Our hard-core, adversarial press corps

By Glenn Greenwald

On Friday, CNN's Ed Henry posted a series of giggly, adolescent updates on his Twitter feed, describing the events that took place at a "beach" party thrown by Joe Biden, at the Vice President's mansion, for various "reporters" and White House officials. Digby excerpted just a sampling of Henry's giddy outburst:

Henry also posted videos and photographs he took of the Vice President and White House Chief of Staff playing with water guns, slides and the White House press corps.

Today, The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder, who often passes along White House thinking under the cover of anonymity, confesses that he, too, attended the water party, and also posted a short video he took of Rahm Emanuel frolicking with a squirt gun along with party participants Wolf Blitzer (the former AIPAC official and current CNN anchor) and The New York Times' David Sanger (who faithfully regurgitates every administration fear-mongering claim regarding the Iranian nuclear program):

About all of this, Ambinder writes:

Does an afternoon of leisure with senior administration officials violate journalistic ethics? To many, the self-evident answer is: "Absolutely." I have a different view, although perhaps it's a way to rationalize my own decision to attend the Bidens' first beach party for journalists. . . .

Yes, "perhaps." I personally don't think that these types of interactions "violate journalistic ethics" because I don't think such a thing exists for them. Rather, all of this just helpfully reveals what our nation's leading "journalists" really are: desperate worshipers of political power who are far more eager to be part of it and to serve it than to act as adversarial checks against it -- and who, in fact, are Royal Court Spokespeople regardless of which monarch is ruling. That's why they're invited into the heart of Versailles to frolic with the King's most trusted aides: it's their reward for loyal service as Court courtiers. Just marvel at the self-abasing joy in which Ed Henry wallows by virtue of getting to play water sports with Emanuel and the Bidens. He sounds like a gushing pre-adolescent who just met his favorite boy band idol and got his water gun signed. Digby asks, quite rhetorically: "do you think this sort of thing makes it easier or more difficult for journalists to maintain their independence?"

(Original here.)