WaPo's John Harris: White House Bitch
by Steve
John Harris is the national political editor for the print edition of the Washington Post. Sunday it was revealed that he was getting heat because Dan Froomkin’s column on the Washington Post website was not labeled as opinion. And who were some of those who were offended? The likes of Jim VandeHei, whose wife used to work for Tom DeLay. Then we find out that the reason Harris was concerned wasn’t because Froomkin isn’t any good, mind you. In fact, Froomkin and Terry O’Neal in my mind are the only reasons to check the online-only content of the Post, since you can never be sure where the hell Howie Kurtz is coming from. But yesterday, we heard that Harris was getting heat from somewhere because Froomkin was perceived to be a liberal. In response to this criticism, Harris could have said “fuck you; Dan is a good columnist.” But no, instead Harris said that the Post would probably have to now bring in a conservative for, you guessed it, “balance”.
Today, we find out that the heat Harris was getting came from a hack conservative blogger who worked at Bush/Cheney 2004. So instead of taking the criticism with a grain of salt and considering the source, Harris defaults to the kneepads position so typical of the Beltway this last decade and talks about “balance.” This from the same paper that cheer leaded for the war and buried the coverage from its own reporters that challenged the administration’s basis for war.
Harris, in a moment of what looked like candor back in 2001, admitted that the Beltway was likely to go easy on Bush because of years of scandal fatigue in covering Clinton. So it is no surprise now that after five years of scandals that make the nineties look like amateur hour, Harris has his knickers tied up not over his own pathetic role in looking the other way, but because Dan Froomkin writes an opinion piece for their website that pisses off the White House. But perhaps, as Digby says, Harris should just admit he and the rest of the Washington Post management are Karl Rove’s bitches and stop this pretense that a newspaper exists.
(Thanks to Jane at FireDogLake)