This is the first truly troubling Hillary email I’ve seen (“Evergreen” is Hillary).
How the op-ed column sausage is made pic.twitter.com/mSvYWqGZDu
— Matt Ford (@fordm) September 1, 2015
Democrats need to stop giving a fuck what David Brooks writes about them. I wasn’t surprised that Rahm was dumb enough to care about this, but I’m disappointed that Hillary is.
Capt Seaweed
It’s the Apocalypse all right…
Hunter Gathers
Such is the price for securing the Totebagger vote.
gogol's wife
Could Obama please have a third term? Please?
Belafon
For those of us who can’t use twitter at work, what does it say?
schrodinger's cat
@Belafon: Importance of meeting Friedman.
Belafon
@gogol’s wife: If I remember correctly, Obama has a tendency to invite people like Brooks to dinners. And the point of this is that reading people like Brooks doesn’t automatically make you a bad politician.
MattF
Dems need to understand that Brooks is the classic ‘fellow traveller.’ There is never any chance of changing his actual opinions. His goal is, always, to sell those opinions to relatively-unsuspecting readers. For a non-deluded view of what Brooks is up to on foreign policy, here’s Larison on Brooks on the Iran deal.
Warren Terra
1) It’s perfectly rational to worry about and to massage Friedman and Brooks. They’re self-important morons, but they’re self-important morons who write on the most important opinion page in the country twice a week, Brooks gets fellated by NPR and PBS weekly or so, and what they emit in place of ideas are uncritically lapped up by tens or hundreds of thousands of college-educated middle-class people in this country, people who vote and who contribute to campaigns. Having tea and biscuits with them is undoubtedly depressing, but useful.
2) Can someone explain to me why every fncking person in the country is now permitted to read inconsequential emails to and from the Secretary Of State within five years of their being created? I think its important everything gets archived, I think it’s conceivable accredited security personal and investigators might have a legitimate reason to go through them (and a professional reason not to blab about it), and eventually the archived emails should be generally available – say, something like Britain’s 30 Years Rule. But the notion that regardless of importance or relevance all the personal emails of the Sec State should be perused by all and sundry looking for funny stories and prurient details within less than a decade, with that Ex Sec State running for President – that’s just nuts.
Germy Shoemangler
“He took a shot at me in his column today. Any ideas what prompted it?”
… The (D) after your name?
Amir Khalid
I hope Hillary and her people used the opportunity to troll the heck out of David Bobo. Because that’s the only worthwhile result of any time you spend with that hopelessly confused man.
Germy Shoemangler
@Warren Terra:
Someone said they want to impeach her before she’s elected.
They just want to save time.
Amir Khalid
If I ever get to meet Tom Friedman, I shall bring my copy of The World Is Flat and demand my money back.
Peale
@Warren Terra: I think DougJ may be jealous that in 2010, he wasn’t considered a reachable influencer. 2010, pre-tea election wipe out seems like another time now.
mdblanche
@Amir Khalid: Caveat emptor.
Paul in KY
@MattF: They need to understand that Brooks is a shill for Republicans. You aren’t going to get him to say positive things about Democratic policies/personalities when his whole job is to make anti-Democratic columns that can hopefully sway sqishy Democrats into abandoning the party.
Paul in KY
@Warren Terra: IMO, they are wasting valuable time sucking up to these Republican propagandists.
Paul in KY
@Germy Shoemangler: See, you get it!
Cervantes
@Warren Terra:
Succinct, albeit optimistic.
EZSmirkzz
We’ve spent the last twelve years saying we should quit letting the POGs frame the conversation, and I’ve spent the last twelve years reading blogs that tell me what the POGs are saying, thus framing the conversation.
Up theirs.
JGabriel
Zandar @ Top:
Agreed. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:
Bobby Thomson
@gogol’s wife: Obama claims to read them, too. Just sayin’.
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: You actually brought the book? Why?
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
Maybe contrive to be his waiter somewhere — afternoon tea at the Shangri-La? — and serve him neo-liberal-style tripe about Malaysia, the more ludicrously incorrect the better.
You could offer him their waist-high outdoor maze as a metaphor for his next book — but if you lead him into the maze, maybe consider letting him get lost there instead.
Warren Terra
@JGabriel: you’re not wrong, but (1) Brooks being a dickhead doesn’t mean it’s not important to keep him on side when possible, and (2) your spamming of the comment box is fairly dickish in its own right.
MattF
@Cervantes: Unfortunately, ‘ludicrously incorrect’ is Friedman’s default, encouragement and additional information don’t add to that. Also, I’d guess Amir has better uses for his time.
Paul in KY
@JGabriel: I like the cut of your jib.
boatboy_srq
Correction: Hillary was concerned. Five years ago. Emails from 2010 aren’t necessarily relevant to her perspective today. If the email were dated more recently it might be a concern: as it is even BHO was trying to persuade Brooks, Will et al to see reason that year. This is a nothingburger.
Paul in KY
@Bobby Thomson: He should just get them summarized. Can’t be a valuable use of his time. Maybe he just gets a laugh out of them? Pretty sure the President is a quick reader.
Paul in KY
@Warren Terra: He’s NOT ON OUR SIDE!!!!! (sorry for the caps, but it is an important point).
boatboy_srq
@Warren Terra:
Because the GOTea is convinced beyond persuasion that each and every Dem, and HRC in particular, is some nefarious treasonous career criminal (whereas they are to an individual Icons of Purity and Virtue, just like Mark Sanford, Bob McDonnell, Scott Walker, Rick Scott and Michael Grimm).
MattF
@boatboy_srq: Good point. It’s possible that Hillary knew better but was trying to be a team player.
ThresherK
@Amir Khalid: You’d better make sure you tell him that first thing, becaus authors have a reflexive “autograph it” synapse on seeing copies of their own books, and if Friedman does that, it’ll lose whatever return value it has.
kped
@gogol’s wife: Obama has had multiple dinners in the Whitehouse with both Brooks and Friedman. He has specifically name checked them as some of his favorite columnists. Hillary is playing the same game he did.
Ken
“Boehner is despised by the younger, more conservative members of the House Republican Conference,” Blumenthal wrote to Clinton. “They are repelled by his personal behavior.”
“He is louche, alcoholic, lazy, and without any commitment to any principle,” he added.
Do Republicans really want the airing of gossipy DC government emails?
benw
IIRC, the W administration just went ahead and deleted all their emails and lost the hard drives. Seems simple enough.
Also, for some reason I find OTR funny: it could be either On *or* Off the Record, which mean opposite things! I assume it’s Off: I guess everyone knows by context.
brantl
The thing that bugs me the most is how out-of-touch does Clinton need to be, to be surprised that David Brooks, conservative contrarian pisstard, is taking a shot at her. When was that not as natural as breathing, for Brooks to take a cheap shot at any and all Democrats? Seriously, has she been awake, EVER, in the last 20 years?
Bobby Thomson
@brantl: I read that more as, “Bobo went after me today instead of the president. Is there some broader messaging campaign I don’t know about? Someone asked for a Clinton hit piece. Why today?” Trust me, the Clintons’ default assumption is that the press hates them.
Paul in KY
@Bobby Thomson: I wish she’d made that clear in her internal emails ;-)
catclub
@benw:
Plus they were RNC mailservers. This was reported for less than an hour in 2007(?) by comparison with Hillary’s email server.
They were also lost after being subpeonaed by a congressional committee.
boatboy_srq
@Ken: One wonders whether, in their zeal to catch HRC being the Traitorous Socialsist Minion With Homicidal and Larcenous Tendencies™ they are convinced she is, they missed that a good portion of what they’re demanding be made public will air far more of their dirty laundry than hers.
boatboy_srq
@catclub:
IOKIYAR strikes again. Count on the US’ Liebrul Media™ to make more hay of this now (not!).
Yatsuno
@boatboy_srq: My brother is convinced, ABSOLUTELY convinced, that she’s Teflon and gets away with so many nefarious acts. When I press for specifics, he just tells me to look at her record. Umm…still not seeing it dude.
This is the supposed Libertarian brother who admires Scalia. So grain of salt and all that.
DougJ
@Ken:
“He is louche, alcoholic, lazy, and without any commitment to any principle” is a description of the perfect politician in my book.
boatboy_srq
@Paul in KY: There are only so many times you can repeat the same language to people who’ve already heard it before everyone gets the idea and both they and you have had enough. Adding all the preceding thoughts would make for a “disclaimer” attachment to the email ten times as long as the message itself: the material would quickly become unreadable – which while perhaps useful to smother the Reichwing trolls wouldn’t have done anything for the original recipients beyond raise their blood pressure.
boatboy_srq
@Yatsuno: Answer? “Which record is that – her actual service as Senator and Sec’y of State? Or the graphic-novel fan-fiction the Reichwing has novelty-press published about her?”
Seanly
Ugh, Brooks & Friedman along with Cokie Roberts, Douthat (pronounced Douche-hat, right?) and numerous other rightwing pundits can all DIAF, preferably a raging tire one…
Like many others, I am mystified why any Democratic candidates, office holders or even janitors give a flying flip about what any of those idiots think.
Omnes Omnibus
@brantl: I think she is more aware than you are of the way the press works given the past 25 or so years of her life.
boatboy_srq
@Seanly: “Doubt-that” is in general use. But your pronunciation works, too.
boatboy_srq
@Seanly: Afterthought: There’s a semi-related item at WaMo where similar thoughts were debated. One thing that distinguishes Left from Right in the US is that the Left continues in attempts to study and engage the Right, while the Right has retreated into its own bubble and steadfastly refuses to come out no matter how insane it becomes within that sphere. Reaching out to the more approachable Conservatists is defensible, even when the results aren’t measurable, simply because attempting to appeal to sanity and common-sense is part of the Left’s appeal. It would be more surprising if the Left abandoned the Right the way the Right has abandoned any and all who are not in lockstep with them than if Dems continued to attempt to engage the opposition; that would mean that Dems had given up on half the political spectrum and had sunk to the GOTea’s level of partisanship and spite.
Steve from Antioch
@kped:
Exactly. Anyone with a smidgen of political savvy understands the importance of using access to try and influence pundits opinions.
Anyone who suggest otherwise should just go brush the hair on their purity pony. Because they are too fucking stupid to sit at the adult’s table,
Zinsky
The best thing that came out of this e-mail dump is Sydney Blumenthal calling John “Orange” Boner a “lazy alcoholic”. FINALLY!
I don’t understand why people aren’t more upset about the Speaker of the House being a raging drunk?? It’s obvious to me that Boner is shit-faced, even when he has just come off the floor of the House. I don’t know about you, but I would be fired immediately if I showed up at work drunk! Democrats should make a huge deal of this and demand that Boehner take a breathalyzer test every time he sets foot on the floor of the House of Representatives!!
Sherparick
As George Carlin famously said: “There is a club, a big fucking club.” Hilary and David “Fucking” Brooks are part of it, and we “dirty rotten hippies of the netroots” are not. http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2015/08/sociopaths-of-glory.html
The sad thing for Hilary (and for Obama), is despite all the money and the big shots she has come to know over the last 40 years, as far as the Brooks, Fourniers, and Dowds of the world are concern, she really is not in the “Club.” She certainly should not try running it since she lacks a penis and somehow does not realize that is a prerequisite (along with a white skin) for running the “Club.”) But at least in 2010 she still thought she could get David Brooks on her side or understand here. That is called being in a bubble.
Another Holocene Human
@catclub: Holy crap.
Peale
@Ken: @Zinsky: Actually it looks like he is just telling her what other Republicans are saying about Boehner rather than calling him a louche directly. LOL.
“Well, I didn’t say that. But it’s out there and where there is smoke. Who’s to say? We report”
Another Holocene Human
@Zinsky: I think people are forgiving of that fact … wouldn’t you need some liquid fortification to deal with his caucus every day?
Paul in KY
@boatboy_srq: I was a little tongue-in-cheek there. That’s what the winkie emoticon was trying to convey.
Another Holocene Human
@Peale: Well I, for one, refuse to believe that the GOP’s “special” 2010 freshmen crop used the word “louche”.
Paul in KY
@Zinsky: We probably have a few drunks on our side. Imagine that’s why we don’t do what you suggest.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Bobby Thomson: Trust me, the Clintons’ default assumption is that the press hates them.
And they’re right. I’m lukewarm on them myself, but I’ve been seeing even liberal pundits talk about Clinton paranoia or how the “conservative media” dislikes them. The straight press hates them too.
I was just reading a write up of how Sid Blumenthal kept the flames of ’08 resentment alive, which is about as surprisjng as the sunrise, but after all this carrying-on, this kind of gossip is what we’re getting? There’s even less there here than I suspected.
gogol's wife
Just already weary of H. Clinton, is what I meant. Maybe it’s not her fault. But it’s how I feel.
Turner Hedenkoff
Meanwhile, the Wile E. Coyote of investigative reporting is putting out his “Free birdseed” signs again.
gian
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The whole don’t give senior advisor axelrod my email and then the gossiping…
I suspect that even if she had an official and a private account the GOP and their media hacks would insist on seeing both.
TG Chicago
This seems to be the column HRC is talking about:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/opinion/09brooks.html?_r=0
That’s a pretty mild “shot” at Clinton, seems to me. Especially by the standards the Clintons must be accustomed to.
Fr33d0m
Disturbed that by now she doesn’t know what its about!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@gian: Paul Begala and a few others were twittter fighting with Ron Fournier, asking why he and his ilk aren’t wondering about Jeb’s emails about the 2000 election (also Terri Schiavo) or the Bush admin emails (you know, when they were lying the country into a war). Fournier smarmily snarked:
To Fournier, “false equivalence” is holding Dems and Republicans to the same standard.
also, too
Ron Fournier, pen-pal to Karl Rove and press secretary manqué to John McCain, says the problem with DC (“us”) is that Democrats don’t hold themselves to a higher standard than Republicans. I gotta say, it’s as good an affirmative declaration of Broderism as I’ve ever seen.
Made me a little nauseous to even be reading Fournier’s tweets. the whole stream oozes smug, biased dickitude.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Ron Fournier, Karl Rove’s pen-pal and picker-upper of donuts with sprinkles
ETA: Liz Sidoti, who helped Fournier pick out McCain’s favorite donuts, left the AP to become chief flak for BP
Turgidson
@Warren Terra:
True. I comfort myself that Obama (and hopefully Hillary) is well aware of how much of a sniveling, mendacious twit Brooks is and that no amount of polite conversation will “convert” him, but despite that, it is worth the trouble to schmooze him a bit if only to encourage him to write more of his fatuous sociological pieces (By and large, the American people can be divided into two camps…the Jerkfaces and the Jackasses…the Jerkfaces see the world blahblahblahSHUTTHEFUCKUP) and fewer of his thinly-veiled GOP propaganda/hit pieces that a surprising number of totebaggers who should know better will sagely nod along with and despair that Obama can’t reach out to Republicans better.
Turgidson
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’ll give Ron “Severe Dementia” Fournier this – in his tweets, he is a fucking maestro at deliberately missing the point of the tweets he responds to so as to keep his both siderism con going, and/or going with the “oh you’re just a biased lefty, so if you’re mad at me that just proves I’m right” trope. As you note, it makes him look like a smug piece of shit, but well, that ship has sailed, right?
Turgidson
@gogol’s wife:
I’m already getting exhausted by the Clinton Rules, but so far I give Hillary about 2% of the blame for that. Aside from going back in time and not having a personal email server, which I bet she would do if she could, in hindsight, I don’t think there’s anything Hillary could have done or be doing to stop this media circus. And I think she knows that, which is why her response has been mostly passive and somewhat annoyed. I also think her team is letting the story burn itself out now, many months before any voting and over a year before the general. We’ll see if this works – I mean, I thought the story would be burned out months ago and here we are.
I do think, however, that the “zomg the Clinton campaign is falling apart” storyline is bullshit. They seem to be methodically going about their business and refusing to get too tangled up in Village drama. They learned that from Obama and it worked out OK for him.
Surreal American
“Pound pastrami, can kraut, six bagels–bring home for Emma.”
Turgidson
@Seanly:
Yes. Also acceptable is “Doubt that”. Because, you know, most of what he says is bullshit.
Alex
Bless you, Doug, you’re a company man til the bitter end. You think up excuses for the Clintons even before they come up with them!
boatboy_srq
@Paul in KY: I’m in email H311 right now with a handful of colleagues (“clodleagues?”) who have zero retention skills and can’t be ars3d to read back through their own correspondence, so I’m a bit more sensitive to “why isn’t [ancient history reference] included/explained here?” questions. I’m normally a bit better at catching snark.
boatboy_srq
@Zinsky: It’s 2015. Alcoholism as a moral failing started tottering when Prohibition was repealed, and has fallen flat in recent years. Now, if there was video of Boehner dancing*, there might actually be a bigger brouhaha…
*Old SBC (painfully-close-to-reality) joke: SB’ists are opposed to drinking and sex because they lead to dancing.
Paul in KY
@boatboy_srq: I should have been less snarky in my response to you. My fault.
Danack
@boatboy_srq:
I believe the preferred term is “cow-orkers”.
boatboy_srq
@Paul in KY: No worries. Snark I can handle, not being a baker.
priscianus jr
Actually, Hillary does not say or imply that she cares. She’s just curious to know what prompted it.
slag
What? David Brooks and Tom Friedman aren’t foxy to you?
It’s true that they’re a blight, a plague on the body politic. But we’ve got absolutely no one, no one but ourselves to blame.