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| White House Enraged, Demand Censorship, After SCOTUS Nominee Outed By CBS | |
| 2010-04-16 | |
| The White House ripped CBS News on Thursday for publishing an online column by a blogger who made assertions about the sexual orientation of Solicitor General Elena Kagan, widely viewed as a leading candidate for the Supreme Court. Ben Domenech, a former Bush administration aide and Republican Senate staffer, wrote that President Obama would "please" much of his base by picking the "first openly gay justice." An administration official, who asked not to be identified discussing personal matters, said Kagan is not a lesbian. I can remember a time, oh, 2005 or so, when a MSM organization outing a Supreme Court nominee would have won a Pulitzer prise ... CBS initially refused to pull the posting, prompting Anita Dunn, a former White House communications director who is working with the administration on the high court vacancy, to say: "The fact that they've chosen to become enablers of people posting lies on their site tells us where the journalistic standards of CBS are in 2010." She said the network was giving a platform to a blogger "with a history of plagiarism" who was "applying old stereotypes to single women with successful careers." The network deleted the posting Thursday night after Domenech said he was merely repeating a rumor. The flare-up underscores how quickly the battle over a Supreme Court nominee -- or even a potential nominee -- can turn searingly personal. Most major news organizations have policies against "outing" gays or reporting on the sex lives of public officials unless they are related to their public duties. A White House spokesman, Ben LaBolt, said he complained to CBS because the column "made false charges." Domenech later added an update to the post: "I have to correct my text here to say that Kagan is apparently still closeted -- odd, because her female partner is rather well known in Harvard circles." CBS executives at first defended the column, noting that it appeared in an opinion section that contains contributions from blogs and publications on the left and right. Dan Farber, editor in chief of CBSNews.com, said that Domenech's column "just got through our filters" and that if his staff had seen "a controversial statement like that, we'd want to get more evidence of its accuracy" before publishing it. "But once it is out there," Farber said, "the better approach is just to address it head-on rather than trying to sweep it under the rug." He changed his mind about yanking the column after receiving an e-mail from Domenech, which the blogger also sent to The Washington Post. Farber said in a statement that "after looking at the facts we determined that it was nothing but pure and irresponsible speculation on the blogger's part." "I offer my sincere apologies to Ms. Kagan if she is offended at all by my repetition of a Harvard rumor in a speculative blog post," Domenech said. That's not an apology. It doesn't matter whether Ms. Kagan is offended, what matters is what Domenech wrote.
In his e-mail, Domenech said that the naming of an openly gay justice would show "how far we've come as a society" and that this "will be an issue of political discussion, whether we like it or not." Domenech is editor of a year-old Web site called the New Ledger, from which the CBS column was reprinted. He is also editor of the City, a religion-oriented publication of Houston Baptist University. Rumors invariably raise a difficult journalistic choice: whether to report on them and give them credence, or withhold them and fail to acknowledge what insiders are discussing. Marc Ambinder, a blogger for the Atlantic, wrote Monday about what he called "a baffling whisper campaign" about Kagan "among both gay rights activists and social conservatives. . . . "So pervasive are these rumors that two senior administration officials I spoke with this weekend acknowledged hearing about them and did not know whether they were true. . . . Why is she the subject of these rumors? Who's behind them?" | |
| Posted by: Anonymoose |
| #10 All I care about the SC nominee is that they narrowly interpret the constitution based on it's content rather than in light of international law, feelings, empathy, or the phase of the moon. Will Obama choose someone like that? Not a snowball's chance in hell. |
| Posted by: DMFD 2010-04-16 17:53 |
| #9 The big concern is that if she was homosexual, that the Democrats are trying to further Balkanize the SCOTUS, by declaring this in future to be the "homosexual" chair. They obviously have an agenda item to make the SCOTUS a "liberal rainbow court", ignoring any constitutional purpose other than to advance leftism. This was first seen in justice Thurgood Marshal, who proved himself utterly incapable of the job. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2010-04-16 16:24 |
| #8 hmmm - I thought this was the Lindsey Graham thread |
| Posted by: Frank G 2010-04-16 16:15 |
| #7 What Steve said. Barry could do a lot worse and probably will |
| Posted by: lex 2010-04-16 15:16 |
| #6 I really don't care about her personal life. I care about her position on interpreting the Constitution Ditto to that. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2010-04-16 13:43 |
| #5 I also could care less about her sexual orientation, whatever it might be. Like Glenmore, I'd prefer her not to be on the court because of her judicial philosophy. But the odds are that Bambi isn't going to nominate a conservative or even middle of the road type legal scholar. Kagan is pretty smart and has shown herself to be a little flexible. If she's run out of town the next nominee might be pretty darned scary. Just saying. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2010-04-16 13:43 |
| #4 If she were a libertarian lesbian then all would be fine. |
| Posted by: No I am the other Beldar 2010-04-16 11:57 |
| #3 Wouldn't shock me if the people behind the "whisper campaign" weren't advocates of a competing (and equally "liberal") potential nominee. |
| Posted by: Mike 2010-04-16 11:03 |
| #2 I really don't care about her personal life. I care about her position on interpreting the Constitution; I fully expect she would be yet another liberal 'revisionist', and as such I would not want her on the Court. ANY Zero appointee would be similarly revisionist though. But if this one 'comes out of her closet' she would be uncriticizable, as a member of a victim group. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2010-04-16 10:56 |
| #1 Anita Dunn, a former White House |
| Posted by: armyguy 2010-04-16 10:51 |