Obama's secret dinner with the media ommentariat...

[Subdivisions]

I was just watching Mika and the Boys on MSNBC and Peggy Noonan was asked about the dinner she attended at George Will's home where Obama was the guest of honor. Noonan was coy and explained that she couldn't impart any of the substance of the dinner conversation.

This raises two questions for me: One, what's with all the secrecy? And, two, has any one of those talking heads revealed what was discussed at that dinner?

How can those people have dinner with an incoming president, one who they would consider, ostensibly, the ideological enemy, and not talk about it? Since when do "jounalists" attend such a newsworthy event and NOT talk about it?

[lonestarnot]

1. Drivel. Drivel was discussed, and they all came away with the usual gas, even

President Elect Obama had it.

[ErinBerin84]

2. did you see Mark Halperin

say to Peggy "I hope that no one made a Who's Coming to Dinner joke!" Hardy har har, Mark. Bleh.

[bluestateguy]

3. Perhaps he figures he can get a couple of nice columns out of each of them

That may be useful in his early presidency.

Notice that he dined with Establishment conservatives (Brooks, Kristol, Barone, Noonan, etc.), and not grass roots bomb throwers (Coulter, Malkin, etc.) or radio talk show hosts.

[merh]

4. Was it his dinner or did George Will invite Obama and did

he and the other journalists agree to an "off record" meeting where they wouldn't discuss or report what was said?

I'm curious as to who instigated it, who sponsored it.

A meal at someone's home tells me it was George Will that invited guests and that to make it possible for Obama to be comfortable there, they promised to keep it an "off the record" dinner meeting.

I could be wrong, but that is the impression I have.

[lurky]

5. Maybe by establishing a relationship with the RW opiners,

he hopes to head off the kind of Whitewater/Vince Foster crap that they spewed at Clinton. I would guess he proposed a kind of mutually-beneficial relationship, such as throwing them a few journalistic bones in exchange for keeping things civil and serious. Plus, it's a lot harder to write smears about someone if you have a personal relationship with them and might have to eat dinner with them again at some point.

[shireen]

6. it was off-the-record

They're ethically bound to not discuss the details of what happened.

[janx]

7. As to your last two questions:

This is exactly the kind of thinking that Obama seems to want to change. As someone else pointed out, note that the Rush Limbaugh bomb-throwing types were not present. ;-)