Can we stick to the issues, please?

The first six weeks have given people a glimpse of your spending priorities. Are you a socialist as some people have suggested?

New York Times reporter, Peter Baker in his interview with President Obama

Now I get it. The NYT is failing because they’ve got rid of all the good reporters and kept on the pimply faced, campus newspaper wannabe’s. If this is the best the NYT can turn out in the way of insightful, thoughtful reporting they should helped to turn out the lights and lock up.

Supposedly asked in an effort to determine the new presidents political philosophy, this is actually just some cheesy bear baiting, in order to placate the political right. It does look like the right has the Times on the ropes, slammed for years as being the center of the liberal universe.

This whole thing ranks right up there with the really important discussions - about Michelle Obama’s biceps and whether Grandma Robinson will be able to sit in on Oval Office meetings.

When queried about the direction of the interview, the NYT replied:

The point is not the label, per se, but the question of whether the times and the solutions under consideration represent some sort of paradigm shift in our national thinking about the role of government in society. In a moment of taxpayer bank bailouts and shifting tax burden proposals and exploding deficits and expansive health care and energy plans, what is the future of American-style capitalism?

We were also interested in exploring how a new president defines his political philosophy, something that has been the subject of intense debate. We wanted to draw him out on all of that and I think his answers, both in the interview itself and the follow-up phone call, were interesting and important.

Oh, please. It’s all about the label, per se.

Americans have been trained over the decades to go into a frothing, teeth gnashing fit over the mere whisper of ‘socialism’. The NYT can’t possibly be this naive, so perhaps this is nothing more than casting aspersions on the ‘real Obama agenda’, so they can stand there later, if it doesn’t work out, and say they told us so.

At any rate, that reporter needs to be sent back to the Bush leagues - where, in fact, he wasn’t asking ‘W’ if he was, perhaps a fascist? Maybe what he meant to ask Obama was “since we’re going back to Reagan era tax rates, doesn’t that mean you’re really a warm, fatherly Hollywood actor?” Or, he could have revisited some of the other discredited Republican talking points, like if Obama really is a United States citizen, or when did he quit beating Michelle, or did the DNC buy her clothes.

Ask ‘em anything but the important stuff.

Now, you all know why there are bloggers.

maven