My former alt-weekly colleague Todd Spivak has published a sharply critical piece on Barack Obama just in time for the Texas primary. The story appears in the Houston Press, where I worked with Spivak until 2006, as well as in its sister paper, the Dallas Observer. Both are circulated by Village Voice Media in cities that happen to be Obama strongholds. The story follows the admirable Houston Press tradition of pissing people off, but it’s also getting ripped up in the blogosphere.
Spivak’s piece is based on his years as a cub reporter in Illinois, where he covered Obama when he was still a political unknown. In 2004 Spivak published a favorable profile of Obama in the Illinois Times, but then he felt guilty about giving him a free pass (sound familiar?). He made some calls around the state legislature and found several lawmakers who were angry at Obama for taking credit for bills that they saw as their own. After Spivak ran with the 2004 story, Obama called to berate him. Wonkette sums up the whole thing in more detail here.
The problem with Spivak’s piece is that it’s somewhat short on context. A slice of the lengthy rebuttal in Daily Kos:
Finally when Spivak gathered all those nasty comments about Obama he was the dark horse in a three way race for the US Senate nomination, and most of the Illinois machine was working for his opponents (namely Dan Hynes son of long time Chicago alderman and self funding millionaire Hull). Nearly all of the folks named are now outspoken advocates and supporters (but they’re still hacks).
Though Spivak brings up some woefully underreported dirt on Obama, he would have been better served to shore it up and drop the whole “Obama and Me” narrative. As it stands, the story is most revealing as a cautionary tale for a schizophrenic national media. Being taken in by Obama and then coming to one’s senses, so to speak, isn’t the best model for coverage. Better to be skeptical from the start, and that includes skepticism of Obama’s critics.
