Politico’s Mike Allen apparently found it odd when the Washington Post’s Wesley Lowery, one of two reporters arrested this week in Ferguson, Mo., went after “talking heads” like MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough.
Lowery went off on Scarborough on Thursday after the former Republican congressman-turned-MNSBC host said the reporter may have gotten arrested in the St. Louis suburb so he could get on TV.
“Well, I would invite Joe Scarborough to come down to Ferguson and get out of 30 Rock where he’s sitting and sipping his Starbucks smugly,” Lowery said during a subsequent appearance on CNN.
Lowery added that he has “little patience for talking heads.”
Allen seemed to think this smacked of chutzpah coming from a young scribe, so he offered the following item in Friday morning’s edition of Politico Playbook:
YA CAN’T MAKE IT UP – Wesley Lowrey, 23-year-old Congress/politics reporter for the WashPost, responding on CNN to suggestions that he should have obeyed police amid a riot: “[L]et me be clear about this: I have LITTLE PATIENCE for talking heads.”
Allen is accustomed to catching heat from other journalists, but the ridicule that has followed his dig at Lowery has been particularly loud.
For one, Allen originally got both Lowery’s name and age wrong (he is actually 24). These two details have since been corrected. But Allen also erred when he wrote that Lowery failed to obey the authorities “amid a riot.” Lowery and the Huffington Post’s Ryan Reilly were arrested inside a Ferguson McDonald’s. Reilly said the fast-food restaurant was “tranquil” before the cops arrived.
It served as yet another reminder of the cozy rapport Allen maintains with the likes of Scarborough, whose show features a Politico-centric segment every day and Allen appears on regularly.
“In Allen’s world, which is defined by overlapping and possibly coterminous circles of sources, friends, and paid advertisers, the sort of effrontery displayed by Lowery first toward the police and then toward an esteemed television commentator was thoroughly intolerable,” wrote New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait.
“YA CAN’T MAKE IT UP – lapdog to power and ethically compromised industry spokesman @mikeallen is thought by some to be a talented journalist,” tweeted Alex Pareene.
Allen doesn’t exactly have an acrimonious personality, and Friday’s shot at Lowery was about as harsh as it gets for him.
In a March installment of Playbook, Allen took what was perceived as a jab at FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver, who at this point is nearly as well-known for his Politico mockery as he is for election forecasts.
“FiveThirtyEight debuts, finally giving smart people something to read on the web,” Allen wrote in the newsletter before linking to a post at Silver’s site titled “You Just Had Sex, So How Many Calories Did You Burn?”
But when TPM reached out to Allen at the time, he had only warm things to say about Silver and company.
In the same spirit, TPM sought comment from Allen on Friday to elaborate on his thoughts about Lowery, but he has not responded.
This post has been updated.
Why I hardly ever read anything from that site. They contribute absolutely nothing to the political dialog, despite their name.
politico???
fixed noise want-a-be!!
Nope, it’s NOT journalism!
The trade name POLITICO, owned as a GOP web presence, means anything that issues forth from that business, is froth.
So who is Mike Allen, and why should we care?
So the reporters “should have obeyed police” Mike? If you read Lowery’s account of what happened…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-ferguson-washington-post-reporter-wesley-lowery-gives-account-of-his-arrest/2014/08/13/0fe25c0e-2359-11e4-86ca-6f03cbd15c1a_story.html
…inside a McDonald’s where the two were recharging equipment and answering Tweets, the cops walked in, heavily armored and Lowery began to video tape them as they approached. The officer told him to stop and Lowery asked him if it was not his right to tape and the cop didn’t press it further.
Then the police ordered the two reporters out of the McDonalds…there did not seem to be a clear rationale for doing so…they were not out on the street, and both, Lowery notes, were wearing Press ID (despite which the cops demanded ID).
Then the cops began hustling them out and when Lowery wasn’t sure which door they wanted him to go through and tried to catch his backpack which was slipping off his shoulder, he was grabbed and slammed into a soda machine. He says he immediately turned his back and put his hands behind him and said, 'I am not resisting." To which the cops reportedly replied…‘You’re resisting. Stop resisting.’
CNN is sadly right when it advises, do what the cops tell you, but at the same time, cops may tell you all sorts of things that you actually don’t have to do, like orders to stop video taping. You really have to know your rights though, and sadly, even when you know them (like demanding the names and badge numbers of officers) if they don’t comply, what ability do you have?
Sure, you can go to court, but you will be hard pressed to find any case in which cops get hauled into court and don’t immediately claim that they felt their lives were in danger, or that the “suspect” was “resisting” or “refusing orders” and judges and juries give them the benefit of the doubt. Note Lowery’s assertion that he wasn’t resisting and the immediate retort that he was. My guess is that modern cops 101 advises patrolmen to assume that there might be a recording going on. Lowery had been recording. So quickly making a statement claiming Lowery WAS resisting would be a handy way to muddy the waters if that tape ever wound up in court.
The one potential saving grace these days is video and digitial photos which can at least provide countervailing evidence as witness the NYC attempt to give a lengthy prison term to a woman for “resisting” and the Oakland rubber bullet firing at point blank range that sent a civilian to the hospital with a severe head wound.
But for all their ineptitude in handling things on the streets, the Ferguson police department seems to have gotten excellent training in CYA. Will be interesting to see if they can cobble up an excuse for the shooting of an unarmed young man.
“[A world] defined by overlapping and possibly coterminous circles of sources, friends, and paid advertisers…”
and
“[L]apdog to power and ethically compromised industry spokesman…”
Truer words were never written of Mike Allen, Politico, or the whole Perpetual-Georgetown-Cocktail-Party industry.