Politicos

Someone needs to explain parody to Rep. John Fleming (R-La.). A recent status update on the Congressman’s Facebook page links to a story about how Planned Parenthood is building an “$8 billion Abortionplex.” A story that was published by… The Onion. The website Literally Unbelievable posted a screen shot of the link. They are devoted to publishing screenshots of people who mistakenly believe that Onion articles are the real deal. Fleming has since taken the link down from his timeline.

It took us six calls to Fleming’s office to realize a reply was probably going to be a long shot. When it sunk in that they were never going to call us back, we decided to try harder. On our first call, we were greeted by a slow-witted intern who told us that he didn’t know WHO had posted the Facebook article on Fleming’s profile. When we asked when they realized it was a fake, he again answered “I don’t know.” Then, we suggested, if this was indeed a fake story, where might we be able to find “a more reputable abortionplex in the area?” Again he replied, “I don’t know.”

Finally, we spoke to Doug Sachtleben, a real live spokesman for Fleming. He tells FishbowlDC that the article was ”inadvertently posted” and taken down “within hours.”

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

Mitt Romney has raised a crop of devilishly handsome sons. There’s Tagg, Matt, Josh, Ben and Craig. The internet seems to be smitten with young, handsome Craig. Today, Buzzfeed has found a new tumblr site devoted to the magic that is Craig Romney. The website, Fuck Yeah! Craig Romney, is devoted to pictures of Craig in various dreamy poses and pictures from the internet. Check out the pictures, that is, if you think you can handle the bombardment of beautiful.

 

(A Sprinkling of What we Think you Ought to Know…)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Does Tom Hanks Look Like Bill Murray? – According to The Atlantic’s John Hudson, some people can’t tell the two actors apart. We’ve never had that problem, but Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) has. Hudson reports that when Attorney General Eric Holder appeared in front of a Congressional hearing on the Fast and Furious program, Kucinich said Holder must feel “like Tom Hanks in Groundhog Day.” While Kucinich quickly amended the record to reflect that it was Murray in the movie, Hudson explains that it’s a common mistake. Director of the movie, Harold Ramis, actually admitted that he went after Hanks for Murray’s role, but decided against it since Hanks appeared “too nice.” As an added bonus, YouTube has put up the entire movie for free. You can watch it here.

Hillary as a Bond Villian - The Daily Mail has a story on the wardrobe of U.S. Sec. of State Hillary Clinton. It shows her latest outfit and says that she is beginning to dress like an “old-School Bond villain.” This once again highlights the difficulties that professional Washington women face when they are in a position of power. Former Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice faced down criticism whenever her coiffe changed over the years. As does FLOTUS over her dress choice or her bare arms. But, the whole thing did get us thinking of a good Bond villain name for Clinton. Maybe Secretary of Hate?

Politico Profiles Political Prankster – Politico‘s Patrick Gavin writes on comedian Joe Mande riling up the Twitterverse in an early morning story. Mande has been making waves on his Twitter account by cracking on various politicos. Favorite targets include MSNBC’s Meghan McCain, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), Fmr. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin among MANY others. We follow Mande, and our personal favorites involve his quiet retweeting of obnoxious celebrities and politicos like this one:

I met @TheScienceGuy this morning while at @foxandfriends! twitter.com/THEHermanCain/…

— Herman Cain (@THEHermanCain) February 1, 2012

While many politicos have blocked Mande, including Vitter, others have joined in the pranking. As Mande explains, “Andrew Breitbart, I used to give him shit, but what he would just do is retweet what I wrote to him, and his psycho followers would attack me for hours and hours. So I say: ‘Touché, Andrew Breitbart.”

Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker Josh Fox was arrested Wednesday morning as he attempted to film a House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment committee hearing on “fracking”, according to Politico. Fox’s documentary, Gasland, explores the practice and the safety concerns surrounding it. Before the hearing even got underway, GOP lawmakers had Fox and his film crew detained. Fox protested that he was within his first amendment rights and that he was being “taken out.”

Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) filed a motion to allow the filmmaker and crew back into the hearing saying, ”If you claim that rule does not allow them to film, or allows you the discretion to turn them away, I move the rules be suspended so the fella who wanted to film for HBO be allowed to film this hearing and that ABC be allowed to film this hearing and all God’s children be allowed to film this hearing until the room is too full for us to conduct our business.”

The Republican lawmakers claim that the issue is that Fox and his crew did not have formal Capitol Hill credentials. HuffPost reports that in previous instances, a person in Fox’s situation would have been directed to obtain a temporary pass, not arrested.

Fox, which is shooting footage to a followup for Gasland, has been charged with unlawful entry.

 

Reporting on a presidential campaign is exhausting work. Jumping from state to state; sometimes following the same candidate for weeks at a time. A certain bond often forms between the media and a candidate. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was famous for having a great relationship with the press in the primary of 2000. Sometimes it can even have a “family” feel.

News broke over the weekend that GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum’s daughter had been hospitalized for pneumonia. Bella Santorum, 3, has a condition called Trisomy 18. It’s a condition that causes abnormalities in her internal organs. It can be fatal for many of those afflicted.

As soon as the announcement was made that Santorum was stepping off the campaign trail to spend time with Bella, tweets of support began rolling in from journalists.

Bret Baier of Fox News tweeted on Saturday

Definitely RT @AwakeinCO @BretBaier How about a RT for prayers for @RickSantorum‘s precious baby Bella who is in Childrens Hospital?

— Bret Baier (@BretBaier) January 29, 2012

This must hit especially close to home for Baier since he has seen his fair share of hospital visits with his son, Paul. Paul has a heart defect that has kept him in the hospital for numerous surgeries.

ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jake Tapper also offered up words of support for the Santorum family… Read more

(A Sprinkling of What we Think you Ought to Know…)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Newt’s campaign still upset about tame audience– Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich complained Tuesday about NBC’s Brian Williams requesting that the audience remain silent during Monday’s debate. After experiencing a relatively docile audience during Thursday’s debate, the Gingrich camp is now getting conspiratorial. Kevin Kellems, a senior adviser to Gingrich, accused rival Mitt Romney‘s campaign of manipulating the makeup of the audience. “They definitely packed the room [with Romney supporters],” Kellems told HuffPost. Goddammit. Where are those moon colonists when you need them?

In jealous rage, The Atlantic calls Weigel a “raging jerk”– As bitchy as journalists can be, the ones on the Republican primary campaign trail have a lot to be happy about. They’re in Florida where the temperature is hanging around a balmy 70 degrees. But that doesn’t mean The Atlantic, founded in frigid Washington, has to be happy for them. On Thursday the magazine called out the braggy tweets from journos in Florida. They called Slate‘s Dave Weigel a “raging jerk” for sending out a tweet last week in which he said, “High on the pleasantness scale: That moment the Florida sun retreats behind a cloud.” And WaPo‘s Philip Rucker is “cruel” for tweeting about the “sunset in Ormond Beach.”

Two Speakers sit down for “This Week”– Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich will appear on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to discuss his campaign and the Florida primary with ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper. Then it’s out with the old and in with the orange. Speaker John Boehner will be on after Gingrich to comment on the details of President Obama‘s State of the Union speech. Other guests: conservative columnist George Will, Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, former Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, and conservative talk radio show host Laura Ingraham.

Editorial writer recalls “most embarrassing correction” of his career– After The Daily Caller‘s Matthew Lewis found glaring errors in a Thursday morning article about Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio published by Reuters, Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner offered up a quasi-defense of the wire service. In a blog post, he recalled his own time at Reuters and a mistake he once made that resulted in a dirty mudslide of corrections:

“[B]ecause it was the most important news of the day and it was rattling many markets, other Reuters reporters simply grabbed my wording to put into our stock report, bond stories, foreign exchange dispatches, and so on. So after I corrected the story, it triggered what my co-workers teased was a ‘global correction tsunami,’ as reporters throughout the world had to issue corrections because of my bungle. It was one of the moments in my career where I could have starred in a Southwest ‘Wanna get away?’ commercial.”

Klein went on to lambast Reuters for their errors Thursday, saying that it was different from his own experience because “this isn’t the type of breaking news financial news story that needs to be pumped out in minutes. It’s a longer feature that the writer and editor had more time to work on. There’s no excuse for being this sloppy.”

Nope. That’s not a newly discovered Dr. Seuss book. Newt Gingrich really wants a zoo.

If you visit the Gingrich Productions website, you’ll find a page dedicated to Newt’s favorite zoos in America. It wouldn’t be a Gingrich Production unless we were treated to thoughtful analysis by the former Speaker on each location. Newt says the Omaha Zoo is “is one of the three best zoos in America. Its nocturnal house is the best in the world.” Thanks, Newt! Commenting on the Zoo at Hershey Park, Gingrich says it’s close to where he grew up. He “spent many wonderful afternoons wandering around and imagining that someday I could become a zoo keeper.” Wow. Such dedication. We couldn’t help but wonder, what kind of animal would Newt be? What immediately comes to mind is a shaved polar bear who is pregnant with quintuplets. Forget being a zoo KEEPER. He could be an attraction at a zoo. In all seriousness, Gingrich’s love of zoos began at an early age.

The Awl uncovered an early mention of young Newton Leroy Gingrich. In 1954, an 11-year-old Gingrich (as frightening as that sounds) actually went to the mayor of his town to suggest that he and his friends could round up enough animals to inhabit their own zoo in a local park. This just drives home the fact that Newt has been a thorn in the side of politicians since a young age. Little did that mayor know that young, presumably chubby Newton, would grow up to be a candidate for President and a self-described “amateur paleontologist.”

At last week’s CNN Debate in South Carolina, when John King asked Newt Gingrich about recent allegations from his first wife saying that he wanted an “open marriage”, Gingrich gave a legendary answer blistering the newsman.

The crowd roared for Gingrich.

It wasn’t the first time. Newt has made a habit out of squeezing in a pointed jab at the “mainstream” and “elite” media in each debate, and each time, his applause gets louder. So imagine Gingrich’s frustration when NBC’s Brian Williams requested that the audience refrain from any cheering and clapping. The result? It was one of Newt’s weaker debates.

But today, Gingrich is fighting back. He told Fox and Friends this morning that he wishes he had protested NBC’s rules about applause and that the reason the audience was told to stay quiet is that the “media is terrified that the audience is going to side with the candidates against the media.” Gingrich says putting debate organizers on notice that he won’t participate in any future debates unless the audience is welcomed back into the mix, saying, “Media doesn’t control free speech. View the video below.

 

There’s another CNN Debate Thursday night, so we will see if anyone tries to muzzle the audience and how Newt reacts if it happens.

In other Newt News… the visual comparisons of Newt to Schrute (Dwight, from NBC’s “The Office”) have been making the viral rounds. Rainn Wilson, who plays Schrute, acknowledged the similarities via Twitter, according to Chris Moody of Yahoo. Wilson has changed his Twitter avatar to the picture on the right.

(A Sprinkling of Things we Think you Ought to Know…)

Happy Birthday to FLOTUS – A Thursday afternoon email from Barack Obama is asking citizens to sign a virtual birthday card for his wife, Michelle. FLOTUS turns 48 years old on Tuesday. The email says, “This fall, Michelle and I will have been married 20 years. The next 10 months will be harder than any we’ve experienced together, and I couldn’t do it without her. I knwo she’d love to hear from you today.” Ok, fine, we signed the card..And then we were immediately directed to a donation page for the Obama re-election campaign. Really? Can’t I just re-gift the smoothie maker I got for Christmas?

Perhaps He Should Be on the Steer-ing Committee – Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) loves his beef. In a recent NYT profile, he admitted that when he travels to Washington, D.C. from his home state, he packs his luggage with “roasts, ribs, round steak and rib steak.” In Tester’s eyes, there’s no beef in D.C. quite like the beef he gets back home in Montana. Tester continues, “Taking meat with us is just something that we do,” Senator Tester, 55, said over a meal of beef stroganoff cooked by his wife, Sharla, in their Capitol Hill town house. “We like our own meat.” What’s the best way to eat meat of such high quality? According to the Tester’s, their favorite recipe is “smothered in canned cream-of-mushroom soup and a squirt of ketchup, cooked down in a slow cooker.”

Soledad Versus Jodi Kantor – Soledad O’Brien pulled no punches with NYT’s Jodi Kantor Friday morning on CNN. HuffPost reports that Kantor, out promoting her book, The Obamas, had to defend the portrait she painted of FLOTUS in the book. Michelle Obama has spoken out about how this isn’t the first time someone has tried to make her out to be the “angry black woman.” Check out the video of the two journos scrapping.

It seems even Rush Limbaugh is tiring of Politico Mike Allen‘s shtick. Allen’s interview with Governor Rick Perry of Texas is making waves for all the wrong reasons. When Allen asked Perry about a campaign source who talked about how disorganized they were, Perry bristled and repeatedly asked the reporter, “You got a name?” On Tuesday’s broadcast, Limbaugh applauded Perry for standing firm and not allowing himself to be badgered by Allen. The radio host said many claim Perry “looks slow”, but he insists it isn’t true. He suggested Allen could be inventing things for a story. While Allen insists that he obtained the information from a source inside the Perry campaign, Limbaugh says, “There doesn’t have to be anybody saying anything. The journalist can simply think something and then put that in the mouth or in the words of some person who doesn’t exist and say it’s ‘a critic.’” Limbaugh continues the half-praise of Perry and half-assault on Allen’s media credentials for several minutes and then gives us a brutal rendition of the exchange.

Listen to Rush Limbaugh’s Mike Allen Impression

Poor Allen. Staring at your interview subject the way a squirrel stares at a ringing telephone is an interesting interview technique, but sadly, not very effective.