Daily PUMA Column - Commentary by Alessandro Machi

Showing posts with label Slate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Slate. Show all posts

Saturday, January 31, 2009

A New Breed of "Blog", Madame Secretary, comprised of hundreds of former government employees now out of power, run by Newsweek, Gasp.

I guess operation Blog Swarm is in full run mode. Madame Secretary, a blog grudgingly listed on DailyPUMA, purports to follow everything Hillary. Yet it is also a blog bankrolled by our friends at Newsweek. You know, the rag that has Jonathan Alter at the helm, who regularly appears on Keith Olbermann's show to make fun of people who talk respectfully of Hillary Clinton. PROOF.

Creepy aspects to Madame Secretary include naming where Hillary Clinton is set to go. Normally the news reports where somebody has been, or reports where they are just as it happens. There is a safety aspect to this type of news reporting when it involves politicians. But I guess when it comes to Hillary Clinton, it's ok to telegraph where she may or may not be going several days in advance.

And, I guess it's ok to not only telegraph where Hillary Clinton is going, but also to have ads such as the one just below...

Isn't that special.

There are several title tabs on Madame Secretary, and each tab reveals a whole nother blog, and a whole nother cadre of writers. I found SHADOW GOVERNMENT TAB somewhat insulting, considering that it is close to Arianna Huffington's Shadow Convention in name. Huffington and George Soros propped up the shadow convention several years ago in preparation for their assault on Hillary Clinton in the 2008 elections.

Here is their own, partial description of Shadow Government, In parliamentary democracies, the "shadow government" is a group of like-minded policymakers who have served in government before and who now find themselves outside of it. In that spirit, this is a blog about U.S. foreign policy, written by people who've made it before. Our commentary and analysis will reflect our experience in government and the practical knowledge we've gleaned from it (not always the easy way). We'll discuss foreign policy with an intimate familiarity of the imperfections and complications, the trade-offs and unintended consequences that are a fact of life when dealing with the world as it is, not as one wishes it to be. And we'll approach the many hard problems facing the United States today with an appreciation for the limits of our nation's power, but also for its enduring potential to shape events for the better.

Whose paying all of these political journalists who used to work in Washington, or still do, to operate this blog? Their annual budget must easily hit several millions of dollars. Um, a little financial disclosure on where the money is coming from for this obviously money losing venture, please.

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