Jeffrey Goldberg Tag

There continues to be fallout from the profile of Obama adviser Ben Rhodes that appeared in Sunday's New York Times magazine last week. Much of discussion of the article has surrounded who demonstrated bad faith, the Obama administration or Samuels. There are two targets of the criticism. In the MSM and left-leaning media the villain is David Samuels for writing a hatchet job on the administration. In the right-leaning media the villain is the administration for lying about the nuclear deal with Iran. But the question of dishonesty or bad faith is less important than the system Samuel described. From the administration's view, the article was, according to Lee Smith, "a victory lap," a boast of how they bested their political opponents and mastered the media. Little attention has been paid to exactly how the "echo chamber" Ben Rhodes boasted about actually worked.