Last week, former Washington Post features writer Martha Sherill oozed after “legendary” executive editor Ben Bradlee’s death that he was so handsome, he put Cary Grant to shame.
So it’s a bit shocking to find another former Postie, Time editor at large David Von Drehle, outdoing Sherrill in the ooze department, throwing out the word “orgasm” to describe Bradlee’s charisma.
The New Yorker editor and former Washington Post reporter contends that “the most overstated notion” about the late Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee “was the idea that he was an ideological man. This was a cartoon.”
He and Post publisher Katharine Graham, though “often seen as ferociously committed liberals…were, in fact, committed to the First Amendment.”
Michelle Fields of the Daily Caller attended the book party for Chris Matthews and his new book on JFK the "Elusive Hero" to draw out media reaction to the vague Herman Cain harassment allegations. Both MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee dumped their disdain on Cain. Bradlee even suggested Cain deserved it all: "I think he’s got it coming to him, doesn’t he?"
Scarborough rejected the idea that Cain's race is a factor in media attempts to derail his presidential campaign. "I don’t think it has anything to do with race. I think it has to do with the fact that the man is not just a very good presidential candidate." Scarborough even suggested a white candidate couldn't "get away with" what Cain is now apparently getting away with.
Although most media members used the occasion of Mark Felt's death on December 18 to praise the former FBI official better known as "Deep Throat," George Friedman of the geopolitical intelligence organization Stratfor warned readers about journalists becoming "tools of various factions in political disputes" as well as "the relationship between security and intelligence organizations and governments in a Democratic society."
As Friedman indicated, Felt is a pop hero to media members across the fruited plain.
The Associated Press called him an "inspiration to a generation of investigative journalists" the day after his death. The Washington Post wrote days later, "Without a single byline he inspired thousands and thousands of campus misfits to get journalism degrees."
Unlike an adoring press that's always interested in the next gotcha story regardless of the consequences, Friedman, ever the concerned citizen looking out for America's national security interests, didn't write about Felt's role in the Watergate scandal with such glowing praise (emphasis added throughout, h/t many NBers):
Ben Bradlee, the longtime executive editor of The Washington Post, sounded off with Radar Online media critic Charles Kaiser. He professed to be unimpressed with Hillary’s team, denounced Carl Bernstein in French, praised Rupert Murdoch’s skill at newspaper publishing, and denounced wars as something America does perpetually "to keep the standing army in good condition." First, the Hillary questions: