Gotcha!


This is an account from Connie Schultz’s facebook page, so I’ll put the whole thing here for you fb-haters.

Email from conservative blogger, dated July 9, 2012:

Dear Ms. Shultz,

We are doing an expose on journalists in the elite media who socialize with elected officials they are assigned to cover. We have found numerous photos of you with Sen. Sherrod Brown. In one of them, you appear to be hugging him.

Care to comment?

An exposé! Of the elite media! And he’s got the photographic evidence! It sounds so Breitbartian. And the followup is a classic Breitbartian pratfall.

Response, dated July 10, 2012:

Dear Mr. [Name Deleted]:

I am surprised you did not find a photo of me kissing U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown so hard he passes out from lack of oxygen. He’s really cute.

He’s also my husband.

You know that, right?

Connie Schultz.

I’m sure this will make headlines at the Drudge Report or the Daily Caller or The Blaze or some similar right-wing schlock factory.

Comments

  1. Gregory in Seattle says

    Obviously she’s lying: if she were married, her name would be Mrs. Sherrod Brown. Because in the Holy, God-Created Institution of Marriage ™, a woman ceases to be a person once she has joined with a man.

  2. davec says

    It can’t be true. Marriage is defined as being between one republican man and one republican woman.

  3. says

    Wonderful example of the combination of evil and incompetence. Oooh! Oooh! Look at this picture! Um… try looking at some pictures of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner sometime.

    An expose, really? You only now notice that most highly paid journalists working for big commercial media outlets have acted more as stenographers than as journalists? Asleep during the Bush administration, were you? – you snoozed while the press steno pool transcribed one lie after another which we can prove with empirical evidence were lies and you are only waking up now? Really? Well, glad you could join us, now do try to keep up.

  4. says

    sadunlap:

    An expose, really? You only now notice that most highly paid journalists working for big commercial media outlets have acted more as stenographers than as journalists?

    Connie Shultz is a real journalist. She’s one of the best journalists around.

    She took a leave of absence during her husband’s campaign in 2006 to avoid accusations of bias. (She also took that opportunity to campaign for her husband.) She left The Plain Dealer late last year because of the potential of divided loyalties.

    She takes her job as journalist very seriously.

  5. Beatrice says

    Google shares information with everyone. Google is communist. No proper conservative would use it.

  6. davec says

    Raging Bee (at #7), the name is hidden because Ms. Schultz has class. She said she figured he was probably an intern, because his name did not show up on the masthead, and she didn’t want to ruin his career as it was just getting started. More restraint than he deserves, surely, but it just shows what a lucky guy Sen. Brown is.

  7. Synfandel says

    I wish she had strung him along for a few email exchanges before ‘exposing’ his research failure. Given a little more rope, he might have made an even bigger public ass of himself.

  8. mythbri says

    We are doing an expose on journalists in the elite media who socialize with elected officials they are assigned to cover.

    Ever notice how these kinds of exposes always miss the former elected officials that want to be elected to be other elected officials that happen to be affiliated with major news organizations?

    *cough* Fox News *cough*

  9. DLC says

    Sherrod Brown is a class act. His Mrs, also.
    These clowns*, not so much.

    (with apologies to decent, hardworking clowns. )

  10. Manu of Deche says

    Too bad failing doesn’t produce a sound. The boom of that initial email would have been audible around the world.

  11. Thomathy, Holy Trinity of Conflation: Atheist-Secularist-Darwinist says

    DLC

    Sherrod Brown is a class act. His Mrs, also.

    That reads oddly. Consider:

    Connie Schultz is a class act. Her Mr., also.

    Hmm …FTFY

  12. yoav says

    I wander if Sean Hannity and Bill O’reilly got similar emails from this guy asking about their appearances in republican campaign events and hosting fundraisers for candidates they later interview on their shows?

  13. RFW says

    “Elite media” = “Uses words of more than two syllables and words I don’t know”

    Why is the right so proud of its ignorance? All you have to do to get rid of ignorance is start reading, Wikipedia probably being the most accessible source of general information these days.

  14. Ogvorbis: Dogmaticus sycophantus says

    “Elite media” = “Uses words of more than two syllables and words I don’t know”

    I disagree with your definition (though I agree wholeheartedly with the radical right’s know-nothingism). When I hear a conservative say “Elite Media”, my own definition is “A reporter who covers conservative issues with the same critical eye that they use when they cover liberal issues.” But that’s just me.

  15. says

    Davec:

    she didn’t want to ruin his career as it was just getting started.

    That wouldn’t have happened, thanks to the generosity of the the wingnut welfare gravy train and the complicity of the mainstream media with the right wing.

    RFW:

    Why is the right so proud of its ignorance?

    They’re setting the example for all the useful idiots out there whose votes they want to command.

  16. Gaebolga says

    Ogvorbis wrote:

    When I hear a conservative say “Elite Media”, my own definition is “A reporter who covers conservative issues with the same critical eye that they use when they cover liberal issues.”

    Similar to the conservative definitions of “fairness” (“ensuring nobody ever treats me like I treat others”) and “compromise” (“everyone else giving me exactly I want”).

    At least conservatives are consistent….

    Ogvorbis wrote:

    But that’s just me.

    …any anyone else who has eyes and a brain.

  17. Nathan Godwin says

    This is hilarious! This is the type of idiotic mistake that is LOL funny no matter who makes it, but when a member of a camp who pride themselves on ignorance and for whom somehow the word “elite” means something other than “better”, it is as vindicating and unsurprising as it is funny.

  18. davec says

    Ms. Daisy: I agree with you, he would probably wear the outing like a badge of honor amongst the rightwing typing brigades; I was merely relaying what I had read was Ms. Schultz’ response to that same inquiry.

  19. Ogvorbis: Dogmaticus sycophantus says

    he would probably wear the outing like a badge of honor amongst the rightwing typing brigades

    More than that, he would have been held up as a victim of the mean and vicious left-wing media and liberal politicians who something, something, something, and is he is therefore a True American Hero! And then he would have been hired by Faux News Corpse as an investigative journalist.

  20. says

    Wow, it’s not like their wikipedia pages don’t say it, either.

    Big oops.

    But yeah, coulda happened to any poor intern given a list to verify without context.

  21. petejohn says

    Goodness…. As some folks mentioned above, there’s this thing called Google. It provides a lot of information. It’s a useful tool, unlike the person who sent the original comment to Schultz. That individual is just a total tool.

  22. says

    More than that, he would have been held up as a victim of the mean and vicious left-wing media and liberal politicians who something, something, something, and is he is therefore a True American Hero! And then he would have been hired by Faux News Corpse as an investigative journalist.

    Joe the Journalist?

  23. says

    Raging Bee (at #7), the name is hidden because Ms. Schultz has class. She said she figured he was probably an intern, because his name did not show up on the masthead, and she didn’t want to ruin his career as it was just getting started. More restraint than he deserves, surely, but it just shows what a lucky guy Sen. Brown is.

    Journalists like this are like tumors. You have to get them when their small or they get like James OKeef and co and become inoperable. Or metastasize and form Fox

  24. Tethys says

    Dear Ms. Shultz

    Why do conservatives have such trouble with spelling?
    Her name is spelled Schultz.

    Spell-check is smarter than conservative bloggers apparently.

  25. DLC says

    @ 20 : you’re right. the post was about Ms Shultz, who should have been the primary subject of my sentence. Correction accepted.

  26. says

    @ 10 NigeltheBold

    Connie Shultz is a real journalist. She’s one of the best journalists around.

    I wouldn’t know because I have not watched television for years and when I did it was seldom.

    How objective can a journalist be when investigative journalism does not happen much anymore? As a result reporters need to cultivate relationships with sources, socialize with their sources, stay on friendly terms with their sources. If they report critically what these sources tell them they lose that source. They must accept what government officials tell them in order to keep “access.”

    Glenn Greenwald has analyzed many instances of stenography substituting for journalism. The trend did not end when Obama took office, either.

  27. says

    @37 – Connie Schultz is a writer and was a newspaper columnist not a TV reporter so your television habits are irrelevant. Would you like to stop digging now or is the hole not deep enough yet?

  28. says

    Can’t help thinking the use of the word “socialize” was deliberate, only a couple of letters away from “socialist”.