New York Times' Jennifer Steinhauer caricatures Peter DeFazio as "near shrieking"

[brentspeak]

From Steinhauer's report on Democratic opposition to parts of Obama's jobs bill:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/15/us/politics/democrats-in-congress-balking-at-obamas-jobs-bill.html

A small but vocal group dislikes the payroll tax cuts for employees and small businesses. “I have been very unequivocal,” said Representative Peter A. DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon. “No more tax cuts.”

His voice rising to a near shriek, he added: “We have the economy that tax cuts give us. And it’s pretty pathetic, isn’t it? The president is in a box.”

Doesn't exactly sound journalistic, does it? Turns it, Steinhauer has a history of lampooning progressive Democrats and liberals in general:

http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2010/01/jennifer-steinhauer-still-trying-to-be-dowd.html

Brendan Nyhan
Political scientist and media critic

January 27, 2010

Jennifer Steinhauer: The proto-Dowd?

As I http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2006/10/new_york_times_.html">noted a few years ago, New York Times Los Angeles bureau chief Jennifer Steinhauer has a penchant for lacing her stories with cutting rhetoric about liberals. It's all too reminiscent of Maureen Dowd, whose derisive coverage of Bill Clinton and other Democrats helped vault her to the paper's op-ed page.

The latest example of Steinhauer's approach http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/us/27pot.html">appears in her report today on new limits on the number of medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles. Late in the article, she works in a gratuitous and unfunny crack about supporters of medical marijuana smelling like patchouli oil:

In a crowded, vaguely patchouli-oil scented Council chamber, advocates for medical marijuana peppered Council members with threats of lawsuits and election challenges.

Similarly, her profile of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi back in 2006 parroted conservative codewords, saying Republicans viewed Pelosi as "an Armani-clad elitist who will help push lawmakers toward an agenda of multicultural, tax-raising appeasement," and misleadingly claimed Pelosi "favors... schools without prayer and death with taxes." The last two phrases are GOP spin -- Pelosi actually opposes organized prayer in schools (not all prayer) and the estate tax (whose elimination Pelosi opposes) only affects a tiny percentage of the Americans who die each year. (The Times later edited the sentence online to correct these problems.)

Soon afterward, Steinhauer again http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2006/11/nyts_jennifer_s.html">parroted Republican rhetoric, calling California a place where "American values are said to go to die" and writing that the state has an image as "a hotbed of liberal lunacy."

[provis99]

1. the Times and the Washington Post have been right wing crap since the 80s.

Even the Wall Street Journal has more liberal (or at least honest) journalists and opinion writers.

[stevedeshazer]

2. Peter DeFazio isn't shrieking. He's correct.

Some media turd repeating a right wing talking point doesn't discredit his point.

[Bluenorthwest]

3. Peter does not shreik, he speaks the truth

And that bothers the hell out of the various factions to the right.

[kenny blankenship]

4. "We have the economy that tax cuts give us" : in any tone of voice that is 100% correct

and this simple, truthful and obvious statement ought to put a sudden end on debates over the proper shape of Democratic economic policy. We have a Low Tax - Low Wage economy. It goes along with a Low Services government. We have had this general combination of low taxes and low wages for about thirty years now, following the decision to replace Jimmy Carter with Ronnie "government is the problem" Reagan - and the "lowness" of it all has been descending ever since. Due to the weight of its accumulating dysfunctions, that arrangement is finally and irretrievably broken. Forget can it ever recover to play the violin, Doctor? The Reagan Economy will never walk on its own or shit normal again, no matter how many faux Democrats try to restore it to health with the blood of outsourced workers and unenrolled Medicaid patients, nor how many payroll tax holidays they declare, nor how much they pray over it with their coreligionists from across the aisle. It's over.

I understand if DeFazio was voicing frustration. You spend a big chunk of a lifetime waiting for Reaganism's bankruptcy to finally drag it down into the grave, and when the day finally arrives, a President of your own party does his damndest to revive it? No, no, no. TAX CUTS AREN'T THE SOLUTION, TAX CUTS ARE WHAT STARTED THE PROBLEM.