At the Times, quoting the voices in their heads

What is the point of this pointless speculation in an otherwise straightforward piece on U.S. raids in Libya and Somalia, New York Times?

With President Obama locked in a standoff with Congressional Republicans and his leadership criticized for a policy reversal in Syria, the raids could fuel accusations among his critics that the administration was eager for a showy foreign policy victory.

No sourcing. But if anyone in the Republican Party were to go there, it might be House Speaker John Boehner. Well, here’s Boehner on ABC’s “This Week”:

I’m very confident that both of these efforts were successful. I’m going to congratulate all of those in the U.S. intelligence operations, our troops, FBI, all those who were involved.

Listen, the threat of al Qaeda and their affiliates remains. And America has continued to be vigilant. And this is a great example of our dedicated forces on the security side, intelligence side, and our military and their capability to track these people down.

What was the Times thinking? Or to put it another way: Why weren’t they thinking?

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4 thoughts on “At the Times, quoting the voices in their heads”

  1. Why, they’re simply following through on the larger campaign to demonize the right wing – which Boehner obviously does not represent.

    And they’re predicting the inevitable. You just have to give the fire breathers a few more days to get their talking points together.

  2. Please observe that Boehner praised the military, FBI and intelligence service BUT NOT THE PRESIDENT. With the exception of
    Bill Cunningham who does host Sunday night talk show so right-wing even WRKO-AM doesn’t carry it, all the far-right-wing talk show hosts on stations in every state will also praise the military, FBI and intelligence agents, b u t castigate President Obama if the Somali raid is not a success.

  3. It is part of the relentless political soap drama that has become media coverage. Consensus doesn’t sell papers, so the promotion of conflict becomes paramount. Witness Mr. Glavin’s assertion that the praise wasn’t fulsome enough, or properly directed. Both sides can’t take ‘yes’ for an anser anymore.

  4. “Fulsome” doesn’t mean what you think it means, but with the passage of time the “wrong” definition, if repeated enough, displaces the formerly “correct” definition.

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