'Handpicked representatives of the press'

The Conservative plan to get on top of the RCMP raid story by putting out their response to select friendly press went horribly awry for them Sunday.

Partly because political reporters on the front line tend to talk to each other, even if they're from competing news outlets, as explained by Kady O'Malley, delightfully referencing Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (I think I'm in love.) and partly because when reporters are accused of being 'friendly' they tend to compensate by being aggressively unfriendly. See Exhibit A and Exhibit B.

Plus of course, when media management itself becomes the story it can only be described as very bad media management.

This all falls in line with Harper's childish obsession with scheming manipulation for its own sake. Amateurs think about tactics, professionals think about strategy, as Andrew Sullivan said of Karl Rove, ' If you have a reputation for being a Machiavellian, you aren’t one.' and Harper is all about the blatantly Machiavellian tactics.

The whole affair has been covered extensively by Impolitical.

UPDATE: Calling Stephen Harper a 'control freak' is a bit like saying 'Gee that Atlantic Ocean is kind of damp isn't it?'