Obama Plans to Meet Soon with Liberal Bloggers

Apparently President Obama wants to circumvent the Washington news establishment and other branches of the main stream media to get out an "unfiltered" message. While I can understand that desire after watching the Washington talking heads endlessly mouthing the empty, hypocritical talking points of the GOP without ever asking (1) what they would propose instead and (2) holding them accountable for their actions during the Chimperator's regime, his administration hopefully knows that many liberal outlets will not just simply do his bidding. Yes, all too often, the MSM acts as if it's the hired PR firm for the GOP both when it is in and out of power. But with liberal bloggers, however, I hope Obama knows what he may be stepping into. Unlike the press corps, he will likely get biting questions and pointed follow up. The liberal bloggers I know and read want action, not lip service . Obama has a long, long way to go to convince some of us that he really meant statements/promises he made during the campaign. Here are some highlights from Politico:

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President Barack Obama and his team are launched on a strategy to sail above the traditional White House press corps by reaching out to liberal commentators, local reporters and ethnic media. . . . But those moves are only part of a much larger strategy aimed at communicating directly with audiences the White House believes are more sympathetic to the president’s agenda . . . Obama himself plans to meet soon with liberal bloggers, according to an administration official.

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Obama can exploit the fact that the traditional newspapers and networks are weakened by competition from cable and the Web, and by a faltering business model. What’s more, the proliferation of outlets has been embraced in recent years by a newly energized liberal base — eager to match the decades-old success of conservatives in building media channels to circumvent what they see as a biased or trivia-minded Washington press corps.

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But another source in the White House said that doing such a program allows the administration to stroke a friendly audience that doesn’t now hear from the president on a regular basis. . . . Dan Bartlett, Bush’s White House communications director, said that he and his counterparts in the Obama administration were simply following the path of their audience. “The lagging role of the mainstream media has prompted people to seek information from a wide variety of outlets that are often now aligned with their personal interests,” he said.

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The idea then, as now, was to reach certain groups directly and without the interpretation of an at times cynical Washington press corps.

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In terms of the Washington press corps, to cynical, I would also add the adjectives lazy, ass kissing, and incompetent. If this crowd had done its job, we would not now be mired down in Iraq and would not have squandered countless billions of dollars in the process.