{"id":153346,"date":"2015-05-22T17:20:03","date_gmt":"2015-05-22T17:20:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=153346"},"modified":"2015-05-22T17:20:03","modified_gmt":"2015-05-22T17:20:03","slug":"corrupt-beltway-elite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/corrupt-beltway-elite\/","title":{"rendered":"The Corrupt Beltway Elite"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mike Allen\u2019s obsequious,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/erik-wemple\/wp\/2013\/11\/20\/politicos-mike-allen-native-advertising-pioneer\/\">pay-to-play<\/a>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/playbook\/\">Playbook newsletter<\/a>\u00a0was once\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/04\/25\/magazine\/25allen-t.html\">hailed<\/a>\u00a0by <em>The<\/em>\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em>\u00a0as a must-read for Washington\u2019s \u201celite set of political and news-media thrivers and strivers.\u201d\u00a0For me, it\u2019s most useful as a shameless chronicle of what that elite group cares about \u2013 and how it lives.<\/p>\n<p>In particular, Allen frequently documents how intimately and seamlessly connected the members of the media aristocracy are with other members of Washington\u2019s ruling elite, whether they come from the intelligence community, the super-wealthy, big banks, the lobbying community, or top levels of government.<\/p>\n<p>To the elite media itself, all this is just background noise. But I\u2019m increasingly thinking the noise is the signal.<\/p>\n<p>Allen had a canonical example in in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/playbook\/0515\/playbook18346.html\">Sunday\u2019s edition<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>CHARLIE ROSE\u2019S WASHINGTON: <\/strong>Charlie Rose, the man who\u2019s always working, got to just enjoy himself last night \u2014 tieless, and rocking sneakers. D.C. friends walked down a red carpet to the elegant terrace of the rarely seen estate of Franco Nuschese, owner of Caf\u00c3\u00a9 Milano, who was honoring Charlie with a dinner celebration and garden party after he delivered the Georgetown commencement address and received an honorary doctorate of humane letters.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Franco\u2019s three and a half acres, <\/strong>in the Northwest D.C. neighborhood of Forest Hills, include a view down the same hill as the Italian ambassador\u2019s residence. In a toast, Charlie said Franco is the best traveling companion in Italy \u2014 aside from two of the evening\u2019s guests, CIA Director John Brennan and former deputy CIA director Michael Morell.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/firstlook.org\/theintercept\/2015\/05\/18\/infernal-corruption-washingtons-elite-media\/\">Read the Whole Article<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mike Allen\u2019s obsequious,\u00a0pay-to-play\u00a0Playbook newsletter\u00a0was once\u00a0hailed\u00a0by The\u00a0New York Times\u00a0as a must-read for Washington\u2019s \u201celite set of political and news-media thrivers and strivers.\u201d\u00a0For me, it\u2019s most useful as a shameless chronicle of what that elite group cares about \u2013 and how it lives. In particular, Allen frequently documents how intimately and seamlessly connected the members of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-153346","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153346\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}