As far as I can tell, the “veal pen” is a metaphor first described by Jane Hamsher in this memorable post.

From Jane:

The veal crate is a wooden restraining device that is the veal calf’s permanent home. It is so small (22″ x 54″) that the calves cannot turn around or even lie down and stretch and is the ultimate in high-profit, confinement animal agriculture.(1) Designed to prevent movement (exercise), the crate does its job of atrophying the calves’ muscles, thus producing tender “gourmet” veal.

[...]

About 14 weeks after their birth, the calves are slaughtered. The quality of this “food,” laden with chemicals, lacking in fiber and other nutrients, diseased and processed, is another matter. The real issue is the calves’ experience. During their brief lives, they never see the sun or touch the Earth. They never see or taste the grass. Their anemic bodies crave proper sustenance. Their muscles ache for freedom and exercise. They long for maternal care. They are kept in darkness except to be fed two to three times a day for 20 minutes.

Soon after the election, the Administration began corralling the big liberal DC interest groups into a variety of organizations and communication networks through which they telegraphed their wishes — into a virtual veal pen. The 8:45 am morning call co-hosted by the “liberal” Center for American Progress, Unity 09, and Common Purpose are just a few of the overt ways that the White House controls its left flank and maintains discipline.

[...]
When the White House met with bankers after the AIG scandal and they said they didn’t want to be criticized for getting huge bonuses paid for by taxpayers, the White House complied and “cooled their rhetoric.” The President told the public that Timothy Geithner had been instructed to do everything in his power to claw back those bonuses, and the House passed a bill doing just that. But it died in the Senate.

You remember all those campaigns by the unions, by the online groups, by liberal economics and finance organizations pushing the Senate to take it up?

Yeah, me either.

Which means that the teabaggers were in perfect position to harvest all of the discontent over the bank bailout, and no coherent liberal critique was offered. I heard it over and over again — if you wanted to criticize the White House on financial issues, your institutional funding would dry up instantly. The Obama campaign successfully telegraphed to donors that they should cut off Fund for America, which famously led to its demise. It wasn’t the last time something like that happened — just ask those who were receiving institutional money who criticized the White House and saw their funding cut, at the specific request of liberal institutional leaders who now principally occupy their time by brown nosing friends and former co-workers in the White House.

And so the groups in the DC veal pen stay silent. They leadership gets gets bought off by cocktail parties at the White House while the interests of their members get sold out. How many have openly pushed back against the Administration on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell or DOMA? Well, not many. Most tried to satisfy their LGBT members by outsourcing activism to other organizations, or proving their bona fides by getting involved in the Prop 8 battle that is not directly toxic to the White House. It’s a chickenshit sidestep that betrays their members in the interest of personal gain, which they justify with feeble self-serving palliatives about the importance of “maintaining a seat at the table.”

(Emphasis added)

Jane’s “veal pen” is principally a criticism of the liberal organizations that crave access to power more than the mandate they are given by their members and contributors. I think her criticism is valid, but overvalued.

The real criticism should be reserved for the funders that pull support from the “veal penned” advocacy organizations when they break containment.

The idea here is that you shouldn’t blame liberal organizations for their sense of self-preservation any more than you should blame the calf kept in the veal pen. And in keeping with the metaphor, it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense to drop a ton of blame at the farmer’s (Obama’s) feet either… To an extent, both the farmer and Obama can be seen as pursuing their own self-preservation… The root of the problem lies with those that buy the veal.

The real blame – the lion’s share of it – should be assigned to the “institutional funders”.

So who are the mysterious “institutional funders” that cut off Fund for America? And how do we extract our pound of flesh from them? Are they susceptible to embarrassment? Can bloggers “out” them? Are there enough “insiders” willing to leak names of these “institutional funders” and their demands? Are their identities an open secret?

Maybe it’s time we start looking at the big money behind the curtain and asking a few tough questions.

UPDATE: I think the “veal pen” metaphor is particularly apt and meaningful, especially today. Jane deserves the credit she’s getting for recognizing its utility and mainstreaming the concept.

With that in mind, as a blogger, I think it important to give credit to the metaphor’s originator, FireDogLake’s hilarious wordsmith,TRex. Way back in 2007, he crafted this devastating Megan McCardle takedown which contained this nugget:

Unfortunately, that helpful older person never intervened in McArdle’s case. From her writing, it appears that she was dumped straight from her gilt-edged creche into some gold plated veal-pen of a preparatory school, from whence her parents’ money wafted her into the rarefied airs of the Ivy League, which summarily spat her into her current sinecure at the Atlantic. Presumably all without her ever scrubbing a toilet, waiting a table, or doing anything that would spoil her manicure or muss her boarding-school bob.