GOP Primary Show: Non-Stop News And Noise In The Age Of Twitter

Huff Post- Posted: 2/7/12  |  Updated: 2/7/12

Michael Calderone

Last week, Jon Ralston, a veteran Las Vegas Sun columnist, dared reporters to ignore Donald Trump’s unveiling of his presidential endorsement — with low expectations about how that might play out.

“I suggest media boycott of @RealDonaldTrump event in Vegas,” Ralston tweeted. “Anyone with me? That’s what I thought.”

Ralston knew, of course, that the nation’s political reporters — the same tribe who breathlessly covered Trump’s half-hearted flirtation last year with a presidential run, his “birther” sideshow and his thwarted plans to host and moderate a GOP debate — wouldn’t ignore the real estate huckster’s “major announcement.”

And, indeed, they didn’t, thereby sparking the latest mini-drama in the reality show otherwise known as the 2012 Republican presidential primaries.

While any campaign reporter you meet will say it’s ridiculous to give any more oxygen to Trump in this election cycle (and some of them will even go so far as to mock the primaries’ circus-like atmosphere on Twitter) many of them still raced to cover the Trump endorsement.

In their haste, several major news organizations — including the Associated Press, The New York Times, Politico and CBS News — erroneously reported that Trump planned to endorse former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Countless others, including The Huffington Post, repeated those reports. All had to backtrack when it became clear former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney would get the Trumpster’s nod. Come showtime, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News all had Romney live, standing at a podium featuring a Trump plaque, in a Trump hotel, accepting a Trump endorsement.

Reporters swarmed the Trump event for the same reason they have pursued and then coughed up almost every other bit of minutiae, no matter how irrelevant or meaningless, around the primaries. In a media landscape replete with Twitter, Facebook, personal blogs and myriad other digital, broadcast and print sources, nothing is too inconsequential to be made consequential.

Political junkies, political operatives and political reporters consume most of this dross, and in this accelerated, 24/7 news cycle, a day feels like a week, with the afternoon’s agreed-upon media narrative getting turned on its head by the evening’s debate. Candidates rise, fall, and rise again, all choreographed to the rat-a-tat background noise of endless minutia.

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Prop 8, California’s Same-Sex Marriage Ban, Declared Unconstitutional

LISA LEFF 02/ 7/12 04:10 PM ETAssociated Press  via: Huff Post

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal appeals court on Tuesday declared California’s same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional but agreed to give sponsors of the bitterly contested, voter-approved law time to appeal the ruling before ordering the state to resume allowing gay couples to wed.

The three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that a lower court judge correctly interpreted the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court precedents when he declared in 2010 that Proposition 8 – a response to an earlier state court decision that legalized gay marriage – was a violation of the civil rights of gays and lesbians.

“Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples,” states the opinion written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt, one of the court’s most liberal judges.

However, the appeals panel took pains to note that its decision applies only to California, even though the court has jurisdiction in nine western states. California is the only one of those states where the ability for gays to marry was granted then rescinded, the court noted in its narrowly crafted opinion.

“Whether under the Constitution same-sex couples may ever be denied the right to marry, a right that has long been enjoyed by opposite-sex couples, is an important and highly controversial question,” the court said. “We need not and do not answer the broader question in this case.”

The ruling will not take effect until the deadline passes for Proposition 8’s backers to appeal to a larger panel of the 9th Circuit. Lawyers for the coalition of conservative religious groups that sponsored the measure said they have not decided if they will seek a 9th Circuit rehearing or file an appeal directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“We are not surprised that this Hollywood-orchestrated attack on marriage – tried in San Francisco – turned out this way. But we are confident that the expressed will of the American people in favor of marriage will be upheld at the Supreme Court,” said Brian Raum, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal aid group based in Arizona that helped defend Proposition 8.

One legal analyst said the U.S. Supreme Court might not agree to take up the case on appeal because the appeals court focused its decision exclusively on California’s ban.

“The ruling is on the narrowest ground possible,” said University of Santa Clara constitutional law professor Margaret Russell.

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Karen Handel, Susan G. Komen Executive, Quits Over Planned Parenthood Dispute

Huff Post- Posted: 2/7/12  |  Updated: 2/7/12

By- Laura Bassett

Karen Handel, vice president for public affairs at Susan G. Komen for the Cure, resigned on Tuesday following public outcry over the announcement Komen would pull funding from Planned Parenthood. After Komen reversed its decision, The Huffington Post reported that Handel drove the decision to defund Planned Parenthood over abortion politics and crafted the strategy to clean up the public relations mess that ensued.

Although she acknowledges her involvement in the Planned Parenthood decision in her resignation letter, she also decries what she calls “gross mischaracterizations” of the situation and maintains that the decision was not about politics:

I am deeply disappointed by the gross mischaracterizations of the strategy, its rationale, and my involvement in it.  I openly acknowledge my role in the matter and continue to believe our decision was the best one for Komen’s future and the women we serve.  However, the decision to update our granting model was made before I joined Komen, and the controversy related to Planned Parenthood has long been a concern to the organization.  Neither the decision nor the changes themselves were based on anyone’s political beliefs or ideology. Rather, both were based on Komen’s mission and how to better serve women, as well as a realization of the need to distance Komen from controversy.  I believe that Komen, like any other nonprofit organization, has the right and the responsibility to set criteria and highest standards for how and to whom it grants.What was a thoughtful and thoroughly reviewed decision — one that would have indeed enabled Komen to deliver even greater community impact — has unfortunately been turned into something about politics. This is entirely untrue.  This development should sadden us all greatly.

Komen has maintained that it pulled funds from Planned Parenthood because of a routine change in criteria for who is eligible to receive grants — not because of pressure from anti-abortion activists over the fact that Planned Parenthood provides abortions. But a Komen insider told HuffPost on Sunday that Handel, who ran for governor of Georgia in 2010 on the promise to defund Planned Parenthood, has been pushing to drop the organization from grants since she was hired in April 2011.

In her signoff, possibly as an acknowledgment of the public outrage toward her, Handel waives her right to a severance package:

“Just as Komen’s best interests and the fight against breast cancer have always been foremost in every aspect of my work, so too are these my priorities in coming to the decision to resign effective immediately,” she writes. “While I appreciate your raising a possible severance package, I respectfully decline.  It is my most sincere hope that Komen is allowed to now refocus its attention and energies on its mission.”

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