Jay Rosen: Why Robert Novak Stormed Off the Set

[norml]

Jay Rosen: Why Robert Novak Stormed Off the Set
1 hour, 16 minutes ago



Thursday afternoon Robert Novak stormed off the set of CNN's "Inside Politics" and got himself suspended. He also eluded questions about the Valerie Plame case that were going to be asked by a CNN colleague, anchor Ed Henry, who said he warned Novak before the show began that he would be raising the matter. (The Transcript. The video.)

For months, Novak has been under pressure to answer questions from fellow journalists. On July 7 (see Time for Robert Novak to Feel Some Chill) I wrote at the Huffington Post: "If you're Jonathan Klein, president of CNN/US, you take him off the air until he decides to go on the air and explain." Novak's friends should tell him to take some time off, I said.

It just seemed to me, as a viewer, that Novak was in an impossible position every time he went on the air to talk politics. If he met his duty to himself (by not speaking up while the Plame case was open) then he could not meet his duty to his peers and his profession.

This was to tell CNN viewers just what he knows about a newsworthy story, and answer a fair-minded interviewer's questions. Putting the man on the air in a situation so constrained was neither fair nor wise. It didn't make journalistic sense, or human sense. (And where was his agent -- rooting him on to disaster?)


snip


http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20050806/cm_huffpost/005233

[imenja]

1. "take him off the air"

that I agree with, only don't ever bring him back.

[opihimoimoi]

2. Apparently, SHRUNKEN BRAIN SYNDROME is contagious

Bush is a prime example.

Rush is also.

and many Pubs too for that matter....

and now NOVEK shows definitive signs of Advanced Shrunken Brains(ASB)

along with the rest of them....Zell included.

[Digit]

3. Novak is arrogant and even difficult to understand ....

Time to get someone younger who hopefully will not throw temper-tantrums. Journalist, my ass.

[Syncronaut Seven]

4. Hehe... It kinda did look like an ambush.

Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy. :nopity:

[MissMarple]

5. So, smallest violin in the world?

:) And, yes, the whole thing looked prescribed.

[Carolab]

6. He was just looking for a way out of answering the name game

From the link above comes the real reason--Henry had a copy of Who's Who in America on his desk, remember? He planned to ask NoFacts about his claim in Monday's column that he "could have" gotten Val's maiden name from it...

http://slate.msn.com/id/2123825/&

Why wouldn't Novak want to say whether he in fact got Plame's name from Who's Who?--ed He might not want to get pinned down on that point, because the truthful answer would be "no." (If it was "yes," wouldn't Novak have written that he'd in fact gotten the name from the book, instead of writing merely that the name "could" be found there?) If the answer is in fact "no," it suggests either a) Novak's source used Plame's maiden name, which might help identify the source, or b) Novak got the name somewhere else and chose to use it himself. Whichever is true, use of the maiden names seems more career-damaging to Plame since more of Plame's overseas contacts as a CIA agent would have known her by that name). Intentional use of that name, then, could be seen as vindictive--evidence that either Novak's source (a) wanted to punish Plame and/or her husband or Novak himself (b) wanted to punish Plame and/or her husband (perhaps in pursuit of a pro-Bush agenda, perhaps because Novak just thinks Wilson's an "ass---"). None of these seem like lines of speculation Novak would want to encourage. ...

[Jamastiene]

7. Feeling a little betrayed by your heroes, Novak???

Yep, it's Novak's turn to be the fall guy for more Bush administration screwups. Of course, he helped himself to his own demise, but he's not nearly as powerful as the higher ups in the Bush administration, so he get to take some heat for a change. He should be tried for treason for outing someone like that. I agree with the world's smallest violin theme I saw in another post. This hateful old man deserves no sympathy. And he gave even the thickest of people a glimpse into his true nature when he said that and stormed off the set like that. No sympathy. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

[truthisfreedom]

8. someone explain to me... is Novak a total drunk? is that why his speech

is generally slurred, and was extremely slurred during that episode of "inside politics?"

[EST]

9. Actually, he's spoken in that stroke-survivor slur for a number of

years, now. What a careful listening and re-listening to the exchange between him and Carville suggests to me is that the cajun was slamming him for having no backbone for bravely coming out and making a statement on shaky ground -instead of that whiny, chicken shit way he revealed his toady, running dog actual self by doing the administration's dirty work in sliming an innocent patriot. The administration showed its lack of respect for him as anything more than an old condom, to be used as a protection for their own nefarious, third rate dirtiness and then cavalierly tossed away--to the trash heap of their own tacky, made up history.
Bob Novak is and has always been an enormously vain, self-aggrandizing person and the way he was used has been eating away at him, recently. I've heard him muttering little things that seem to indicate his dawning awareness that the neocon hyenas in no way resemble the old school staunch republican conservative that he imagines himself.
At the final stages of his narcissistic career, he has revealed himself as decidedly lacking in judgment and nowhere close to being the sharp witted slayer of journalistic dragons that he thinks he was and imagines himself still to be. What a blow to this vain has-been. No wonder he apparently, has chosen to commit suicide on the installment plan - by searching for delusions of departed greatness ot the bottom of a bottle.