White House Words with Woodward More Proof of Obama Tyranny, Say Rightbloggers

"UPDATE," hastened Jennifer Rubin, "The full e-mails reveal less bullying and far more pomposity, suggesting the White House would have its critic's best interest at heart." After headlining "Woodward Claims White House Threat," Ross Kaminsky of The American Spectator updated, "the details of the e-mails at issue in this story make Woodward's claim of being threatened seem overstated," but "when you have a Chicago thugocracy, it's not surprising that more stories of threats start to percolate out, such as from former Clinton aide Lanny Davis..."

But for many rightbloggers, this didn't matter at all. In fact it only increased their outrage. "Attack the messenger and nitpick what 'you will regret' means to stifle his message that Obama has told two whoppers about the sequester," thundered William A. Jacobson of Legal Insurrection.

Craige McMillan of WorldNetDaily predicted horrible consequences for Woodward from Obama's "Chicago machine": "On a personal level," he said, flashlight under his chin, "dinner and cocktail party invitations will dry up." Also, there would be "more critical articles."

Worse, McMillan implied, Woodward's newspaper articles would be memory-holed: "Regarding Woodward's archives, I would expect his employer to assert ownership, on the basis of his employment and 'work for hire' in the copyright law," said McMillan. "Given his age (and its influence on habits), he is unlikely to have copies stored elsewhere. He may well lose access to his own archives." Great God, he's right -- it's already happened to Josh Trevino!

The Anchoress wrote a post called "Taking Down Benedict; Taking Down Woodward," which compared some nuns' removal of "Benedict's picture from their walls at the moment of sede vacante" with "the Woodward take-down," also described as "mediafolk eating their own to protect their presidential squeeze-toy." Along with this pureed metaphor, The Anchoress offered the observation that "perhaps yesterday was a day when butterflies flapped their wings, and fomented distant calamities." Maybe Obama will hijack the Papacy.

Journalists make enemies! Who knew?

While some rightbloggers hashtagged the world that they #StandWithWoodward ("'Dick Morris: Bob Woodward Wasn't Exaggerating Threat'... #StandWithWoodward," tweeted Kendal Black -- well, that's going to change some minds), others wanted us to know that, truth be told, they never liked the guy.

Jeffrey T. Kuhner at the Washington Times told us, "I don't care for Mr. Woodward," because he brought down the sainted Richard Nixon "for one reason: [He and Carl Bernstein] despised his politics," and also because Woodward "was willing to turn a blind eye to Mr. Clinton's numerous scandals..." Despite this history of evil, Kuhner affected to believe that Woodward turned on the "socialist autocrat" Obama because "he realizes that the president is an inept narcissist who is out of his depth" and wants to save America from him. Complicated man, that Woodward.

A disgusted Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media got mad at Woodward for being "an Obama appeaser," because the leaked emails showed him being chummy with Sperling. "Can you imagine famed Watergate reporter Woodward referring to Nixon Administration officials in such friendly terms?" snarled Kincaid. "This exchange has all the earmarks of a 'journalist' who, rather than being threatened, is being fed a line by the Obama White House and wants more of it... Sadly, it is all too typical of how the liberal media do Obama's bidding."

Both victim and collaborator -- why, it's positively Soviet. Kincaid fleshed this assertion out at length with accounts of how "Obama supporters and Internet 'trolls' have sanitized" the Wikipedia page on Frank Marshall Davis "in order to eliminate any hint that Obama's Marxist policies are being driven by the relationship he had for almost 10 years with a Communist Party operative under surveillance by the FBI." Also, Davis was "a Communist, pornographer, a pedophile, heavy drinker and dope smoker... His influence on Obama helps explain his policies as President." See how it all ties together?

The Right Scoop went even further: though "Bob Woodward says that he never called the language in the email a threat against him," Bob Woodward was wrong, because The Right Scoop found it "pretty much a threat in my book."

On Sunday, Woodward was inviting Obama and Sperling over to his house, but by then it was clear that rightbloggers had already added the Woodward incident to their permanent collection of Obama grievances.

At the Washington Post, Kathleen Parker had a fascinating angle: Parker wrote, "Americans increasingly dislike the so-called mainstream media, sometimes for good reason," she wrote. So far so what -- but then: "Distrust of media, encouraged by alternative media seeking to enhance their own standing, has become a tool useful to the very powers the Fourth Estate was constitutionally endowed to monitor. When the president can bypass reporters to reach the public, it is not far-fetched to imagine a time -- perhaps now? -- when the state controls the message."

Wait -- so, now the President can bypass the liberal media, and use blogs and Twitter to reach the American people? This seems like a rightblogger wet dream -- from about, oh, 2000-2008.

At Hot Air, Jazz Shaw amplified: While originally, "bloggers and other non-establishment entities stepped in to watch the watchers so to speak," over time "blogging quickly devolved into competing camps who almost exclusively challenged the media on the other side of the fence rather than scoring any points for transparency in government." Wow! Have any of you guys heard about this?

For Shaw this meant that "state influence over the media remains a danger, just as the Founders knew it could be when they drafted the Bill of Rights." To William A. Jacobson, it meant one of the great non-sequiturs of our time: "The press itself has become the greatest threat to freedom of the press."

To us, it means that rightbloggers' most reliable skill is turning the tiniest burp of news into the Rise of the Third Reich. Too bad for them that, at the moment, it's not really a paying skill.