid someone reveals that political reporting in D.C. is the same as entertainment reporting in Hollywood, but with closer proximity to real power.
jl
I recommend following the link to Newell’s piece. Some of it was written with some kind of hilarious universal solvent super acid that destroys everything, but is strangely bland and innocent at the same time.
feebog
He won’t tell his friends where he lives? That’s some Alex Jones level paranoia there.
Keith G
Is there anyway that The Politico’s “TMZ style” of political reporting will reach a sell by date? I know they get some things right, but jeebus it seems they pay a very small price for the crap they spread around.
JPL
OT Can anyone access Reinhart and Rogoff’s comment from the oped piece they did today? They seemed to have disappeared. Did they whine to the editor because their feelings were hurt?
Boots Day
Newell’s piece has the following identifying information from the original Politico story:
So she’s the Andrew W.K. of D.C.
Quicksand
This is the political reporting equivalent of an old-school Dennis Miller monologue.
If you know what they’re talking about, great, you can feel smugly satisfied about your own insideriness. And if you don’t, also great, you can feel like you’re listening in on really profound and revealing super-seekrit DC workings.
? Martin
Nice when Josh acknowledges life in the village:
SiubhanDuinne
It must be the day for above-average takedowns of Teh Stoopid. I know not everyone here admires Charlie Pierce, but he does a great job of eviscerating Nooners today.
In fairness, he manages to eviscerate her primarily by quoting her latest gin-sodden scribblings at length and verbatim.
Mike in NC
I’m just happy that Bob Novak has gone to meet his maker.
Kay
@JPL:
I’m trying to blame them, but they’re just hired hands.
World Leaders based a whole approach to recovery from a crisis on ONE paper?
That’s the scandal.
I put more thought into buying a new refrigerator.
Eric U.
@Quicksand: I may have been the only person that was impressed that Dennis Miller could keep that schtick up for an entire Monday night football broadcast. I think he may have killed the franchise though.
MikeJ
@Kay: Nobody based their approach to recovery on that paper. They knew what they wanted to do before it was ever published. The “study” was cover.
Kay
@MikeJ:
Right, I agree, but do they have another?
Because they’re never going to admit they started with the policy. Never. Ever.
What else did they have?
JustMe
Explanation of Tammy Haddad:
Honestly, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of people like this in DC. It’s practically a DC cottage industry.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Can’t we just kill them all and let God sort ’em out?
Just Some Fuckhead
Years ago I ran across an Allen/VandeHei profile of some political figure and the authors mentioned that he was “born-again”, not “a born-again Christian” or otherwise followed up by some explanation of how a person can possibly be born twice, just simply “born-again”.
Since I grew up in that culture, I knew immediately Allen and VandeHei were evangelical Christians and by extension, Christian-right Republicans.
JPL
@Kay: Kay, When I just went to the NYTimes, the comments seemed to have disappeared down the memory hole. All oped pieces allows comments and their piece had some great ones.
I do agree that the damage they did should be discussed. Unemployment in Spain is high but if you are young, forget about getting a job.
gelfling545
@Kay: Well, they also added a strong dose of steel-plated ideology.
Baud
@Kay:
I put more thought into my comments on this blog.
Baud
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Jesus, what did God ever do to us to deserve that punishment?
JPL
@JPL: Never mind.. It appears they have two oped pieces and only one doesn’t allow comments..
MattF
All the varied, obscure, insider references are pre-emptive deflections of the question You May Not Ask: ‘Why should I pay any attention to you?”‘ I may read that book, though.
scav
@JPL: NYT wants the Twit followers, not so much the commenters. Comments get uppity, and sometimes go so far as to insist a vague adherence to fact is still actually a part of the journalists’ remit.
Alex S.
@? Martin:
I think the chances of US engagement in Syria are real and they’re rising. Obama might even honestly support it.
EconWatcher
@JPL:
Reinhart and Rogoff may have just shilled for a policy that would have happened anyway. But it would serve a useful warning if they actually faced the career-ending consquences that they appear to deserve.
Harvard should do an investigation and see if they have reasonable explanations for what appear to be fraudulent cherrypicking of the data. If they don’t, they should be out.
And if the university won’t act, I certainly hope they don’t intend ever again to discipline their students for any academic dishonesty. That would obviously be hypocritical and unfair.
If Harvard is a place where you cheat with no consequences, so be it. But let’s be open about it.
Anne Laurie
@MattF:
Heck, if Jim Newell likes it, we may all read that book.
I’d suggest DougJ lead a Book Chat here, but I don’t know if his blood pressure could stand the strain!
Just Some Fuckhead
@Alex S.:
We’ll know it’s imminent when the Martins and Morzers and Joes From Lowell start making the case for it.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
Not at all. World leaders decided on an approach to recovery based on their own interests and prejudices, then found a paper that supported their decision. The real crime is that they’re basing their policy on no research whatsoever.
CaseyL
That Newell piece is simply delicious. Normally, the infinitely self-reflecting, infinitely-regressive world of DC “journamalism” is the last subject I’d be entertained reading about, but Leibovich’s book sounds worth making an exception for.
And just think: if it hadn’t been for TBotP’s (h/t C. Pierce) hissy fit, I’d never even be aware that the book existed, much less that it’s a must-read!
scav
@EconWatcher: Any chance / mechanism for reprimand by large economic associations? It’s not as though they’re doing the discipline any good, either in the eyes of the public or other branches of science / academe in general. Self-preservation would suggest action by many second-order actors.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@? Martin:
Oh, shit. A quick trip to Google news reveals that Israel (Surprise!) is urging the U.S. to take action over Syria’s use of chemical weapons.
EconWatcher
@scav:
Well, there’s no licensing or anything like that, but R and R are sufficiently prominent that I’m sure they’re on the editorial boards of published journals and whatnot. Those folks can decide what their standards of retention are.
But as in most professions, they probably look at for their own. As I commented earlier, even K-thug seems to have been a little gentle and reticent with them, perhaps because their part of the same brotherhood and sisterhood.
He’s aggressively attacked their findings, but studiously avoided any comment on the apparent fraud in the choice of data. I think the worst he’s said is their weighting and choices were “unusual.”
If he won’t go there, no one else will.
MikeJ
@JPL:
A comment from them or just the comments in general?
I didn’t see one from them, but I did see JGabriel in the NYT picks.
Schlemizel
@Kay:
i blame them because they pushed the idea. They pushed the idea even though the paper was not peer reviewed and that they would not share the data. This is not how professional scientists behave.
@MikeJ:
These guys testified & did interviews pushing the idea that austerity was the ONLY solution. They did more than lay a turd, they promoted it as truth. That pols used them as cover was an obvious outcome of their own behavior
scav
@EconWatcher: Damn. Another bit of my carefully protected idealism will have to be taken out back and stomped on. I’ve got it down to a science.
patroclus
@EconWatcher: I’ll go there. I don’t (nor have I ever) do anything in economics, but I do have two degrees in the subject and what Starsky and Hutch did is unconscionable. They had no peer review, they omitted/ignored relevant date from relevant countries, they made blatant easily-catchable errors, they cherry-picked data, they reveled in their celebrity, they privately met with lawmakers and urged “radical change” quickly based on their error-filled study and they held themselves out as experts in a field in which they are clearly not qualified. Tony Orlando and Dawn’s integrity and credibility is in the toilet and they should be trashed from coast to coast and all around the world as the unprincipled hacks that they are.
MattF
@JPL: RR have two items in the NYT under today’s date. This one is ‘Responding to our critics’:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/opinion/reinhart-and-rogoff-responding-to-our-critics.html
Schlemizel
@Baud:
I actually have a very long list of things for me personally that He would have to answer for should we ever meet
Anoniminous
@Schlemizel:
Economists aren’t scientists. Economics is a Cargo Cult Science.
Phil Perspective
@feebog: Well, Allen’s dad was/is a big time John Birch Society guy. Like Vice President of the whole kit and kaboodle kind of guy.
Redshift
@Roger Moore:
R&R just provided the convenient talking point that above a certain level of debt lurked automatic disaster. The broader “research” about the wonders of austerity was provided by the “freshwater” school of economists, who have spent the past several years insisting that if reality refused to match their models’ predictions, there must be something wrong with reality, and it would surely start behaving any minute now.
However, since many wingnut officials have used the R&R paper as a simplistic support for those preconceived ideas, I am more than happy to make them share in the mockery over its downfall, even if it wasn’t the sole basis of their evil idiocy.
Anoniminous
@MattF:
The R&R response: LOOK! A Shiny Object!
Phil Perspective
@EconWatcher: What do you expect Krgthulu to say? He’s probably going to see those two again at conferences in the future. Besides, he’s not the type to ask if R & R invites Mickey Kaus over for goat-fcking parties.
mdblanche
@Baud: He created man.
geg6
Well, guess I’m getting a new book soon.
And OT, but whoever suggested reading Columbine, I owe a big thanks to. Great book and, in line with the post topic, another excellent criticism of our emessem.
JPL
@EconWatcher: This
@MikeJ: I corrected my comment at 23 … It appears they have two oped pieces and one doesn’t allow comments. I say JGabriel also which was cool.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
Interesting that this whole thing comes after Dylan Byers’ hit piece on the Times’ Jill Abramson, which generated a lot of accusations of sexism in media criticism circles.
Morzer
Tammy Had-Dad?
Is that MoDo’s nom de plume as a romance novelist?
mdblanche
@SiubhanDuinne: The commenters are doing a great job of impersonating Noonan:
jl
@EconWatcher:
‘ … even K-thug seems to have been a little gentle and reticent with {R and R] perhaps because their part of the same brotherhood and sisterhood.
He’s aggressively attacked their findings, but studiously avoided any comment on the apparent fraud in the choice of data. I think the worst he’s said is their weighting and choices were “unusual.” ‘
An explanation is that Rogoff is not a corrupt hack, or at least has not been in the past. I’ve never been a Rogoff fan on how he does applied policy research, so I do not like saying that. But Rogoff was part of a team that did important research in international macroceconomics that Krugman has used as a foundation for his own research. See, for example, Foundations of International Macroeconomics by Maurice Obstfeld and Kenneth S. Rogoff.
So, as far as I know, this is first time Rogoff got involved in problematic research that had big policy implications. I hoped he and the other R would have handled it better than Feldstein did with his non reproducible findings on Social Security and productivity, but so far, they have not, or maybe done worse.
GregB
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
That is also a backdoor way to involve Iran. They(Iran and Syria) have a mutual security pact.
Sadly, I think we could be on the threshold of a regional conflagration that will initiate a pretty heinous cycle of sectarian conflict.
Ugly, ugly, ugly stuff is waiting in the wings.
NCSteve
@EconWatcher: I’m pretty sure K-Thug did, in fact, call them out on their rather, ahem, discerning approach to selecting data to run their model. I’d love to be able to find it and link you to it, but it’s a Smith & Wesson, and I’ve had my six the New York Times, and I’ve had my ten.
jl
@jl: It’s interesting that Reinhart and Rogoff’s book ‘this time it’s different’ was much more careful and useful research that did not have such black and white policy implications. Interesting that the paper, which was just a conference paper, got such big attention, but their better and more thoroughly vetted book did not.
And interesting that R and R went along for the ride. I did not expect that from Rogoff. If I see anybody starts making big bets on some non peer reviewed work I’ve ever done, and I find out about it, my first impulse is to go back and do a check. And also say loudly “Uh, dude, that stuff is preliminary and ain’t been double (or triple) checked real careful yet… you know that, right?”
Edit:; and cripes, if you’ve done the data processing and calcs on **** Excel, first thing you do is run check it! What the heck were they thinking? (or actually have somene else check it. Excel is treacherous unless you are an excel spreadsheet design maven)
Alex S.
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Heh, well that list omits my name. I was for the Libya action as well. And I still think that it was a relatively ‘clean’ operation, it was successful and limited. But Libya was a ‘clean’ country: a small populated coastline, a regime supported by the loyalty of mercenaries, religious homogeneity… Syria is more complicated. This could get very, very ugly.
JGabriel
DougJ @ Top:
Apparently Tammy Haddad doesn’t even rate her own Wikipedia page.
mathguy
On related topic, this writes its own jokes:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/04/today-conservatism
Malkin receiving a Breibart. Damn.
MikeJ
@mathguy: A Breitbart? What’s that?
A: Twenty dollars, same as in town.
Chris
@JPL:
I really think the EU is going to crash and fucking burn. It was always a possibility, but now I’m starting to see it as the most likely one.
I mean, the situation’s horrific. Most of these countries have our economy dialed up to 11 by the austerity measures, while at the same time, they have populations that are much less susceptible to one-percenter bullshit than ours. If the EU powers-that-be acknowledged that and acted accordingly, they’d have a chance, but I don’t see the Germans going along with anything other than more pain – the reaction seems to be “filthy Mediterraneans, suffer more!” rather than “let’s keep the ship afloat.” I also don’t see any meaningful changes being made in the system without the Germans on board; I don’t see the population of the PIIGS bending over and taking it indefinitely, especially as austerity measures continue to fail to deliver any improvement in employment or wages; so, in sum, I don’t see how this can end with anything other than the EU breaking.
JPL
@EconWatcher: With credit, I copied your comment on Krugman.. Not sure if it will be posted but needs to be.
Dolly Lllama
Missed the “Blogospheric Navel Gazing” tag on this one, Doug. For people who don’t read but a handful of blogs, this stuff is about as “inside baseball” as anything I’ve read here lately. Not saying you ought to stop posting it, mind you. Obviously, there’s a demand for it (or at least an interest in it.) I ought to just stop reading it.
WereBear
@geg6: Might have been me. Great book.
Kay
@Schlemizel:
I don’t know what it’s going to take. I don’t know what the cure is for what I consider extreme cluelessness.
What happened to “first do no harm”?
There’s this idea that we’re suffering from a lack of “bold ideas” but we’re not.
We’re suffering from reckless people.
For a long time, at the outset of austerity, I thought, “oh, they’ll get off this because they have short attention spans” but then it gathered so many powerful adherents it became impossible to back off it! Now ALL of them were ALL in.
It’s tiring, because I feel as if I see the same thing, again and again. Stop helping us! We’re fine out here!
bemused
@Kay:
I read today that Rogoff is a member of the Advisory Board at (Pete) Peterson Institute and Reinhert is a regular at Peterson Institute functions.
jl
@bemused: Uh, oh. How long has that been? Some economists change quite a big when they get on the policy celebrity train. (Mankiw, for example). Others don’t change much at all (Krugman, for example).
bemused
@bemused:
I don’t know. A relative forwarded a blog post by Thom Hartmann and I haven’t had time to look into it further.
bemused
@jl:
According to PRWatch, Peterson Institute bankrolled and published Reinhart/Rogoff “Decade of Debt”.
NotMax
Shorter version of Politco:
Mark Leibovich is the Truman Capote of D.C.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Alex S.:
There’s a whole ‘nother bucket of folks that go along with our wars cuz Obama is for ’em and they’re star fuckers. I honestly can’t remember who you are or where you fit into the grand conspiracy of permawar.
nellcote
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Kay
@bemused:
I have a new view of these “philanthropists”
It’s this: ” fuck off and leave us alone” :)
It’s bad enough we have a “gilded age” but we ALSO get lectured by billionaires, who only want to “help”
Baud
@Kay:
They promised to go Galt.
They lied.
Chris
@Baud:
That really does sadden me. I so wish the fuckers just picked up and left already.
Kay
@Baud:
Can’t they focus on the arts? I don’t remember asking any of these people for help.
“Please Mr. Peterson, sir, stop helping me!”
bemused
@Kay:
They don’t have a worry in the world and can have almost any material thing they desire but it’s never enough. I think it’s a hoarding disorder. They are obsessed to get their hands on any money out there they don’t already have and stockpile it. They are no different than cat hoarders or people who can’t bear to get rid of anything, imo. Same kind of obsessive emotional attachment.
bemused
@Kay:
They are trying to help themselves…to our money…to feed their OCD.
Kay
@bemused:
I think the “philanthropy” idea needs to be re-examined.
This is some weird, aggressive form that isn’t at all charitable. Not that I asked for charity. I didn’t.
bemused
@Kay:
The Peterson’s of the world flip philanthropy upside down…money flowing to the needy…them. They really, really need all the money.
Omnes Omnibus
@Alex S.: I can’t see how getting involved in Syria can end well.
EZSmirkzz
OK I give. What is Politico, and does it rhyme with asshole?
jl
@bemused:
I think it is dicey to get involved with funding from a source that has an obvious and fixed position on policy. For government funding, and even a lot of think tanks that are even semi legit think tanks you can say pretty much what you think, and in private often do it rather rudely (actually I have seen instances of saying things in private the funder does not agree with very rudely!) but as long as you do research publishable in respectable places, you are OK. Even the AEI used to be this way, at least in economics, though I don’t know about how it is now.
I wonder whether the Koch brothers are still funding that physicist who changed his tune on man made climate change?
liberal
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Heh.
liberal
@scav:
Wha?
If someone hasn’t already been convinced that economics as a whole is completely corrupted (and has been for a long, long time), this tiny data point isn’t going to do the job.
liberal
@Chris:
Me neither.
scav
@liberal: Some still seem to. Don’t look at me — I’m still desparately nurturing the belief that there are a remnent breeding population of Economist- Astronomers to the teeming ravening hordes of Astrologer-Economists. This shit just mooves me closer to moving the former from the endangered to the extinct list
catclub
@? Martin: I have a very strong suspicion that once the Generals have heard that Syria has used Sarin, their timetable on invasion is well after the first of never.
They were worried that Saddam would use chemicals in 2003.
catclub
@Chris: “I don’t see the population of the PIIGS bending over and taking it indefinitely,”
Just remember, after four years of the great depression, unemployment in Germany was 47% . Then things got real.
We are in year five, but unemployment in Spain/Greece is only 27%, so give it one more year.
lojasmo
@Quicksand:
What if I knew what he was talking about, but didn’t care because he was a no-talent clown?
Plantsmantx
@JGabriel:
I don’t know what Tammy Haddad is known for now, but I remember that name from Larry King’s radio show thirty-odd years ago. She was his producer.
palolololo
Anything that starts with a FBB reference automatically wins. Period The article was awesome,also.