re: "A week of WikiLeaks and not one mention of the State Department's "cookie pushers" "

Domani Spero at Diplopundit ("Just one obsessive observer, diplomatic watcher, opinionator and noodle newsmaker monitoring the goings on at Foggy Bottom and the worldwide available universe.") notes a missing element among the scribes, punditry, and ink-stained wretches.

Money quote(s):

"Apparently coined by US diplomat Hugh S. Gibson in 1924, the term Cookie Pusher has been applied as a reference to diplomats in general and members of the United States Foreign Service in particular, and not in a good way.

Whenever the State Department diplomats made the news in our 24 hour news cycle, some journalists, commentators and opinion makers more often than not, bring up the pejorative term to refer to our diplomats."

Usually it's paired with "striped-pants" to make "striped-pants cookie-pushers."

This refers, presumably, to the striped pants which are still a component of formal day wear for men.

The which I've worn only once in my entire life, as a groomsman, for a formal day wedding (my brother's).

"This past week, after days of classified embassy cables dripping out of selected news outlets and the WikiLeaks servers when they were not under denial of service (DoS) attacks, there was no single mention of US diplomats as "cookie pushers."

Not one single one.

Of course, NYT's Mark Landler in From WikiLemons, Clinton Tries to Make Lemonade, made up for the media's oversight by describing our diplomats as "pinstriped authors who pour their hearts and minds into cables that are filed to Washington and often not even read by desk officers, let alone senior diplomats or the secretary herself."

But -- still no mention of the "cookie pushers ..." "

&

"Perhaps one of the strangest thing to come out of this -- is that in releasing these diplomatic cables, WikiLeaks have succeeded in redrawing the "unfortunate caricature of our profession" in the words of Nick Burns, into a fuller picture of what it is to be an American diplomat -- the "thoughtful, well-informed and dedicated servants of the American interest" -- dealing with problems in a global scale."

Still not worth the candle, but gratifying in a not-so-strange sort of way. After all, what writer doesn't value praise, however grudging?