These incompetent old white men love using Christmas as a deadline to pressure legislative action even though they all also know they don’t actually care about being home and it only punishes staff. Just get rid of the debt limit already!
Love, Meredith, pointlessly on the floor of the Capitol because of the “fiscal cliff,” New Years Eve 2013
I wish I could remember who took this picture of me, likely on a BlackBerry. BUT EVERYONE HAD A GREAT TIME and I got in a serious fight with a photographer, putting my body between him and a colleague after a Biden scrum. To think it only got infinitely more broken from there!
BUT this night ended up being accidentally important to me personally, because a friend picked up a call from his boss at 11:59p when he was with his gf, I told him he needed to quit his job and then @jzembik replaced him so LOL to me AND Josh AND get rid of the debt limit!
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I don’t often if ever grant on-the-record interviews to other reporters. But after being contacted for this story, I spoke at length in defense of @feliciasonmez and put my name to it. Lived experience should not be disqualifying and you cannot “both-sides” sexual assault.
As @carter_sherman bravely shows through her disclosure here, her personal experience made her reporting better and more sensitive, not worse. Part of why political news is so broken is because privileged white men who have never needed govt protection or support guide coverage.
One anecdote I shared was how in 2009, when I was a new reporter on the Hill covering the ACA debate, I did not get employer insurance and was uninsurable because of a preexisting condition. A colleague chastised me for saying this aloud because people might think I was “biased.”
Joe Biden's press staff circulating Jennifer Rubin columns to "allies" to tweet and Politico covering this as if it's some big scandal instead of merely dopey behavior is why everyone in DC should get the f out of it every once in a while.
literal white nationalists attacked the Capitol and wanted to murder members of Congress THIS YEAR, but the last thing published before the apocalypse/end of the republic will just be "Look who got snubbed from Ron Klain's birthday party!"
anyway, I hate you all sometimes and I think you should know that or likely already do!
🧵 A few thoughts on the Ben Smith piece on Politico (which seems like a crazy thing to write about in a detached way considering he was one of the big figures who launched the site. The anecdotal lede hints at a conflict w/o directly addressing it) (1/4) nytimes.com/2021/08/29/bus…
"A workplace culture *some* employees described as grinding and *sometimes* sexist" is an insane thing to write as a person who worked there—either you were too high up in the Politico caste system to know or you're being intentionally obtuse about the place (2/4)
Politico Pro is just Congressional Quarterly! Politico is getting credit for creating a product that already existed. Now that Politico sold for $1B, The Economist Group looks like an asshole for gutting CQ for parts WHEN IT ACTUALLY WAS AN EXTREMELY GOOD, VALUABLE PRODUCT (3/4)
🧵I shared this privately yesterday but I think it’s important to share with everyone #onhere: the more I think about it, the more I feel like there is a pre-1/6 me and a post-1/6 me. (1/4)
I went into the Capitol building daily for seven years believing certain things, about our republic, about my personal safety at the Capitol, and all those beliefs have been violated and shattered. Worse, those like me who feel this way are being gaslit by powerful people. (2/4)
No one here outside of DC (*other than @jzembik) really understands the depth of these feelings. And I’m incredibly angry, especially with the White House and Senate Democrats who centered on “move on” as a strategy (3/4)
Two years ago, in a hospital bed and irreversible labor, I had a lot of time to think about what was happening to me, how I was swiftly approaching an outcome we didn't desire. And I thought about Republicans attacking Ralph Northam over this interview: cnn.com/2019/01/31/pol…
I thought about how what Ralph Northam described was exactly what I was experiencing, how the mainstream media had taken the GOP bait and made this into a "controversy" when what the actual medical doctor was describing was palliative care within the bounds of medical ethics.
In my sadness, confusion and anger on that day two years, I also felt *presence* because I knew everything would be fleeting, a burst of energy in our lives that never would be recaptured. So I focused on our family, but I also promised myself something.
I have an idea on how to react: we don’t value women as a society and so there is no consensus around “sexual assault is bad.” There are literally reporters who not only say “cancer is bad” but also actively fundraise to end cancer and are therefore actual activists.
Don’t get me wrong, cancer *is* bad. But it’s wild reporters will put on hats to symbolize their belief that cancer is bad to fundraise for cancer research but we can’t agree sexual assault is bad. Likely because for years, men in power exerted their power by ignoring consent.
Reporters should be allowed to fundraise to end cancer because cancer is bad! They also should be able to disclose that they are sexual assault survivors (or even fundraise for RAINN) because sexual assault is bad and there are no “both sides” to that issue.