Topic: WorldNetDaily
With the imminent arrival of the White House Correspondents Dinner on May 1, it appears that Joseph Farah's attempt to intimidate the White House Correspondents Association into giving it more seats has failed.
While WorldNetDaily's $10 million lawsuit against the WHCA over the snub -- which the WHCA, as a private organization, is well within its rights to do -- apparently continues, it appears to concede it will not get the seats it wanted, so an April 29 WND article is full of whining:
"Gadfly," a biography of WND White House correspondent Les Kinsolving, written by his daughter, Kathleen Kinsolving Willmann, was to debut at the White House Correspondents Dinner featuring Barack Obama May 1.
It still debuts May 1. However, the association sponsoring the dinner rebuffed a request for a table at the event from WorldNetDaily.com and Kinsolving, who has covered the White House since the Nixon administration, making him among the most senior correspondents in the association.
Are the three seats WND was granted not enough to launch what to all appearances be a fawning, uncritical bio of Kinsolving? (His daughter wrote the book.) Is WND implying that because it couldn't get more than three seats, it won't launch the book at all at the dinner? Isn't that a little unfair to Kinsolving, regardless of his reputation as the Jeff Gannon before Jeff Gannon?
The article quotes Farah repeating the falsehood that "We believe in the traditional watchdog role of the press" and trashing the White House press corps, which makes Farah's lawsuit look even more like a spiteful suicide mission. He calls them "this group of self-appointed media cops, these lapdogs for Big Government" -- never mind that Farah is a lapdog for the likes of Orly Taitz.
Farah went on to whine, ""This is an illustration of what some call the 'government-media complex' or the 'state-sponsored media.'" Is being in the thrall of a crappy lawye, as WND is, really an improvement?
UPDATE: Farah confirms his petulance in his May 1 WND column:
No one from WND will be attending this year – not me, not Les Kinsolving, a White House correspondent since the Nixon administration, none of our reporters, none of our guests.
Because the White House Correspondents Association, a group to which we belong as members, decided to shaft us for its own reasons.
That means WND won't be permitted to cover the event like other news organizations, even though we pay our dues like everyone else and had pre-paid for tables at the dinner before anyone else, even though we're the oldest of the Internet news organizations and even though we have never before been denied a table at the dinner.
Farah is lying when he says "WND won't be permitted to cover the event like other news organizations." WND was granted three seats to the dinner and is, in fact, not being blocked from attending. Farah has merely decided to take his ball and go home.
The only thing keeping Farah, Kinsolving and another guest from attending the dinner is Farah's hissy fit.
