Another old leak from JournoList, the late off-the-record listserve of liberal pundits, has proven that leftists control all media! Some bloggers were apparently so upset with a 2008 debate that they conspired to write an open letter.

The Daily Caller's Jonathan Strong, the same dude who wrote about Dave Weigel's angry JournoList emails and eventually cost Weigel his Washington Post job, has found a thread from the aftermath of a terrible, terrible 2008 ABC News presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the worst of the season. The moderators were George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson, who brought shame to their villages. Every liberal hated it and was quite vocal about it. (The question I remember most vividly was George Stephanopoulos', to Obama: "Does Jeremiah Wright love America as much as you do?" There was also a question regarding how Obama felt about the American flag. He said he liked it! Lying? Etc.)

Meanwhile, on JournoList, many of the same liberal pundits who were openly contemptuous of the debate on their own blogs or column spaces hatched the Collusion Plot of the Century, as the Daily Caller would have us believe: they would write an open letter to ABC News — collaboratively.

Michael Tomasky, a writer for the Guardian, also tried to rally his fellow members of Journolist: "Listen folks–in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn't about defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people."

"Richard Kim got this right above: ‘a horrible glimpse of general election press strategy.' He's dead on," Tomasky continued. "We need to throw chairs now, try as hard as we can to get the call next time. Otherwise the questions in October will be exactly like this. This is just a disease."

(In an interview Monday, Tomasky defended his position, calling the ABC debate an example of shoddy journalism.)

Thomas Schaller, a columnist for the Baltimore Sun as well as a political science professor, upped the ante from there. In a post with the subject header, "why don't we use the power of this list to do something about the debate?" Schaller proposed coordinating a "smart statement expressing disgust" at the questions Gibson and Stephanopoulos had posed to Obama.

"It would create quite a stir, I bet, and be a warning against future behavior of the sort," Schaller wrote.

Tomasky approved. "YES. A thousand times yes," he exclaimed.

The members began collaborating on their open letter. Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones rejected an early draft, saying, "I'd say too short. In my opinion, it doesn't go far enough in highlighting the inanity of some of [Gibson's] and [Stephanopoulos's] questions. And it doesn't point out their factual inaccuracies …Our friends at Media Matters probably have tons of experience with this sort of thing, if we want their input."

This is the scandal. Even worse, they eventually released that letter! Nooooo!

Also, later in the story: Spencer Ackerman gets angry sometimes, and people have to talk him down. Who knew?

So, to wrap up the Daily Caller's powerful expose: Michael Tomasky. Thomas Schaller. Richard Kim. Media Matters. Mother Jones' blog. Perhaps a couple dozen more. The Most Powerful Media-Controlling Force In The World.

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