Dana Milbank

Dana Milbank
Born Dana Timothy Milbank
(1968-04-27) April 27, 1968
Spouse(s) Dona Lynn DePasquale (m. 1993)
Parent(s) Ann C. and Mark A. Milbank

Dana Timothy Milbank (born April 27, 1968) is a columnist for The Washington Post.

Personal life

Milbank is the son of Ann C. and Mark A. Milbank[1] and is Jewish.[2] He is a graduate of Yale University, where he was a member of Trumbull College, the Progressive Party of the Yale Political Union and the secret society Skull and Bones.[3][4] He is a graduate of Sanford H. Calhoun High School in Merrick, New York. In 1993, Milbank married Dona Lynn DePasquale in an interfaith Jewish and Roman Catholic ceremony.[1] He is now divorced.[5]

Career

Milbank covered the 2000 and the 2004 presidential elections. He also covered President George W. Bush's first term in office. After Bush won the 2000 election, Karl Rove asked the Washington Post not to assign Milbank to cover White House news.[6] In 2001, a pool report penned by Milbank which covered a Bush visit to the U.S. Capitol generated controversy within conservative circles.[7] According to Milbank, the nickname given to him by the president is "not printable in a family publication."[8]

Milbank writes "Washington Sketch" for the Post, an observational column about political theater in the White House, Congress, and elsewhere in the capital. Before coming to the Post as a political writer in 2000, he covered the Clinton White House for The New Republic and Congress for The Wall Street Journal.

Milbank was criticized for a July 30, 2008 article[9] in which, in part by using snippets of quotations, he portrayed Barack Obama as being presumptuous.[10][11] A few days later MSNBC's Keith Olbermann stated that Milbank would not be allowed back onto his show, which Milbank had appeared on since 2004, until Milbank submitted "a correction or an explanation." [12] However, Milbank had apparently already left Olbermann's show for another show on CNN.[13] Milbank stated that he has been dissatisfied since he was criticized by Olbermann's staff over making a positive comment about Charlie Black, a McCain senior advisor, and as a result had already been negotiating with CNN.[14]

Milbank and Chris Cillizza appeared in a series of humor videos called "Mouthpiece Theater" which appeared on the Washington Post's website. An outcry followed a video in which, during a discussion of the White House "Beer Summit", they chose new brands for a number of people, including "Mad Bitch Beer" for Hillary Clinton. Both men apologized for the video and the series was canceled.[15]

In 2011, Milbank was the subject of street art featuring his likeness and last name.[16][17]

Books

Milbank is the author of Smash Mouth: Two Years in the Gutter with Al Gore and George W. Bush—Notes from the 2000 Campaign Trail.

Homo Politicus: The Strange and Scary Tribes that Run Our Government was published by Random House in January 2008.[18]

In 2010, Doubleday released Milbank's polemic biography of conservative pundit Glenn Beck: Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Tea Bagging of America,[19] which a review in Milbank's paper, the Washington Post, said was a "droll, take-no-prisoners account of the nation's most audacious conspiracy-spinner."[20]

Political views

Milbank has stated that his "policy" on presidential general elections is to vote for the best candidate who is not on the ballot. He voted for John McCain in 2000, Chuck Hagel in 2004, and Michael Bloomberg in 2008. He has explained that his approach allows him to "go through the exercise of who would be a good president" while avoiding committing to one candidate or another in the race.[21]

Greg Marx, associate editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, describes Milibank as "extravagantly contrarian."[22] Marx and New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen have critiqued what they view as "Milbank's insistence on characterizing political debate as consisting of two unreasonable poles, and himself as a truth-teller caught in the middle—a posture so habitual and inflexible that it has become an ideology."[22]

Milibank has criticized the growth of the White House Correspondents' Dinner, writing in 2011 that the event "was a minor annoyance for years, when it was a 'nerd prom' for journalists and a few minor celebrities. But, as with so much else in this town, the event has spun out of control. Now, awash in lobbyist and corporate money, it is another display of Washington's excesses."[23][24]

Revealed through the second Wikileaks release on the DNC , Dana Milbank appears to have asked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to do the majority of the research for a negative column he wrote about Donald Trump in April 2016.[25]

References

  1. 1 2 "WEDDINGS; D. L. DePasquale, Dana T. Milbank". The New York Times. October 17, 1993.
  2. ↑ Washington Post: "The magic of Sukkot" by Dana Milbank October 14, 2014
  3. ↑ Grove, Lloyd (March 4, 2004). "Yale Bones Connect Kerry, Bush". New York Daily News.
  4. ↑ Mitchell, Deborah (January 28, 2001). "A Rich Bounty, Gone For Good". New York Daily News.
  5. ↑
  6. ↑ Nicholas Confessore, "Beat the Press: Does the White House have a blacklist?"
  7. ↑ Christopher Cooper, Bloggers Parse Pool Reportage On Bush Doings, The Wall Street Journal, March 10, 2005
  8. ↑ Bryan Keefer, Dana Milbank on Covering the White House and Nicknames We Can't Publish, Columbia Journalism Review
  9. ↑ Dana Milbank. President Obama Continues Hectic Victory Tour. Washington Post. July 30, 2008
  10. ↑ "Jason Linkins, Huffington Post, July 30, 2008". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 15 November 2014.
  11. ↑ http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/206260.php Josh Marshall, TalkingPointsMemo, July 31, 2008
  12. ↑ "Countdown with Keith Olbermann for Monday, August 4". msnbc.com. Retrieved 15 November 2014.
  13. ↑ POLITICO. "WaPo's Milbank leaves "Countdown"". Retrieved 15 November 2014.
  14. ↑ POLITICO. "Milbank's move". Retrieved 15 November 2014.
  15. ↑ Howard Kurtz, "Post's Video 'Theater' Ends Its Run: Hosts Apologize for Off-Color Clinton Joke", Washington Post, August 6, 2009
  16. ↑ "Goodbye, Milbanksy". Washington City Paper. Retrieved 2013-07-05.
  17. ↑ Judkis, Maura (February 22, 2012). "Hanksy, Milbanksy: What will the next Banksy parody be?". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2013-07-05.
  18. ↑ Homo Politicus by Dana Milbank - Books - Random House
  19. ↑ Milbank, Dana (October 5, 2010). "Mormon Prophecy Behind Glenn Beck's Message". Huffington Post.
  20. ↑ Oshinsky, David (October 17, 2010). "Dana Milbank's Glenn Beck book "Tears of a Clown," reviewed by David Oshinsky". Washington Post.
  21. ↑ Milbank, Dana (February 8, 2010). "Dana Milbank on Scott Brown, John McCain, more". Washington Post.
  22. 1 2 Greg Marx, Dana Milbank, Ideologue: The WaPo columnist's latest reflects the press bias for action, (June 24, 2010).
  23. ↑ Dana Milbank, How the journalist prom got out of control,Washington Post (April 29, 2011).
  24. ↑ Alec Jacobs, A Contrarian's Point of View on WHCD, AdWeek (April 29, 2011).
  25. ↑ http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/06/wikileaks-show-washington-post-writer-asked-dnc-for-anti-trump-research/#ixzz4PV5V28AI

External links

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