It turns out that the White House likes to ignore all kinds of “community organizing,” now that Barack Obama has won the election. A march by gay-rights supporters the day after Obama offered them nothing more than a repeat of the same promises he made during the campaign on single-gender marriage and Don’t Ask – Don’t Tell got a derisive response from the White House. John Harwood reports that the Obama administration basically told the “fringe” Internet left to shut up and get real:
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Eric Zimmerman covers it this morning for The Hill:
Liberal bloggers are up in arms over a reported jab from a White House adviser.
The uproar began this weekend when NBC’s John Harwood, after reporting on a gay rights march in Washington, relayed a dismissive quote from an anonymous administration official.
“And for a sign of how seriously the White House does or doesn’t take this opposition one adviser told me today those bloggers need to take off their pajamas, get dressed and realize that governing a closely divided country is complicated and difficult,” Harwood said.
Though the quote seemed to refer to the “internet left” in general, many bloggers are taking the quote as an affront to the gay activists, who are already angry with the president for not pushing hard enough for LGBT issues.
Well, the gay activists certainly qualified as mainstream for the Obama campaign when he needed their vote. Now that they have begun to remind him of the promises he made, suddenly those same bloggers have become the “internet Left” and are fringe voices … in pajamas, natch. One can always tell an organization that fails to comprehend the nature and the reach of the blogosphere when “pajamas” gets used as a snide insult.
Say, wasn’t this the same candidate who relied heavily on online activism and regularly hailed it as a sign of increased participation in politics? I guess Obama doesn’t value that participation any longer, at least not when being held accountable for his lack of action. And when a politician has proven himself as “all talk,” as Obama has, exposing his lack of action really says all that needs to be said about him — which is why the White House lashed out in such an immature manner.
