Eric Holder treated his friends in the media abominably over the last several months. So he tried to make it up to them with a private party. He might have known that more than half of them would never want to be alone with him behind a closed door ever again. And that’s exactly what they told him.

“Off the record”? No thanks, Eric Holder!

Of the original Big Three Networks, only ABC attended. According to Politico.com, ABC’s people said they would press Eric Holder to let them comment afterward. But CBS said flatly: no reporting, no meeting.

Fox News, of course, flatly refused. Well, let’s see. Eric Holder signed off on an affidavit saying one of Fox’s best men, James Rosen, was a dangerous and traitorous criminal conspirator. And because the Justice Department might prosecute him, they mustn’t tell him anything about snooping into his e-mail. Oh, yes, if you want someone to meet you on the Q-T, that’s the perfect way to treat that someone’s associate! (Of course that’s the same kind of affidavit that Eric Holder, more than two weeks ago, said he would never sign, never heard of, and did not think wise.)

The Associated Press also said they wouldn’t come. (This comes from The Huffington Post, after they said they wouldn’t come, either.) Well, what did Eric Holder expect? The AP might (or might not) have forgiven Eric Holder for calling James Rosen a dangerous traitor and threatening (or only pretending to threaten?) to charge him with that. No doubt many in the AP think anyone at Fox is a traitor. Or they did, before Eric Holder did them just as dirty as they did Fox!

CNN, NBC News, Reuters, McClatchy, and The New York Times also refused.

Gluttons for punishment

Eric Holder, Attorney General. Photo: US Department of Justice

James Warren, Washington bureau chief for The New York Daily News, does seem to have gone. And he, or someone, wrung from Eric Holder a concession to put the meeting on the record. And if Warren is telling the truth, then for ninety minutes Eric Holder and the handful of attendees talked about…”guidelines.” Guidelines? Like the ones he broke literally right and left?

The other attendees, besides ABC and The Daily News: The Wall Street Journal, Politico.com, Bloomberg News, USA Today, and a representative for The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune.

Summing up

Eric Holder cannot hope to repair his reputation with this fiasco. Half his friends in the media have deserted him. And with him, his boss, de facto President Barack Obama. Because none can doubt that Obama wanted total control, by any means necessary. That’s the Chicago Way.

The attitude of the media ought to interest people more. Investors Business Daily finds that attitude less than consistent. Why, they ask, should The New York Times balk at an off-the-record meeting merely because it is off the record? After all, IBD points out, they do it all the time.

But this time was a little different. This time Eric Holder, who had slapped them silly, wanted to kiss and make up. What could possibly go wrong?

That’s the problem, of course. Something has gone wrong. Very wrong. These media organs, except maybe for Fox News, threw away their reputations as neutral observers. Any news organ who sends someone in to any meeting with Eric Holder will show itself up permanently as a house organ of the Democratic Party. The New York Times knows this. The Washington Post either doesn’t know, or doesn’t care.

But now we will see whether the non-attendees will “let a good crisis go to waste.” This is Eric Holder’s crisis. And the country’s. And it is a crisis in the old-fashioned sense of that word: a day of judgment. Not only for Eric Holder. For the media.

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