It was inappropriate for Ms. Power to share her personal opinions... on the record OR off the record ... to the extent that she cannot separate her "new book tour" from her role as "advisor to Barack Obama and campaign" ... period. Sh damaged her credibility and the Obama campaign.

Trash-talking the other team often results in blowback ... as the Clinton campaign has also learned "the hard way" in the last few months. It's immature and unprincipled.

Samantha Power spoke of effing up in Ohio.

American reporters have been kissing ass for at least as long as they've allowed the rest of America to believe that FDR could walk. And probably a lot further back than that.

I don't know what accounts for it, other than that keeping things looking rosy and under control keeps consumers spending and wars humming, and that's really all that's ever been terribly important.

When she says "I'm sure that she's perfectly fine in her own Harvard hothouse. To think that Samantha was Obama's senior adviser on foreign policy (that's the way she was presented here and in the UK) is quite frightening. She means well, I'm sure, but she has no "cop-on"."

I hate to burst your balloon, but you lack any awareness, self or otherwise -- or maybe you are just consumed with resentment. To put it more bluntly 1993 to 1996 in the former Yugoslavia, Burundi, East Timor, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan, and Zimbabwe -- hardly the Harvard hothouse and much more salubrious than the south Dublin suburbs. In the process she has achieved quite a lot, including spurring world intervention in the what was going on in several of those benighted places. Not to be mean, but what have you done to "piss on her grave?"

Morover I know numerous international diplomats, and well, Dublin 4 or 6 may think it is all decorous, but its not. Few people in my experience have quite as thorough a grasp of profanity, short of an infantry sergeant. They curse quite as much, if not more than most, at least the effective ones do, at least in a private setting. Very few by the way have the money to buy $200 bottles of Whiskey either.

You say, in reply to my post, that you're glad that Ms. Peev did not "usurp" your right to have an opinion. Because she duly reported that Power called Clinton a "monster", you get to decide what you think about that.

I guess that's true. But I guess the field is so cluttered with trivial issues like this one I'm sorry to see another one added to the list--collectively plugging up the conversation.

Here's what the American people heard from the whole Edwards campaign: HAIRCUT, HAIRCUT,HAIRCUT,HAIRCUT,HAIRCUT,HAIRCUT,HAIRCUT,HAIRCUT,HAIRCUT,HAIRCUT,HAIRCUT,HAIRCUT,HAIRCUT

Now, no one usurped their "right" to make a decision about that haircut; but I'm not sure anyone really profited from that.

The point I guess is that no report is ever completely exhaustive; telling us one thing means leaving something else out; and by providing us with the "right" to judge this trivial issue, journalism has deprived us of the context, analysis, and so on we might need to make judgments on more substantive ones.

Amen.

I was raised with "old school" journalistic ethics, where the job of the 4th estate was what the founding fathers intended it to be.

Talk about going to hell in a handbasket...

Without an inquisitive, aggressive press, this country is doomed.

like that's not obviously where we're heading....

is that if all of these traditional media people ceased to exist at breakfast-time, politicians would find other ways of communicating with the American public by dinner-time. They'd barely skip a beat. It's hardly necessary for journalists to abase themselves in such a manner. The American public would lose absolutely nothing if Tim Russert's "rules" were tossed overboard.

Yes, I immediately remembered the Carole Coleman interview from 2004 when I saw Carlson was claiming that European reporters "Make things up." I thought, "Well, if Ms Coleman is typical of European reporters, then 1. I can see why American politicians disparage them and 2. I can see that no, they don't make things up nearly as much as American reporters report made-up news with straight faces.

Why do you begin by saying you support Samantha Power, only to then say that it all depends on the context and you don't know the context?

Because I didn't think "I might support Samantha Power given the context of the quotation in her interview" would fit in the subject box. No other reason, other than to get your attention.

Thanks for the link! Clears things up. I agree with you that the comment was highly relevant.

Just asking: are you an Obama supporter?

Not really.

In his fascinating book, The Dark Side of Camelot, Seymour Hersh tells of the time John Kennedy needed to plant a false story (denying his then unknown first marriage to Durie Malcolm). He "turned to Ben Bradlee [Washington Post editor], who was in JFK's doghouse. Bradlee had made the mistake of being quoted in a Look Magazine article, published in August, suggesting that Kennedy's relationship with the press was beginning to erode. It was 'almost impossible to write a story they [Jack and Bobby] would like,' Bradlee told Look. 'Even if a story is quite favorable to their side, they'll find one paragraph to quibble with.' In a 1996 interview for this book. Bradlee said be was 'dumb' to have spoken to the magazine--and to have told the truth. The president was in a snit. 'God,' Bradlee quoted him as exclaiming, 'You guys! You get more out of this White House than anybody did and this is how you express your thanks.' After that, Bradlee told me, 'I didn't see him for two or three months. Didn't answer a phone call.

"The impasse ended in September 1962 when Bradlee agreed, as Kennedy surely knew he would, to collaborate with the White House to debunk the Durie Malcolm story once and for all." To do this, Bradlee told Hersh, he agreed to give the president right of approval on the finished story. Hersh quotes Bradlee: "I wanted to be friends again. I missed the access of course, but I missed the laughter and the warmth just as much."

Bradlee dutifully wrote his story, which was based on misleading information the Administration supplied. He gave his story to the president personally prior to publication and was back in his good graces.