Wow, it didn’t take long for President Obama’s buddies in the media to throw Bob Woodward under the bus. His sin was to criticize Obama and reveal how economic adviser Gene Sperling told him he would come to “regret” his reporting on the sequester. Normal people would stand up for Woodward, but for the most part, the press corps covering the White House is not made up of normal people.

Just to clarify, Smith later added via Twitter, “Am I crazy to read ‘regret’ here as ‘regret being wrong’? This is something flacks yell at reporters a lot.”

That meme was picked up by the White House’s favorite palace guards, including Dave Weigel at Slate (he retweeted Smith, tweeted, “Theory: Woodward is trolling,” then added via retweet that the whole situation was “boring”); BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski, who mockingly tweeted, “Every reporter who deals with flacks/campaign advisors/politicos/ on a daily basis finds that less than threatening”; Justin Green, who edits David Frum’s blog at The Daily Beast, tweeted, “I rarely rarely report, and I’ve had flacks say worse. Not that rare”; Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic tweeted, “As a reporter, I don’t think this was a threat”; Dylan Byers of Politico tweeted, “tweets, I’m no Woodward but broadcast/cable TV PR reps use that ‘regret’ tactic a lot”; Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo tweeted, “Who goes birther first, Scalia or Woodward?” The messaging was universal from the leftist Obama-supporting media: Woodward hadn’t been threatened, and was an amateur or a crazy old coot to think he was being threatened. Matt Yglesias of Slate summed up the general Palace Guard Media take: “Woodward’s managed to make me suspect Nixon got a raw deal.”

The gall of this is astounding. (Read More)

It is astounding, but not at all surprising.

Oh, and Lanny Davis better watch his back.