by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
I was going to shut up about this until I saw someone praise Maggie Haberman “habering” me on Twitter. “Bravo, Maggie,” is the exact quote. The issue is you can “huzzah, grrl power” all you want to, access journalism still sucks.
But why?
Apparently, Ms. Haberman’s argument is by definition journalism requires access and so, well, fuck you. But let me be honest — Ms. Haberman is no better than Trump for putting me on blast to make her point. Punching down is never cool, no matter who you are. So, in a sense, my pique is more about her flex on me than it is the facts. I find that Blue Check Nattering Nabobs have started to do this more often. For some reason, they want to do it to me. This is grating because generally — but not always — they put me on blast after having made a snap, inaccurate judgement about what my tweet was about.
Instead of getting information the easy way by coddling Trump — or whomever — maybe Ms. Haberman should be willing to burn her bridges in the bowels of House Trump if it means she’s able to be more critical of the would-be Thousand Year Trump.
She has her argument and I have mine. She’s powerful, I’m not. I’ll let you make up your own mind. I believe we’re in a crisis. It’s time for the press to forgo cozy relations with the criminal fascist Trump Adminstration and be patriots, to think about the best interests of the nation first.
All I can say is I love to write and fairly cogent in my rhetoric. What’s more, I’m not Ben Shapiro. I actually am working in good faith. And, really, it wouldn’t even be an issue if Ms. Haberman was a bit more polite to in her efforts to defend herself.
Arrogance is a dick move, no matter who you are.
