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Obama and Jeffrey Goldberg Took Aim at Netanyahu, Shot Themselves in the Foot
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On October 29, 2014 @ 8:37 pm In The Point | 14 Comments
The calculated media leak has been a regular tool in the Obama Inc. PR box. It’s never been a very effective tool, but that never stopped them from using certain publications, the New York Times, and certain hacks, Jeffrey Goldberg, to distribute their talking points.
But the problem with using someone like Goldberg to distribute another Netanyahu smear is that he’s an attention whore who cares more about clickbait than politics. And he’s quite good at spinning an otherwise mediocre story or interview into major news by finding the right provocative word or phrase.
The so-called Chickegate is a bonanza for Jeffrey Goldberg, but has ended up undermining Obama and the larger anti-Israel agenda.
Goldberg’s story was another brick in the wall for a narrative characterizing Netanyahu as “the problem” in the US-Israel relationship. It was supposed to lift the blame for Obama and sell him and the Democrats to Jewish voters.
It might have done that if not for the story being condensed down to a member of the administration calling the Prime Minister of Israel a “coward” and “chickens__t”.
It’s hard to take that money quote and blame Israel.
Jeffrey Goldberg scored his media moment, again, while unintentionally vaporizing his own narrative. Instead of Netanyahu being the problem, suddenly the pettiness and personal antipathy of the administration looks like the problem.
Instead of making Netanyahu look bad, Goldberg made him look good and put Obama Inc. on the defensive. It doesn’t really matter that he doesn’t want to give up his source. His attention whoring burned his source already. The article has done more damage to the narrative than anything put out by the right. It will take a while to put everything back together again.
Jeffrey Goldberg took an insider topic and made it international news. The insider topic was personal antipathy to Netanyahu. That’s a hot topic among Israeli lefties, who obsessively hate the man, and various foreign policy wonks who hate anyone on the right.
The consequences of that publicity will be to undermine any Obama Inc. critique of Netanyahu and Israel as personal animosity. By insulting Netanyahu, they took the conflict out of the realm of policy and into the realm of spite.
And that means they lost the policy argument with anyone who doesn’t share their personal hatred of Netanyahu.
All that’s left is the hate.
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