Spitting Out The Mouthpiece

Where oh where will I get my weekly dose of horrendously bad comedy now?

The Washington Post has brought down the curtain on "Mouthpiece Theater."

Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli killed the satirical video series Wednesday after harsh criticism of a joke about Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, which had prompted him to pull the latest episode from the paper's Web site Friday night. The Post staffers who appeared in the videos, Dana Milbank and Chris Cillizza, agreed with the decision and apologized in separate interviews.

"I don't think the series worked as they intended," Brauchli said. "It was meant to be funny and insightful and translate the superb journalism Chris and Dana do in print and online into a new format."

"Mouthpiece Theater" was designed as a sendup of pompous punditry, with Milbank, the paper's Washington Sketch columnist, and Cillizza, a White House correspondent who writes The Fix blog, appearing with oversized pipes and smoking jackets.

Um, it wasn't a sendup of anything. It was exactly what it looked like - bitchy, self-regarding gossip from two inside-the-Beltway Villagers who accurately translated their feelings of entitlement into video form. They weren't sending up pompous punditry, they were EXHIBITING it.

By the way, you'll be excited to know that Brauchli praised Milbank and Cillizza effusively and welcomed them back to work on their regular assignments of spouting conventional wisdom and producing Mean Girl low-rent Maureen Dowd ripoffs (which is quite a feat).

Winners Of The Village Open Mike Comedy Award For "Outstanding Spirit!"

Chris Cillizza and Dana Milbank, after practicing in their basement for days, have a HIGH-larious response to criticism over their comedy gold of calling Hillary Clinton a bitch.

The proper lesson to have inferred would have been this: IF the Washington Post's website has a feature that only receives substantial attention for how bad it is, and that no one pays any mind to were it not for an awful, mean-spirited joke, THEN perhaps it is a feature that the website can do without. Or, alternately, they can ride the traffic generated by the world's outrage, which is what I gather Fred Hiatt does, on the op-ed page, where people just make stuff up.

Don't worry though! Nobody's learned a gollydarned thing! Today, Mouthpiece Theatre returns with a "response video," in which Cillizza and Milbank basically whine about having been criticized by the blogosphere.

Of course, the two never make any apology, or, indeed, any overt mention of the brouhaha to which they are referring, so if you weren't paying attention last week, you have no clue what they are even doing today. But that's all beside the important point that they are making: HOW DARE the blogosphere notice when two grown men act like jackasses, on web videos! Leave Britney alone!

The worst thing about this video, which isn't worth the effort to embed, is the Marriott hotels ad placed right before it. Is Marriott endorsing the naming of Hillary Clinton as a bitch? Is the hotel chain endorsing the most unfunny comedy since "East German Economist Night O' Yuks" back in the '80s?

Here's some actual humor, and I guess the best thing that can be said about Mouthpiece Theater is that without them, this biting satire wouldn't exist:

Crazy Dana

Probably because it's so unsuccessful, the Washington Post has kept throwing money at this horrific "Mouthpiece Theater" gossip show they do with Dana Milbank and Chris Cillizza while having to massively cut costs to return to profitability. Their investment in Milbank's comedy stylings yielded this gem today.

If I were on the board of directors of the Kaplan test prep company, and discovered that the people running a money-losing Kaplan subsidiary (better known as the Washington Post) had greenlighted a feature called "Mouthpiece Theater," I would demand that either they be fired, or that the Post itself be liquidated.

In today's episode, Dana Milbank suggests Hillary Clinton should drink "Mad Bitch" beer.

The episode starts with an ad for BP. So, is it time to boycott them and tell them the reason?

I've seen open mike nights with more comedy talent than Mouthpiece Theater.

...And WaPo takes down the clip. You can see it here.

Next Time, Mention Mouthpiece Theater

Great job by Nico Pitney, batting down the absolute nonsense from Dana Milbank on Howard Kurtz' program today.



"This is a person, Dana, who, when he had a chance to ask Obama a question, he approached him in the hall and asked him not one, but multiple questions about how he looked in a bathing suit. I mean, that, to me, is pathetic."

Here's that thrilling moment in reporting.

The look on Milbank's face after being called out on his own irrelevancy is priceless. Apparently, after the segment, Milbank whispered to Pitney, "you're such a dick."

And Nico, the next time you talk to Dana, be sure to ask him about the stringent journalistic standards at work in Mouthpiece Theater."

The Beltway Bubble

Just a coda to this "Nico Pitney asked a planted question" nonsense. I've never seen such an overt expression of jealousy in all my life. With the possible exception of Roger Cohen (who's great today, and will probably win a Pulitzer), nobody in America has had the kind of coverage on the Iran story that Nico has had. Certainly not Dana Milbank, who has spent the last few days embarrassing the entire profession of journalism with his foppish, bitchy gossip segment that summarized the Village's belief that politics is a game and they're the sportscasters covering it. So for him to dare to criticize the journalism of anyone else is completely nonsensical.

Asserting that President Obama's June 23 press conference included "prepackaged entertainment," Dana Milbank wrote in his June 24 Washington Post column that Huffington Post national editor Nico Pitney was "a planted questioner" who asked "a preplanned question." Milbank further wrote: "The use of planted questioners is a no-no at presidential news conferences, because it sends a message to the world -- Iran included -- that the American press isn't as free as advertised." But while Milbank noted that "Pitney said the White House" was "not aware of the question's wording," he did not quote or paraphrase the question itself, which Guardian America editor Michael Tomasky described as "an important and tough question that got right to the heart of the matter." The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen called it "a terrific question that the president wasn't anxious to answer," while Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald referred to it as "one of the toughest questions at the Press Conference."

Andrew Sullivan exposes this dichotomy further, with Nico writing about a fairly important struggle by millions of Iranians, and Milbank gossiping about JibJab videos. Never mind the fact that Milbank is simply lying to make this whole thing appear more insidious; his interest in journalistic integrity doesn't pass the laugh test.

...Ari Melber attacks this from a different angle.

Since Obama was inaugurated, many media critics, citizen journalists and web activists have been calling on him to answer meaningful, unfiltered questions from citizens. After watching the Obama Campaign in action, people saw the potential for deeper, direct engagement between wired citizens and a President who gets new media and believes in transparency [...]

Thus it was likely -- and hardly surprising -- that a citizen question would be posed at a presidential press conference. Given the news, it happened to come from Tehran, not Tennessee.

So the complaints of several Washington reporters are not only odd, but hard to take at face value. It is particularly rich for reporters to protest that the White House told Pitney he might be tapped for a question. Every day, a few top White House correspondents have special access in press briefings, while many reporters are never called on (seating charts are powerful). And many Washington reporters routinely, secretly grant the White House blind quotes and restrictive ground rules in exchange for access. By contrast, Pitney transparently told readers about his dealings with the White House, in real time, on his blog. The public would be better served if all media outlets took that tack, publishing any arrangements, restrictions or ground rules along with every article or interview. (Readers would be interested -- media criticism and scrutiny tends to draw traffic across the spectrum.)

Greenwald, too.

The Aristocrats

I don't think you can find a more perfect summation of the traditional media inside Washington than this - Dana Milbank and Chris Cillizza dressed like fops in bowties and smoking jackets - or more likely, dressed like their own mental projection of themselves - smugly discoursing, with CHAMBER MUSIC in the background, about Beltway gossip. You would think they'd go ahead and use the British accents too.



Amazingly, this isn't a product of two You Tubers engaging in a parody of the Village mindset, but a video produced by two of the top political reporters at the Washington Post. Two respected figures inside the Beltway, who get all kinds of face time on major media.

I think at this point, we can stop asking "If only the media would cover such-and-such story in THIS way..." For that to be successful, we would have to get such a story covered by someone like these two. That's just not going to happen.

Milbank's Follies

Last week Dana Milbank thought it very unprecedented for Barack Obama to leave New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza off the campaign plane during his trip to Europe, even though it wasn't.

I wonder when he's going to get around to noticing that McCain has thrown his whole campaign off the bus.

KANSAS CITY-- While the traveling press corps was shipped off to a barbecue restaurant here, John McCain charmed his way through an interview with a local TV reporter. Surae Chinn of KCTV posed such less-than-penetrating questions as "How important is Missouri?" and "Have you chosen a running mate?" and -- addressing the candidate's wife Cindy -- "How do you make your marriage work?" [...]

It wasn't part of the mix last week. National correspondents traveling with the candidate did not get to ask McCain a question for four days, and grew angry when a short media availability was scheduled for late afternoon Friday in Panama City, Fla. -- too late to do them much good and requiring extra flights for those who had planned to head home for the weekend.

While the front of McCain's plane was reconfigured with a couch and two captain's chairs to allow for easy conversation, journalists say he has invited them up only once, on a trip to Colombia. On the ground, his availability is sometimes limited to a quick gaggle with a small group of pool reporters.

Even the local reporter started annoying him, if you read the story. Wonder if this will be part of some rich tableau penned by La Milbank.

The last one was invented from whole cloth in its own right:

I've spent a few days on the campaign trail with Obama and know people who've traveled with him for months. I wouldn't argue that portrayals of the candidate as occasionally aloof, or a little professorial, are imagined.

But it's a long ways from, in the words of Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, acting like "the presumptuous nominee" whose "biggest challenger may not be Republican John McCain but rather his own hubris."

Milbank, who is often wickedly revealing, last week seemed mostly wicked as he turned benign campaign tableau -- an Obama motorcade, a talk with the Treasury secretary, a "pep rally" with congressional Democrats -- into evidence that Obama thinks he's already the winner.

He really looks silly on this, doesn't he?

Shut Up Whiners

Dana Milbank flat-out lied in his article parroting Obama's "presumptuousness," got caught, and now can't face facts.

In a July 31 washingtonpost.com online discussion, Dana Milbank dismissed participants' criticisms of his July 30 column -- a "sketch" of Sen. Barack Obama's "premature presidency" -- as "whines." Indeed, Milbank began the discussion by acknowledging that "some of you have some thoughts you'd like to share about yesterday's Sketch on the premature presidency of Barack Obama," and before taking questions, wrote: "I've decided to approach today's chat as a wine writer would. ... Today, I am inaugurating the Whine Enthusiast, in which I will rate your whines."

The Washington Post itself was not quite as dismissive, publishing a correction to one falsehood (in a column rife with misleadingly cropped quotes, false insinuations, and negligent reporting, as Media Matters for America noted). Milbank falsely asserted that Obama "g[a]ve British Prime Minister Gordon Brown some management advice over the weekend." The Post ran the following correction: "This column incorrectly said that Sen. Barack Obama shared his views on how to avoid micromanagement with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown last Saturday. Obama shared those views with British opposition leader David Cameron."

Referring to a July 29 meeting Obama had with members of the House of Representatives, Milbank wrote in his column: "Inside, according to a witness, he told the House members, 'This is the moment ... that the world is waiting for,' adding: 'I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.' " Milbank cited the quote in support of his thesis that Obama was becoming a "presumptuous nominee" and as evidence that Obama's "own hubris" may be his "biggest challenger." Several participants in the online discussion, apparently in reference to this quote, accused Milbank of "misquot[ing]" Obama, "omit[ting] the full context of his quote," and "intentionally butcher[ing] Barack Obama's words to sell papers."

During the discussion, a reader from Pasadena, California, asked Milbank: "I do wonder whether or not echoing a Rovian talking point, complete with misquote, is really your best starting point." Milbank responded:

Under challenge is a quote in the story, and in an earlier post on the washingtonpost.com blog, The Trail, by my colleague Jonathan Weisman. We cite a witness to Obama's private meeting with House Democrats telling us that Obama said "this is the moment ... that the world is waiting for" and "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."

House Democratic aides got up Thursday morning and decided that the quotes looked bad. While not challenging the quotations themselves, they said that the quotes were out of context. This is interesting, because our source who was among the people complaining about the quotes yesterday sent us the quotes in writing in an email Wednesday night.

Evidently no recording was made, so we'll probably never know the exact wording.

Milbank's trying to become the next Maureen Dowd and I'm sure he got quite a few backslaps from his Beltway friends on this one. He's not going to bother with such trifles as fact-checking or accuracy. The narrative is set, and anyone who wants to change it is just a whiner who's pissed off that their guy just got zinged.

He's winning "America's Next Top Clueless Pundit," and he's not going to turn in his crown now.

It really is some news operation that looks with nothing but contempt at their readers.



...on the other hand, Bob Herbert is pretty clear-eyed today.

Accessing Recent History

Dana Milbank takes a stroll through presumptuous garden today, and while he ascribes routine security measures as somehow evidence of Obama being uppity, this part jumped out at me:

Then came Obama's overseas trip and the campaign's selection of which news organizations could come aboard. Among those excluded: the New Yorker magazine, which had just published a satirical cover about Obama that offended the campaign.

Even Bush hasn't tried that.

If Obama left Ryan Lizza off the plane because of the New Yorker cover (the campaign claims it was a space issue), then that's pretty uncool. But to suggest that it's unprecedented is just willfully stupid. Aside from the Bush Administration being the most secretive with the press in American history, high-level officials have done things like, you know, keeping reporters off the campaign plane.

The administration's news management has taken many forms, including banning New York Times reporters from Vice President Dick Cheney's campaign plane, cutting short press conferences held jointly with more loquacious foreign leaders, and holding a mere 17 solo press conferences as of December 20, far fewer than the 44 or 84 that Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, respectively, held at a comparable point during their administrations. One-on-one interviews are doled out selectively: Chen says the Los Angeles Times is one of the last major newspapers in the world that has not had an interview with President Bush. It's not personal; it's strategic. "This White House doesn't need California, has no use for California politically," says Chen, "so we carry no clout."

Not to mention the fact that Obama's opponent has played this game as well:

The truth is, not only have journalists done a poor job of using the access McCain grants them, but their access isn't as great as they claim.

Two months ago, after Newsweek published an article the McCain camp didn't like, McCain aide Mark Salter reportedly threatened to throw the magazine's reporters off the campaign bus. During the 2000 campaign, an Arizona Republic reporter was kicked off the bus after her newspaper ran an editorial questioning whether McCain "has the temperament and the political approach and skills we want in the next president of the United States." In August 2006, a senior McCain strategist allegedly told another Arizona Republic reporter he was "off the bus" after an article the McCain camp didn't like.

In late June, The Washington Post reported that McCain's new campaign plane features a "special area" with a couch and captain's chairs where McCain will conduct interviews -- and that Salter said "only the good reporters" would get to sit in the area; "You'll have to earn it."

Hilariously, Boehlert reports that Howie Kurtz dismissed the "you'll have to earn it" quote as a joke, even though it's documented to have happened.

Dana Milbank is one of those "bury the past" media members who makes sure he has no knowledge of history so his statements can have an internal logic.

...meanwhile, the presumptuous meme is continuing, even if the media has to use false quotes to push it.