Ezra has a question:
But it gets at an important truth: That the media does, indeed, come together to repel perceived threats. In Clinton’s case, it was a gauche striver. He was a threat to DC’s prestige, or vision of itself. Not the greatest danger in the world, but the media was quite effective in kneecapping him.
So what of Rudy? Rudy, after all, is a danger to the world. Every reporter in this town knows that he’s become a pandering lunatic. Why doesn’t Time have cover stories asking “Is hGiulianie out of his #($*^ mind!?” Why aren’t the Sunday shows filled with horrified reporters agreeing to disagree about much of the race, but uniting against the apocalyptic stupidity on evidence in the GIuliani campaign? Why aren’t the various horserace reporters fitting every successive foreign policy pronouncement into an overarching narrative of Giuliani’s crazed belligerence, “which is causing serious doubts about his campaign among some in the GOP?” There is precedent for all this. And in Giuliani’s case, the threat has the added benefit of being true. You don’t need to make anything up, invent any scandals, concoct any problems. You just have to honestly evaluate the words coming out of Giuliani’s mouth, the rhetoric coming out of his campaign, and the advisers circling the candidate. It’s all there. There’s no blowjob, I know, but there’s a real threat, and the media should, in its role as guardian of some minimal level of competency within the political process, be pointing out that this man is dangerous, his statements scary, his campaign unsettling and his advisers insane.
The majority of the answer is that our beltway press does not consider Rudy to be nuts. There are other reasons, of course: the press has many more conservatives in national commentary positions than liberals, it has been attacked so often formthe right that much of it flinches at the mere thought of criticizing a right-winger, and the “he-said-she-said” ethics of modern journalism all conspire to prevent a full on Clinton-like media feeding frenzy. But the core of the issue is that the press and the foreign policy establishment just don;t think Rudy is all that out there.
It is an article of faith among the beltway political press that the anti-Vietnam protests killed the Democrats on national security until the end of time. As a corollary to that belief, it is “understood” that the best political play is to always go as pro-war as possible. There is literally no position a hawk can take that, with the possible exception of a nuclear first strike or an invasion of England, that our press will deem insane. After all, we all know that the dirty hippies destroyed the Democrats on national security, so the more hawkish the better! And since our national press has an almost allergic reaction to actually covering anything other than the horse race, it simply doesn’t occur to most of them that there is anything wrong with what Rudy is doing and saying.
Our foreign policy establishment might be able to push a “Rudy is crazy” meme, but policy doesn’t play a large role in our press coverage and, frankly, our foreign policy establishment would not necessarily think Rudy is insane. Our foreign policy establishment that generally considers serious foreign policy thought to start with the “right” of the United states to intervene military anywhere it chooses. Diplomacy, while not altogether discounted, is not seen as the mark of a serious person and avoiding a war altogether or the outright rejection of this neo-imperialistic mindset means banishment from the foreign policy establishment. In a very real sense, there just aren’t enough people who think Rudy is nuts in the press or the people to whom the press listens to make enough noise to overcome the conservative bend to the media nor the “he said she said” nonsense that passes for journalistic ethics in this day and age.
October 30th, 2007
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General, Politics, Media |
one comment
Has any candidate seen their stock fall so far so fast in recent times? I don’t mean their ability to win a contest, I mean their entire image. Obama promised a new beginning, a politics of hope and reconciliation. But in the last week, he has thrown all of that away with two really bone-headed decisions, the first of which was the deliberate choice to involve a horrible bigot in his gospel tour.
McClurkin is a hateful person, a man who is convinced that gays are trying to “kill our children”, and that homosexuality is a “curse” brought about by abuse and molestation. Those are not the words of a man genuinely concerned with the lives or souls of homosexuals; those are the words of a man who is so filled with loathing for something he dislikes that he is willing to to tell any lie or indulge in any smear to hurt those he hates. And this was the man the campaign chose to headline the event. And, of course, he took the opportunity to attack homosexuals on Obama’s time:
The whole controversy might have been forgotten in the swell of gospel sound except Mr. McClurkin turned the final half hour of the three-hour concert into a revival meeting about the lightning rod he has become for the Obama campaign.
He approached the subject gingerly at first. Then, just when the concert had seemed to reach its pitch and about to end, Mr. McClurkin returned to it with a full-blown plea: “Don’t call me a bigot or anti-gay when I have suffered the same feelings,” he cried.
“God delivered me from homosexuality,” he added. He then told the audience to believe the Bible over the blogs: “God is the only way.” The crowd sang and clapped along in full support….
Mr. McClurkin’s support for Mr. Obama could signal to some black evangelical voters that race and religion are more important than Mr. Obama’s support for gay rights.
This decision was bad enough, but then came the response:
Part of the reason that we have had a faith outreach in our campaigns is precisely because I don’t think the LGBT community or the Democratic Party is served by being hermetically sealed from the faith community and not in dialogue with a substantial portion of the electorate, even though we may disagree with them.
So progressives are “hermetically sealed” from the religious in this country? Really? Tell that, Mr. Senator, to these people, or these people, or, heck, even to me and the millions and millions like me:
For far too long, the right wing has gulled the media and the country into thinking that its religion was the only acceptable face of Christianity. It has used the respect for all religions on the left as evidence of the left’s irreligiosity. That has never been the case. The teachings of Jesus Christ are at the core of how millions define their support for liberal causes, myself included. John Kerry, with one small statement, has reminded the nation of that fact. Millions of us are liberal because of our religion. Millions of us are not represented by Opus Dei, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, or any of the other right wing talking heads the media turns to when it wants to “discuss” religion in this country. Antonin Scalia does not speak for all Catholics.
… The language of religion has always been spoken comfortably on the left, even if the principle of tolerance has caused it to occasionally be spoken too quietly. John Kerry is not speaking quietly now. Whatever George W. Bush may desire, whatever the editors of the Washington Post and New York Times may decree, Christianity and faith are not the property of the right wing. I have a faith, too, as does John Kerry and millions of others. It is strong, and sincere, and, as Kerry has reminded us, powerful. And in the face of provocation and distortion, it has no reason to be silent.
It is bad enough that you stupidly try to pander to a sense of bigotry among some segment of the South Carolina voting population. But to use the same, tired right wing smears against progressives as a justification for your pandering? Disgusting is perhaps the nicest thing that I can say about that decision. This is the worst kind of pandering. It has nothing to do with trying to tread the distance between where many of his supporters are on this issue and where Obama would like to lead them. Obama took one of the most hateful anti-gay bigots, a man who thinks gays are trying to “kill our children” and making him the face of the Obama campaign for the duration of this Gospel event. It is the explicit and deliberate decision to appeal to the basest nature of South Carolina voters in the desperate hope that those voters can deliver him an essential win. It is the worst kind of politics as usual.
And then Obama compounded this with another stupid mistake: an attack on Social Security:
A new Obama ad in Iowa shows the candidate talking to a small group of people are Social Security, and calling for an honest discussion about the problems that the program face
There is no Social Security crisis. Even with the GOP spending money as it grows on trees, the program is set through 2047. And the events of 2005 showed, people like the program just fine the way it is. Having spent all that time and effort beating back the privatization monster, it is incredibly depressing to hear a Democrat open the door for its return. But Obama needs an issue to attack Clinton on, and attacking Social Security is an issue that the media Village just adores and so is sure to pick up and treat favorably, especially since it fits into their notion of what a “serious” Democrat should be. A “serious” Democrat, of course, is one who is more than willing to attack the underpinnings of the New Deal and any other Democratic program that is popular with the general public but not with the Villagers.
There are plenty of other issues out there Obama could have chosen to differentiate himself from Clinton: the coming war with Iran, universal health care, fair trade, the war on drugs, the GOP’s war on the Constitution, etc, etc,etc. The problem, though, is that the Village disapproves of the progressive side on all of those matters, so taking on Clinton over any of them would have been meant with Village scorn. And that would have meant that it would have been harder to generate positive press and to force Clinton onto the defensive. That would have taken courage, something Obama does not seem to poses in any noticeable measure these days.
I had hopes for Obama. He came out of Chicago’s politics, so I knew that he knew how to brawl, but his rhetoric had given me hope that he would use those skills to advance a genuinely inclusive, progressive vision. Apparently, that is not to be. Twice in less than a week, Obama has chosen to take the low road, the easy way through the political landscape. Twice in a week, Obama has chosen to pander to the basest of motives of voters and the self-important nitwits that run our national press. Instead of actually being bold, instead of actually trying to build a new politics built on the Audacity of Hope, Obama and his campaign chose to take the basest route to the White House. They have embraced politics as usual — and as dirty as can be — with the speed of a drunk embracing a free case of beer. In the process, they have shown Obama to be a hollow candidate, a smiling face for the same old politics of division and sycophancy.
October 30th, 2007
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Politics, Legal Issues, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Torture |
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