Squaring the Culture

Ben Smith at Politico has the text of an Action Line email broadcast sent out by the Obama campaign to instruct campaign workers to disrupt a radio interview of National Review journalist Stanley Kurtz by Milt Rosenberg on WGN radio in Chicago.

The instructions point out one possible inaccuracy in Kurtz’s report on Fox News the previous night (that’s “1″. Uno. Un. Echad. Not 2, nor 3. Four is right out. Five…), claiming that Kurtz exaggerates William Ayers’ role in choosing Obama to chair the Annenberg Challenge, and that this has been “disproved in numerous press accounts.” On this basis, the Obama camp calls Kurtz a “smear-merchant” and denounces his “baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears.”

Obama campaigners did call the radio show and attempt to discredit Kurtz. Andy McCarthy at The Corner live-blogged them briefly, here and here. They were unable to disrupt or rebut, and mostly complained that there was nobody from the Obama campaign there to rebut Kurtz’s “attacks.” Rosenberg, the host, countered that he’d spoken with the Obama campaign, which is headquartered about a quarter of a mile from the radio station, and the campaign declined to send a representative.

Obama is making a serious mistake attempting to stifle a story like this; he’s only going to draw attention to it, especially given the wild disparity between the tone of the complaint and the actual content, which has not been disproved in any way, and would be a relatively minor quibble even if it had been. However, the truly disturbing take from the incident is the Obama campaign’s choice to respond to awkward stories by attempting to shut down the purveyors. Recall, here, that his campaign also sent threatening letters to the station managers, denouncing them for allowing “smears” on their stations, and also attempted to get the Justice Department to investigate the source of the “smear.” (Michelle Malkin now sports a lengthy reply from the American Issues Project, which is worth a read.) This is something we’ve noted before, and it reminds one of the rising of the Nazi party in 1930s Germany.

Blue Crab Boulevard has a related story: an ABC news reporter was arrested and taken away in handcuffs for attempting to film Democratic Senators and VIP Donors to the Democratic party at a private meeting at the Brown Palace Hotel. ABC News has film of the arrest. The reporters were outside the hotel in public space. It does not appear that the reporter was disturbing the peace or breaking the law, though apparently the hotel complained. Perhaps it was just a misunderstanding, but looks as though the Democratic party does not want the public to associate its name with the sumptuous treatment of super-wealthy donors, and is willing to forfeit freedom of the press in order to maintain the populist fiction of the Democrats being the party of the working man. One wonders how they feel about being associated with reporters being led away in handcuffs.

UPDATE: Guy Benson, who was present in the WGN Studios when Rosenberg was interviewing Kurtz, blogs about the experience on National Review’s Media Blog. He notes that the assault began before the program, with hundreds of calls demanding that the interview not take place. There’s a great deal more here. Read it.