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Flashback: Clinton says of Obama "Just a few years ago, Obama would have been serving their coffee."
I went on MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” Tuesday to talk about health care reform, but somehow the conversation turned to “Game Change,” John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s breathless new book about the last election. I shouldn’t have been surprised; MSNBC particularly has been all “Game Change,” all the time since last week.
On Sunday I wrote about the book’s “revelation” that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid used the term “Negro dialect” referring to Barack Obama. I wrote then about my discomfort with the book’s mostly anonymous sourcing – there is no index or source notes – as well as its strange practice of “quoting” inflammatory statements in mere sentence fragments, without full context, and Heilemann and Halperin’s Bob Woodward-like zest for recreating thoughts and conversations they couldn’t have been a party to. (I particularly enjoyed the opening scene, set in Obama’s room at a Des Moines Hampton Inn just before the Iowa caucuses, when the candidate woke up anxious in the middle of the night, feeling like “the dog that caught the bus.” Were they there? Now that’s a story!) I have the book, and I’m making my way through it, but I’m surprised more people aren’t asking the questions I have about it. And that’s what I told Schultz, somewhat to his surprise.
In what may be the most damaging “revelation” of all – that former President Clinton told Sen. Ted Kennedy that just a few years ago, Obama would have been serving their coffee – the incendiary statement, with zero sourcing, isn’t even in quotes. None of the words, not even coffee, are in quotes, and given how many zingy words and sentence fragments they toss around in quotes elsewhere in the book, it makes me wonder what they’re shaky on. Did Clinton say “coffee?” Or was it tea? Martinis? But that lack of clarity hasn’t stopped many other journalists – including my friend Eugene Robinson, who should know better – from serving up the statement in quotes, as though it came verbatim from Clinton and/or Kennedy, and concluding that Clinton was saying Obama should be serving him and Kennedy coffee because he’s black, and thus Clinton is a racist.
On Sunday I wrote about the book’s “revelation” that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid used the term “Negro dialect” referring to Barack Obama. I wrote then about my discomfort with the book’s mostly anonymous sourcing – there is no index or source notes – as well as its strange practice of “quoting” inflammatory statements in mere sentence fragments, without full context, and Heilemann and Halperin’s Bob Woodward-like zest for recreating thoughts and conversations they couldn’t have been a party to. (I particularly enjoyed the opening scene, set in Obama’s room at a Des Moines Hampton Inn just before the Iowa caucuses, when the candidate woke up anxious in the middle of the night, feeling like “the dog that caught the bus.” Were they there? Now that’s a story!) I have the book, and I’m making my way through it, but I’m surprised more people aren’t asking the questions I have about it. And that’s what I told Schultz, somewhat to his surprise.
In what may be the most damaging “revelation” of all – that former President Clinton told Sen. Ted Kennedy that just a few years ago, Obama would have been serving their coffee – the incendiary statement, with zero sourcing, isn’t even in quotes. None of the words, not even coffee, are in quotes, and given how many zingy words and sentence fragments they toss around in quotes elsewhere in the book, it makes me wonder what they’re shaky on. Did Clinton say “coffee?” Or was it tea? Martinis? But that lack of clarity hasn’t stopped many other journalists – including my friend Eugene Robinson, who should know better – from serving up the statement in quotes, as though it came verbatim from Clinton and/or Kennedy, and concluding that Clinton was saying Obama should be serving him and Kennedy coffee because he’s black, and thus Clinton is a racist.
Joan Walsh: When gossip trumps news
Goodness. Even the late Ted Kennedy couldn't keep his story straight. So dismayed...
8 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
Who, apparently, couldn't tell the story the same way twice.
