Talking Points Memo is not the perfect name for a news website. No one here is going to argue with you about that.
But we’ve had it for 20 years and it’s not changing now.
The name started as an inside joke between Josh Marshall and himself.
During the Clinton impeachment, the so-called origins of the “talking points memo” — a supposed list of talking points that Monica Lewinsky gave to Linda Tripp — was a holy grail for conservative investigators.
Josh tells the story here:
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Thanks for explaining that. I had always wondered where the name came from. If I had to guess, my guess would’ve been that it was to mock Republicans who seem to talk as if they have read an actual ‘talking points memo’ as they hit the airwaves and they say the same exact thing to every news outlet.
I always thought it was throwing shade at Bill O’Reilly and his talking point memo segment.
Pretty sure the name would have predated O’Reilly’s segment, but that didn’t seem to have stopped Bill from treating it that way (and incidentally allowing TPM to punch above its weight by exposing it to a larger cable audience).
I took it literally–that this site is a “talking points memo”, i.e. a list of points Josh and others were going to talk about. Isn’t that what it still is?
This is all well and good, but the important point:
What is the name of the little dog that walks by near the end of the video?