Somebody, in a fit of pique, called someone else a relatively meaningless name and, apparently, instantly regretted it; the horror, the horror. Yes, clearly this is a revelatory and substantive issue that cuts to the heart of the campaign.

It isn't what was said that is revelatory, it is the reaction to what was said.

In real life, none of us get "takebacks" when we say or do something stupid.. If I slip, and in a "fit of pique" call my wife a bitch or my boss an arsehole then I'm going to pay the price, often quite literally.

Why should it be different for people who are supposedly very smart and who wield a great deal of power?

MSNBC just gave Tucker his walking papers. Apparently someone has finally caught on to the fact that he is an ignorant winger who doesn't know shit from shinola.

By Jenn Shreve, Salon.com People

"Perhaps it's appropriate that the word "bitch" would spell the end of Chung's career on CBS. Compared to debutante ice queens Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer and chipper everywomen like Katie Couric, Connie Chung was the bitch -- in the uncompromising, afraid of nothing sense -- of TV news journalism. She pursued stories with unsuppressed eagerness. Once a person agreed to be interviewed by her, he or she could rest assured the interrogation would not be easy. Chung didn't simply read questions from a neatly typed cue card and nod in sympathetic rhythm to her subject's answers; she free-styled. If an interviewee was avoiding the question, Chung would keep asking until she got her answer or her subject broke down."

Of course Chung's, "Why don't you just whisper it to me, just between you and me." was different, but as far as network ratings are concerned, "Bitch" and "Monster" go a long way. More interesting are the reasons behind the name calling, which are not always as newsie.

I wonder why Propublica has not gotten more attention. Won't it put the MSM to shame?

These "Somebody"s aren't "Nobody"s. One is an adviser to Barack Obama on foreign policy and the object of calumny was another woman who just happens to be the first female candiate for the Presidency of the United States. There's a certain grim irony in the fact that the foreign policy adviser, Samantha Power, fell into the slurry-pit (pardon, agricultural metaphor) when she ventured into foreign territory. You may insist that "monster" is an innocuous word which is used in certain circles but you cannot maintain that insularity in the global village, particularly in the English-speaking part of it and may I remind you that Americans do not control the language. We've had more than enough of your "extraordinary rendition", sanitised phraseology for kidnapping and possibly worse as suspected terrorists are grabbed all over the world and disappear into the abyss.

Your excuse that Samantha Power uttered the word "monster" in a moment of pique is laughable. You;d think that she was in the scool playground and another kid had tugged her pigtails. Repeating the famous (and criticised) headline from "The Sun"(trashy UK newspaper) isn't too smart either. The "Gotcha" headline was the triumphalist one that hailed the sinking of the Argentinian ship "Belgrano" by the British during the Falklands War when Margaret Thatcher - Ronald Reagan's pal - was British Prime Minister. Many young Argentinians died on that ship and the reasons for attacking the vessel are very suspect. So no, Steve D., it was not a Gotcha moment for the young journalist working for "The Scotsman". She was merely doing her job in "the warts and all" way that professional political writers are supposed to do. She was writing for "The Scotsman" readership but if Drudge and others want to prowl the international print media and serve it up in the USA it is most unfair of you to blame Gerri Peev. "A shut mouth catches no flies" but if Samantha Power chose to get involved in politics she has to talk to the media. Unfortunately, she showed very poor judgment when she left her own comfort zone and that is her own fault.

it's the same reason car magazines are reluctant to pan any car no matter how bad, stereo magazines are enthusiastic about every new gadget, computer mags are excited about every new development, etc. it's not that they might lose advertising revenue, it's the loss of access that's the real threat. if you tell the public that the all-new XYZ is a total dud, you stand a very real risk of getting cut off from the press releases, leaked photos, off the record interviews, test drives, press junkets, etc. etc. and you end up writing your articles 6 months after everybody else, which doesn't sell magazines.

in this country, where our view of politics is just another product to be consumed, the same thing holds. we don't want an in-depth piece on how McCain's health plan and Clinton's and Obama's all compare and how they relate to what's been tried and what experts think that took two weeks to research and write; we want to know what clever quip McCain said at breakfast this morning, and we want to know it now! if you get thrown out of the group privileged with the insider info, you're now part of the fringe media. oddly, Britain and even Canada have managed to largely dodge this perversion, so far.

The writer does not fully understand how journalism works. When a print journalist is standing there with his or her notebook open, pen in hand, it is to be assumed that everything said is on the record (unless otherwise agreed upon). Russert, on the other hand, is not really a news-gathering reporter. He is someone who interviews people, often in a tough manner, on television. So it is hardly some sort of sychophantic climbdown for him to consider his telephone conversations to be off the record or purely for background. His Meet-the-Press stuff, obviously, is on the record. The fact that Lewis Libby was convicted of a Kafkaesque "crime" of misremembering off-the-record conversations with multiple journalists years after the fact refutes the main point of the story, rather than supports it. Tucker Carlson, again, is not really a journalist, certainly not in the traditional print sense. He is an on-air personality. In his comments referred to in this article he is clearly clueless about the role of journalism. He should in no way be considered emblematic of professional journalists today. The reporter for The Scotsman did things just right -- running the full quote, with Powers's admonition that it was "off the record," even though no such ground rule had been established.