Fallout from Hillary's "monster" victory

Calling Hillary Clinton a monster is being unnecessarily kind. But that is the sin of Obama's former adviser on foreign affairs.

Samantha Power said it in an unguarded moment while being interviewed by a newspaper in Scotland. She immediately told the reporter (Gerri Peev, a female) that the remark should be off the record, but the reporter and her editors determined that such forgiveness wasn't in accordance with pre-established rules; namely, it had been previously agreed that the interview was to be on the record.

Gotcha! The Scotsman published that slip of the tongue and, for good measure, took pains to publicize the aside volunteered by Ms. Power in which she used the f-word.

The fall-out was, as everyone already knows, that Obama feigned shock and fired Ms. Power. That clearly indicates two things: Obama is a weak-ass when it comes to supporting folks on his team and, two, Ms. Power wasn't all that much of an asset anyway.

But the fall-out goes deeper for anyone who cares about media and reportage.

Off-the-record information for the reporter normally is used as backgrounding for better understanding of the subject at issue. It can be specified in the interview agreement, but if not, it is generally understood to be the way of doing business. Only a publication with an agenda or a penchant for making a splash for itself would violate this trust over something so shallow as an unguarded little name-call.

If calling Billary a monster were consequential enough to report, it surely is important enough to follow up with questions about why this term applied to the candidate. It was not that consequential, however. It was a Gotcha! pure and simple. (See the MSNBC report.)

The uproar that followed was loud enough to inspire the editor of the Scotsman to proclaim "we are certain it was right to publish (the monster comment)." Not so certain were folks who read the story and offered their opinions because commenting was suspended "due to repeated abuse of our terms and conditions."

Not so certain, also, are professional journalists who understand that The Scotsman's behavior intensifies distrust of media by news sources and intensifies the perception among consumers that many, if not most, big-media reporters are hypocritical and fraudulent.