New York Times Redux

As my one reader knows, I’ve been critical of the crimes of the New York Times, though theirs have paled in comparison to those of ABC. So I’ll give them an at-a-boy when they do something to indicate a spine behind all that extraneous flesh. Thank you NYT for today’s editorial, The Low Road to Victory. Nothing new, but something good and right and true.

ABC = American Bulls**t Corporation

Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous deserve to have been boo-ed off the stage, as they were at the end of last night’s debate in Philadelphia, by the audience which represented an American public hungry for real debate about real issues but sat through two hours of nothing but tabloid attacks. I had never seen a major national news network anchor booed off the stage on a televised event, but found this to be one of the only hopeful moments of the evening. Hosting a presidential debate is a test of character not only for the candidates, but also for the host network, and it demands a certain amount of seriousness, respect, and integrity on the part of the interviewers even when asking aggressive questions. Clinton fully participated in the antics, but repeatedly found herself evading eye-contact with the audience, her daughter, or her moderators, choosing instead when she went into mudslinging mode to be speaking to the rafters.

Shame on you ABC! If this debate represents your idea of the proper or even profit-worthy relationship between journalism and politics at a time of an unfathomably destructive war and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, not to mention all the other domestic and global issues for which the presidential candidates should be articulating a vision for the future, I would go so far as to say that ABC is an enemy of the American public.

After witnessing the embarrassing capitulation to lowest common denominator gutter politics, and the so called “objective commentary” at the end that basically served as an 30-second campaign ad for Clinton who months ago under Mark being-human-is-overrated Penn set the tone for this kind of mudslinging and tabloid tactics, I hereby boycott ABC as a source of any news in the future and declare that ABC is harboring weapons of mass distraction that pose a vital threat to the American people.

Whatever fate is in store for those moderating this goosing of America should also meet the producers of the show and David Brooks, who for the New York Times (surprise surprise) gives ABC an ‘A’ for its hardhitting questions on lapel pins, pastors, Bosnian gunfire, and 60’s radicals, and whose op-ed title “No Whining about the Media” expresses a particularly disturbing stance toward the outcries of thousands of Americans who are up in arms about the so-called shapers of public opinion and their increasing distance from the matters shaping the public sphere and those affecting the public good.

Only this now gives me hope! http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/DemocraticDebate/comments?type=story&id=4666956

When first I checked, this official ABC comment roll of 14,951 comments included hundreds of posts, about 90% of which decried the shameful behavior by ABC cohosts Gibson and Stephanopolous, the producers and the network, and many of which share my resolve to boycott ABC. When last I checked, it seems that dozens of these comments had been scrubbed or were inaccessible, including my own albeit brusquely worded version of the above. I hope someone archives these comments for posterity (and for the ABC board), because I think if we’re lucky we may look back on last night’s debacle of a debate as some kind of pivotal moment in the history of the relationship between American media and American politics, when the American public decides to take back both politics and the media from the hands of propagandistic corporate distractionists and disinforming swine. If we’re unlucky, last night’s debate is yet one more nail in the coffin of American journalism and we may well mark it as the day the music died.

Bye, Bye Miss American Pie — In Memoriam for the New York Times Book Review

After years of being trained to suspect underlying interests behind any genre or institution that claims a position of disinterest or service to the pure public good, and watching the corporatization and partisan-ization of the press, including that of the so-called public media, at least here in the U.S., of which I think Bill Moyers is the best and most hardhitting analyst (hence my soft spot for movies like Network and The Insider), I think I still harbored the naive belief that, if not the New York Times at least the New York Times Book Review could be a safe harbor, an a-topia immune to the obvious and crass antics of media manipulation – because after all the New York Times Book Review readership is if nothing else hyper-literate. Despite the inevitable and increasingly common topical capitulations to the topical, I never felt that any book review actually had a secret agenda other than to review a book and maybe to advance the reviewer’s standing in the eyes of the public as someone with better adjectives or better restraint in the use of adjectives, or someone better versed in the art of rhetorical inversions, or someone with an unfathomably richer vocabulary than that of any other reviewer who ever wrote for the US intelligentsia’s Good Book. There are countless Sundays when I have read the NYTBR like a kind of scripture, pen in hand, marking my agreements and disagreements with the reviewers, and notes to self and marginalia of resonances with my own obsessions.

But last Sunday’s April 13, 2008 book review featured a review, Niall Ferguson’s review of Terror and Consent by Philip Bobbitt that made me feel that not only had politics encroached upon my sacred space but the same political antics that were driving campaign pundits to smear and camoflauge strategy as opinion and disinform the gullible glue-eyed American “public” 25 hours a day, 8 days a week were intruding into the very structure and message of the review. There are better critiques than mine of the troubling substance of the review. (e.g. Kalkaina’s on the Daily Kos, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/4/13/133931/051). But my surprise — surprise is the wrong word, as if Scarlet O’Hara was “surprised” to find Tara demolished in the midst of a civil war that turned the world into an upside down hell, or dot dot dot name your literary figure here for sacred domestic spaces being turned into vivid scenes of destruction and lost innocence) — was that the entire editorial apparatus was being brought in to camouflage a campaign ad for John McCain as if it were a very positive review of a very scholarly book.

First, never before in the New York Times Book Review have I noticed so much focus on the credentials of the author of the book in a review. The authors whose works have been reviewed in the review include the world’s greatest writers, the most prize winning prize winners, some of the most honored degree holders, and a slew of really smart people whose lack of an ivy league degree in no way compromises their achievements as scholars, writers, or achievers on the world stage. New York Times Book Review readers, I imagine, are a smart group who collectively represent higher education around the world, and are likely not to be wowed by emphases on the educational credentials of the authors reviewed. But the editors of this issue — rather than commenting on the substance of the review — state that Phillip Bobbitt “is a busy man” as Senior Fellow of the University of Texas research institute, teaches law at Columbia and runs the Columbia Center for National Security. But, we are told that “his reviewer goes one better” holding four positions, including Lawrence A. Tisch professor of history at Harvard, the William Ziegler professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, and a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford.

Doth the lady protest too much?

We only get a hint at an idea in the last line of the editor’s “Up Front” Preface to this week’s review.

What are all these credentials for? We now read the review not as one review among others but as a reviewer’s review – where the conspicuous display of unsurpassed credentials should suspend any disbelief we have toward the content of the review. I skip now over the review’s assertions rather than display of the brilliance of this text and the superlatives that Niall Ferguson lays upon the Bobbitt book (it is “quite simply the most prfound book to have been written on the subject of American foreign policy since the attacks of 9/11 - indeed since the end of the cold war,” my emphasis), I skip over these measured and objective remarks to the review’s conclusion, “Yet it is striking that despite being a democrat, Philip Bobbitt so often echoes the arguments made by McCain on foreign policy.

Are we meant to go away from the lead book review in the New York Times with the impression that even the most well educated democrats will be forced to concede after reading this book, or even without reading this book?, that John McCain is the candidate for anyone who cares about foreign policy? perhaps that McCain is the most profound candidate for advancing US foreign policy since the cold war? Or are we supposed to go away thinking that either of these eggheads would make a mighty fine Secretary of State under President McCain? Or are we supposed to come away thinking, hmmm… I’m a democrat and if I (like the New York Times) really want to endorse Hillary Clinton, I better vote for McCain (and find really convoluted ways of defending my choice to my fellow democrats) so Hillary has a chance in 2012?

America Votes on the Number Two Issue

Ok. Fear, smear, sarcasm, threats and potential lawsuits, and leaked memos …. apparently it all did the trick.

Congratulations Mark (“Being human is overrated“) Penn.

Maybe Walters Bagehot and Lippman, and Leo Strauss, were right after all.

This newsclip, by the way, is irresistible — (thanks to my infinite friend):

Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters

Tony Rezko = Dr. Phil?

Please tell me its a coincidence that that the Tony Rezko federal corruption trial was scheduled to begin on the eve of the biggest election day of the primaries since Super Tuesday?

Is it possible this whole thing is just a case of mistaken identity? Maybe Barack Obama thought he was dealing with Dr. Phil all along. Who wouldn’t trust Dr. Phil?

But don’t believe the rumors that Tony Rezko is Dr. Phil’s alternate personality, like Dr. Jeckyll’s Mr. Hyde, his dark side, despite the evidence of deep ties between Dr. Phil and Hillary (see below):

http://revver.com/video/606694/dr-phil-rushes-to-hillary-clintons-bedside/

Tactics and Antics on the Stump

Pat Buchanan was a guest commentator on MSNBC this morning. I almost never watch MSNBC, and typically don’t watch news in the morning. A little Bloomberg with breakfast, maybe, to see how far my stocks have tumbled overnight in European trading. But for the first time in my life…drumroll please–no, I’m not going to mention pride in my country… although?…–I’m finding myself addicted to campaign politics. I’ve been impressed by how Buchanan has been generally able to tone down his political convictions in his role as debate commentator. To his credit, he focuses most of his remarks on the tactics of debate, and surely serves as one barometer of public response to some of the antics emerging in the campaign.

In his commentary on last night’s presidential debate, however, Buchanan made a regrettable remark about Hillary Clinton’s stump style. He preceded the remark with a reference to her many personalities (I think he called her “Sybil”): her assumption of a respectful, even honorific tone toward Senator Obama one moment (as she concluded the last presidential debate) and her ostensibly outraged indictment the following day: “Shame* on you, Barack Obama”; her hammed-up, sarcastic mockery of Obama as a charismatic, if not snake-oil, prophet out of touch with reality and with no concrete plans and of his supporters, a good swath of the American public now, as a bunch of blind supplicants hoodwinked by the visionary’s charisma; her ‘I’m a fighter’ theme in such stark contrast to her public tears and valedictory gestures. [*“Shame” was a recurrent theme of the recent stump speech, where she also compared Obama to, of all people, George W. Bush and implied that if the American public votes for Obama, they'll get “shafted” once again and should be ashamed of themselves for even considering it; “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me”—at least you have to give her credit for correctly citing the cliché that Bush famously bumbled.] I am going to resist the temptation to criticize Senator Clinton for her choice of tone and words, or linger on the question of whether there is any central intelligence in the campaign selecting the occasion and timing of the emergence of these multiple personalities or estimating their impact. (But seriously, does her team really think that Sarcasm and Shame are winning strategies against Hope and Change in this election season?)

The Clinton campaign strikes me as a dog in a bear trap, willing to chew off its own leg in order to survive. The overarching strategy of her campaign in this last stretch of the nomination process appears to be: “You take the high road, and I’ll take the low road.” I find it disappointing because I think Senator Clinton’s campaign in the lead-up to Texas and Ohio could have been much more successful if she had made it a footrace on the high road. My belief is that it’s too late now, but my advice to the Clinton campaign is to give up the posturing, the theatricality, the mock vulnerability and mock outrage, and the feigned adulation for her opponent. The many faces of Hilary are tactical, yes; but they are also antics. And that’s one of the major difference between the campaign strategies of the two democratic candidates. After what the American people have been through over the last decade, the American public is a body re-awakening as if from a long sleep to the exhilaration of active and informed engagement in the democratic process. And I think that it is (or we are) doing so precisely because there is already an acute sense of responsibility, if not shame, for the consequences of having either opted out of the heart of process, or so passively engaged in it until now. And while enthusiasm for charisma is high, and the qualifications of the candidates will be important, I believe that the demand for personal integrity and authenticity is going to be the deciding issue in this election. In this political context, the strategic adoption of four distinct personalities in as many weeks, and two opposite “emotional” stances toward her opponent in twenty four hours, runs the risk of sending a message to the public that dissembling and inconsistency are fairplay, and that it is just good politics to adopt tones and stances for different audiences as the occasion demands and as the heat of competition requires. [Senator Clinton admitted last night, with a laugh and a smile, to the tactical nature of her shifts in tone.]

Fans of politics-as-usual will credit Senator Clinton for her tactical abilities as a political Proteus. But one of Senator Obama’s arguments is that if experience is defined only as the resourceful and expedient deployment of a battery of tactics as the occasion demands without a governing intelligence to adjudicate (call it smarts or a moral compass), that is, if it is defined as politics-as-usual, he will gladly cede the monopoly on that political virtue to his opponent. In this sense, Senator Clinton’s complicity in the U.S. government’s decision to “drive the truck into the ditch” and her seemingly inconsistent campaign strategies strike me as part of a consistent pattern of deciding not to decide, of deciding to choose expediency over conviction, of choosing to do and say what her advisors have determined to be the most popular things to do or say depending on the state or situation. And perhaps this is the reason why more than any other issue when that of health care arises, even if she is being pressed to speak about the details of her policy, she will turn the subject to her “convictions.” If on every other issue her position is driven by tactics rather than conviction, at least this one, at least her position on health care, is driven by conviction. When asked by Senator Obama to articulate her policy details, she has resorted in both debates to an assertion of conviction: “it is one of my deepest convictions that.” Conversely, when asked to answer questions about where she stands, or what she believes, she has often responded with an inventory of policy details: (‘beliefs are beside the point, there are complexities to be dealt with’). I doubt this tactic reflects confusion on her part about the difference between conviction and policy points, as if the assertion of one was the same as the articulation of the other. This is the very confusion that she warns the public not to let Senator Obama get away with. Her criticism of Obama on precisely this issue would seem to indicate that her substitution of one for the other is a consciously adopted strategic tactic: “if asked about detail x on issue y, talk about how important this is as a personal issue of yours and refer to anecdotes of individuals, personalize it” OR “if asked where you stand on this issue, talk about how complicated the details are, cite examples, and mention ‘experience.’”

To get back to Pat Buchanan’s gaffe. When asked to comment on the various positions that Senator Clinton has taken over the past week, and particularly her tactics on the stump, he paraphrased Samuel Johnson’s (in)famous quote: “Sir, a woman’s [public speaking] is like a dog’s walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.” Mr. Buchanan’s regurgitation of Samuel Johnson’s quote to explain the failure of Clinton’s stump strategy over the past weeks is on the surface offensive for obvious reasons: at the very least, it is blatantly misogynist. And it is ill-informed, denying America a heritage of effective female public speakers. Not to mention its problematic elision of political public speaking and “preaching” (Johnson’s original reference) or the fact that to have used this quote to talk about Obama would have gotten him fired, big time, Imus style. But on another level Mr. Buchanan’s citation of Johnson was misguided because it misattributes to a flaw in Senator Clinton’s sex—women can’t give stump speeches—what is arguably the fatal flaw in her campaign strategy—Hillary can’t win on the high road.

Buchanan’s co-hosts showed proper embarrassment, but their nervous reaction, short of cutting to a commercial break and canceling his contract, ultimately raised another issue dear to Samuel Johnson’s heart and for which he is more highly regarded: literacy. Buchanan’s cohosts were dumbfounded not only because of the offensiveness of his statement but also because they didn’t even recognize the name of Samuel Johnson. “Boswell’s Life of Johnson!” Buchanan cried in disbelief, to vacant stares, thus demonstrating that the two generations of by all appearances Euro-stock majority in which Buchanan has invested so much of his political capital to unify the country do not share a common culture. The televised generation gap qua literacy gap must have struck Mr. Buchanon as a cultural instance of the larger problem, real or imaginary, that he has tried to tackle through his public attacks on immigration in the United States: that “we” no longer know where we stand because we no share a common identity, be it rooted in bloodlines, culture, or religion. This was a metamoment, for television especially over the past decade is both the culprit and the rapporteur of the decline in literacy. With all due respect to the well groomed young innocents (and as we all know that’s DC cant for I’m sticking it to you now!), the networks are as much to blame for dumbing down television news by replacing journalists, who for all the negative associations the public may have of them have also traditionally connoted literacy, experience, and an appreciation for history, with white-toothed well-dressed witty young people with good builds and pretty faces. I’m proselytizing now, but not only were Buchanan’s interlocutors unfamiliar with Johnson, they were also unable to contest his sexist comment by naming one single female speaker in America. Buchanon responded to the dumb and dumbfounded faces of his cohosts and jumped to his own rebuttal by throwing up… Margaret Thatcher! It’s one thing for MSNBC’s news anchors to provide vacant stares in response to references to the albeit antiquated reference to obscure figures of eighteenth century British literature, but quite another for them to be floating adrift when prompted to call up the name of one female politician with acumen as a public speaker.

But maybe the question is not whether Hillary Clinton can give a good stump speech or can be consistent or even whether her campaign strategists are competent. The real question, at once more naive, more profound, and more tragic, may be: whether she can be authentic. Has she so imbibed or stewed in the juices of politics-as-usual (to borrow from one of Obama’s recent speeches) that it is impossible not only to shed affectation but also to even know where she herself actually stands. This is the same threat to the integrity of the private self that runs through the literature on theatricality: the risk that actors may cease to become their own persons because they become nothing but an agglomeration of their roles. Is the demise of Senator Clinton’s campaign evidence that there is no there there? no private self calling the shots outside the circularity of the majority caucus/campaign cycle that Lewis Carroll captured so well in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: where polls determine the antics and tactics adopted to better candidates’ standing in the polls. Maybe this all means that we should think of a politician’s integrity in a different, more philosophical light than is usually marshalled in political discussions on the topic. Critiques of ‘old school political tactics’ typically suggest that politicians lack integrity because they are always calculating; factors in the calculation are self interests and special interests, with the public interest a distant third. But the disintegration of Senator Clinton’s 2008 campaign, if indeed it turns out to have been a failure, may rather suggest that the greatest threat to effective leadership in this country is when political tactics substitute for and annihilate the integrity of the personality of the politician. Because all politics are tactical, this may be better stated that when antics take the place of tactics in a campaign strategy, our deepest concern should be not just that it muddies the waters of politics but that it begs the question whether there is a person running for office or whether the prospect of office is running and ruining the person.

It is my belief that Senator Clinton is to be credited for strategically adopting every position she has taken over the past weeks and that none of these (except perhaps the outburst at Tim Russert about being always ‘called on first’ that began last night’s debate) represents genuine “emotion,” which could be a good or bad thing depending on your perspective. The issue is not that Hillary Clinton can’t be consistent or can’t make good speeches, but that her consistent strategy has been to not make good public speeches, which is to say speeches that appeal to the public’s desire for politicians who claim to represent the public good. One of Obama’s singular strengths is his tactical insistence on the high road at almost every instance. When asked if he ever cast a vote that he regretted, he described the stance he didn’t take in congress: on the Terri Shiavo situation. One the one hand this could look like a tactical answer because of the issue’s relatively low place on the ranking of issues at stake in this year’s campaign. On the other hand, the fact that Obama’s answer is so below the radar (by contrast to Senator Clinton’s greatest regret: to vote to go to war in Iraq) might suggest to prospective voters that his is a genuinely felt regret, the result of sincere reflection that this political inaction, an error of omission rather than commission, was an instance of moral weakness in which he succumbed to the temptation to fall in line with consensus politics. If so, then his answer tactical though it may have been suggests a place deeper than politics from which political decisions should be made. If there is such a place, whatever we call it, let’s hope–or entertain the hope-–at least for the moment, it is a place that might just save politicians of all parties from the bear traps of “politics.”