That’s what this exchange in today’s WaPo chat sounds like:
Kensington, Md.: Am I the only one who finds it irritating and childish when the media (and the public) assigns credit or blame to a president for the outcome of a small-scale touch-and-go military operation on the other side of the world? I’m a huge Obama supporter, but he is no more a hero because the waves held steady as our Navy sharpshooter took his aim than Jimmy Carter was a goat because an unexpected sandstorm jammed the helicopter engines during the 1980 hostage rescue mission. Does the media truly have no idea how irrational (and unrealistic) this hero/goat assignment practice is?
Michael A. Fletcher: No comment there. But it is our common practice. Think of the instant analysis after political debates about who “won.” Remember Al Gore’s eye roll? What did that have to with the substance of his answers? But did it say somehting about his personality? Rightly or wrongly, these incidents often come to define presidents, and I don’t think it is just because of the media coverage. It probably speaks to the few windows we get into their decision making. In this case, Obama could have said we’re not going to do something that risky. Or he could have done what he did–I think that says something, even if it doesn’t say as much as we often make it out to.
Until this begins to change, our political system is largely screwed. Leaders are now judged, at best, by random events over which they have little control, and, at worst, by Villagers’ sad attempts at psychoanalysis. Bush managed to transcend that through the magnitude of his incompetence, but, even then, it took the Village until 2005 to realize it, so wowed were they by the straight talk and the flight suit and what not.
Maybe some day that will change. But I’m not optimistic.
ricky
your lack of optimism is the sad result of non substantive eye rolling in your youth. If newspapers die you will have no one to blame but themselves.
Garrigus Carraig
Ahaha "No comment there [sevenlinesofcomment]"
Lupin
The Media are no longer there to inform us, but have become some strange Greek chorus on speed.
Comrade Dread
The age of reason has yet to touch political life.
We’re still the offspring of the same tribal idiots who got together and worshiped their chosen leader because the sun didn’t eclipse during his reign and the Nile flooded regularly letting us grow crops.
AnotherBruce
Looking back at it, what sentient person wouldn’t roll their eyes at something W said. His administration really gave power to the stupid.
MattF
It’s the combination of 1) reporting triviality as though it was news with 2) stenography on questions of policy that’s so poisonous. I don’t care if a Villager is offended by Michelle’s bare arms, except that there’s actual news out there that needs actual reporting by actual reporters.
HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
I guess you missed Nov. 4th.
SpotWeld
He didn’t micromanage it.
It didn’t pass the buck either.
He let the ultimate responsibility has a gate to float up to his desk if things went the worst way possible.
While the credit for any success cannot be attributed to him, it’s rather like Al Gore and the internet. He acted in a manner that allowed for least restricted path towards success.
That doesn’t make for a good sound bite, so the nutbars set the tone.
Comrade Dread
Except he’s not talking about who runs the country. He’s talking about the media’s tendency to major in the minors while ignoring real issues completely.
Take yesterday. I mean, seriously, I could flip to any freakin’ news station and hear hours about Obama’s puppy. I didn’t hear one ‘reporter’ talk at all about Goldman Sachs’ "profit" and how the bailout was the only reason for it.
How do you fill that much time on a freakin’ dog.
jenniebee
Or the time in the town-hall style debate when Gore crossed the stage and asked Bush what his position was on the Gramm-Leach Act? What was up with that? Gawd, I mean, that told you so much about Gore, didn’t it? He was so, like, "what about Gramm-Leach?" and I mean, like, who cares? It’s not like it was important or anything.
Common Sense
I’m betting that 3/4 of the teabaggers will be people over 60 who have short term memory problems when it comes to recent events (like Bush), but can remember ancient history such as Carter like it happened yesterday.
I honestly think that the GOP created a monster the last few years. They have emboldened their own Jimmy Carter in GW Bush. For the next 30 years, his name will be invoked as a shorthand for GOP incompetence. Any Democrat will simply call their opponent Bush redux, and any GOP candidate will have to take explicit pains to distance themselves from Bush’s policies (a la Clinton wrt Carter), spending more time redifining themselves than defining their opponent.
Face
Posted w/o comment.
Wisdom
Barney Frank and Charles Schumer were not random actors. But yes, no one had control over them and we are all screwed as long as they are your heroes.
bayville
Because W. didn’t roll his eyes, allegedly like Gore, that means he was going to be a better President?????? Is that the logic?
What a bunch of Heathers.
Zifnab
Transcend nothing. He thrived off of it. Folksy charm got magnified by dozens of Washington insider puff pieces. His integrity was embellished on to an embarrassing degree as a counterpoint to Clinton’s White House blow jobs.
And when he lost the election in 2000, his "I’m a Republican and I’m serious" media aura gave his little judicially lubricated political coup the room it needed to shut up his detractors.
The Cowboy President wouldn’t exist without a healthy dose of villager idiocy selling rich people tax cuts and restoring-honor-and-integrity-to-the-White-House bullshit 24/7.
Zifnab
@Wisdom:
No no. Barney Frank and Charles Schummer are our champions. Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden (possibly the same person, mind you) are our Heroes.
That’s why we’ve got guys like Glenn Greenwald constantly writing Obama puff pieces and websites like FireDogLake that can’t shut up about how much they love our President’s choice of economic advisers. It’s a fucking bonanza of political cock-sucking over here. But if you’re going to accuse us of having dicks in our mouths, at least get the names right.
Just go back through the last twenty or so blog posts and you’ll see fanboism brimming from every pore and folicle of the site. You’ll be able to identify our Heroes easily enough.
John Cole
You may all dislike it, but the simple fact of the matter is that Al Gore’s nonverbals were irritating and in many cases, just weird. Is that any way to choose a President? No. Did the media have a responsibility to get it right based on issues and not superficialities? Yes. But you can’t change the fact that Gore’s behavior is what created that impression. Watch this at around 37 seconds:
Yes, Gore was right on the issues, but what stuck for people was Gore’s violation of people’s sense of space. It was the same damned thing with McCain stumbling around the stage.
jake 4 that 1
Is the press still covering that? I thought they were on to PUPPY GATE!!
Just Some Fuckhead
John, I would argue that Gore wouldn’t have had to sigh loudly or roll his eyes or encroach in Danger Monkey’s airspace (or whatever else he did that keeps you up at nght imagining he’s just like McCain) if the idiot debate moderators were doing their flipping job and not letting Danger Monkey just spout nonsense and bullshit. So it’s back to Teh Media. Your play.
flounder
I think this Bob Somerby post explains the instant analysis of the Bush/Gore debates:
In short Gore won, these debates (and Bush lied his ass off about his budget numbers and his prescription drug plan numbers). The next day/week/month it was all about how rude and weird Gore was; consider this little statement was considered not rude, but true and hilarious:
Svensker
@Wisdom:
Huh? Or alternatively, WTF?
Balconesfault
Of course, pre-Katrina there seemed to be about half-a-dozen newspeople or political commentators in America who were allowed to make any substantive criticism of Bush and still get airtime/column inches.
This isn’t just that the media is filled with people clamoring to get an invite to McCain’s barbecue … it’s that the media has been selected to promote people who are willing to clamor to get an invite to McCain’s barbecue, rather than rejecting the concept outright as an insult to their professional standards.
Laura W
@Just Some Fuckhead: Well I probably should’ve been listening more closely but I’m pretty sure the President just chided Washington (and the press?) for having short attention spans, the need for immediate grat and overnight changes, and living from drama to drama?
Maybe I misheard him?
Napoleon
Gore ran a seriously bad campaign, much, much worse then Kerry’s. There was no reason he should not have beat Bush by 5 points. Complaining of how the press treated him is like the Cleveland Cavs playing a lousy game against the Washington Wizards, then complaigning about a bad call that cost them the game. If they were playing the game they are capable of the bad call would never matter.
The Grand Panjandrum
@John Cole: Facts they may be, but we have more than 4000 dead Americans, and scores of thousands of dead Iraqis because a lot of mouth breathers fell for that particular set of facts. In other words, democracy has evolved into a media driven popularity contest.
Given the options in the last election we may have gotten it right this time. But when we don’t it’s a motherfucker.
John Cole
@Just Some Fuckhead: Fair enough.
Also, I was teaching nonverbal at the time and in the middle of writing a companion workbook for a co-worker’s nonverbal text during the 2000 election, so I may have paid more attention to that than others and may have ascribed more importance to it than your average user.
Plus, I think I was a full fledged wingnut in 2000.
Just Some Fuckhead
That’s not rude. That’s hilarious conversation from a dude we’d all love to have a beer with.
JK
To a great degree, blame can be laid at the doorstep of the all news cable channels. They gave us the 24/7 news cycle. The growth of the Web put the 24/7 news cycle on steroids.
The 24/7 news cycle is the worst thing that ever happened to journalism. With 24/7, serious perspective is dead. Every story gets magnified a trillion times and gets sliced, diced, and dissected a trillion ways.
The 24/7 news cycle created the environment for leaders being judged by random events over which they have little control and for Villagers’ attempts at psychoanalysis
Programs during peak hours consist of hosts and pundits giving thumbs up or thumbs down to Obama or whoever else is on the media’s radar on that day.
News divisions at ABC, CBS, and NBC were once seen as a public service by network executives. They weren’t expected to make a profit or get high Nielsen ratings. The mission was to report the news and not waste time telling viewers who won the news cycle and whose star was rising or falling.
The big three network news divisions had their flaws but at least they had fricking gravitas. They treated the news seriously. We had on air talent like Ted Koppel, John Chancellor, Howard K. Smith, Sander Vanocur, Edwin Newman, Marvin Kalb, Eric Severeid, and Roger Mudd. In contrast, cable news is A Thousand Clowns starring Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Joe Scarborough, Lou Dobbs, Chris Matthews, Jim Cramer, Joe Kernan, Nancy Grace, Geraldo Rivera, Fox and Friends, etc.
I felt better served by the big 3 network news divisions than I now feel with 24 hour cable news.
What we’re seeing now in journalism is the bad driving out the good. Fox News Channel’s ratings are going thru the roof while newspapers are dying left and right.
I’m glad Richard Phillips was rescued but the over the top tone of the coverage was disgusting. Chris Matthews was having an orgasm discussing the bounce he believed Obama would receive as a result of the successful rescue operation.
Svensker
Well, this morning on Fox, Newtie said that while Obama had done the right thing with the Somali pirates, it took him FIVE DAYS which was way too long, and it’s good the pirates are dead BUT THERE ARE STILL PIRATES in Somalia!;!;! (Guess Newt expected the MUP to make all the pirates vanish and Somalia to become an African paradise just by a wave of the pony’s magic purple glossy tail.) Oh, and how come Obama hasn’t bombed N. Korea or Iran yet?
So I switched to ABC (I think, the one with Harry whatsizname) and they were talking about how black and white animal prints are the NEW BIG THING for spring.
Which is why I mostly watch DVDs and HGTV and get my news from the toobs.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Laura W: I tried to watch it in the breakroom here at work but people kept coming in and talking to me like I friggin’ care who they voted for or what they think of Obama.
I need my office teevee back stat.
Laura W
@Just Some Fuckhead: Somebody sounds like they need their chamomile tea break a little early today, mmm?
Tsulagi
And…
Both are accurate. A president can’t make every decision or pull every trigger, but he/she shares the responsibility for the outcome in their choosing of people placed in position and expectations.
An intelligent leader would put smart, competent people (preferably even more than themself) in place who know competence if not excellence is the expectation and requirement for continued employment. Likely more good results than bad occur in that situation.
With Bush, the only job requirement and expectation was fealty. And with that guy it wasn’t a career enhancer to exhibit more intelligence and competence than the Decider. Fuckup beyond all measure, there was likely a Medal of Freedom and promotion in your future if like Harriet Miers you drew happy faces on birthday cards to Bush and told him he was really smart.
Richard Bottoms
Flogging the Famous Equine:
Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight. If the political arena requires we win on the superficialities, then we make sure we win there too.
Get to 61 Senators.
What. Ever. It. Takes.
MR Bill
@ Balconesfault: the thing that made Bob Somerby of The Daily Howler a must read for so long, whatever quirks and annoying tics he has, was his perception of Washington DC as "the Village" and Washington Media as "Village Scribes". The insularity of a relatively small group in a hierarchical society , and the recent ascendancy of that group to upper class status, make clamoring for barbecue and cocktail weenies inevitable.
Somerby and others have argued that as the Washington Press, in it’s attempt to get "access" to the powerful, have become courtiers and the equivalent of the staff of the High School Paper, or an in-house publication.
Journalism is the futherest thing from these stenographers minds.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole:
I saw a different debate. I never picked up on the sighs and eye-rolls because I was focused on the biggest idiot ever to be put forward as a national candidate. And when Gore confronted Bush, I was up in the air yelling, "Yeah! Get the motherfucker!"
Dennis-SGMM
@Svensker:
That’s not a non sequitur: it’s Wisdom.
Ed in NJ
Bernie Goldberg slapping around Hannity for continuing to criticize Obama re: the pirates. Last minute is the best.
Goldberg on Hannity
JK
@John Cole #17,
I blame the news media for focusing on minutiae and I blame the morons among the general public who fell hook, line, and sinker for the Washington Press Corps narrative that Gore’s non-verbal actions represented something important and should be a basis upon which to determine who deserves to serve as president.
Follow-up on lack of coffee options
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQxgv4QtKM8
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
"We’re still the offspring of the same tribal idiots who got together and worshiped their chosen leader because the sun didn’t eclipse during his reign and the Nile flooded regularly letting us grow crops."
In fairness, effectiveness of the Nile flooding the cropland would be partially related to how well the irrigation canals were maintained and managed, which would have been at the nonarch level or below but still somewhat accountable to the pharoah at a programmatic level. Plus, the actual effect of a bad flood year on the population would depend on reserves of grain set aside in granaries in previous years, which were managed by the pharoah. Good pharoah like Tutmoses III – lotsa reserves; hippy space-cadet like Akenaten: time to check out emigration to the Hittites.
So the tribal "idiots" above seem a bit more based in the reality of cause-and-effect than the beltway villagers.
Martin
Probably a bit of that, but really the problem was that the media reported on little else. They didn’t want to report on the substance of the debates, just the execution. Execution is easier to deliver, and certainly easier to fill a 24/7 network with, and given that Obama is Captain Teleprompter to the right and to the PUMAs, it would seem that a healthy chunk of the populace cares about little else. Yes, Gore was annoying, but much of the population didn’t seem to care so long as Gore was in command of the issues, which Bush often didn’t seem to be (and which is every bit as annoying to some people).
So, here’s the chicken/egg problem. Does the media report on the superficial shit that a meaningful percentage of the population demand, or do they report on substance that the rest demand and hope it brings the first group around. I know there’s a temptation to frame this as a ‘media responsibility’ issue, but let’s face it, media responsibility doesn’t get GE through it’s quarterly conference call. The media live in the same capitalistic system as WalMart and Microsoft. How many supply-side solutions have we seen work in this country?
bobbo
Things don’t just happen to "stick for people." When you’ve got a 24-hour a day news media that chooses to focus on "Gore’s violation of people’s sense of space" over and over again, they are not just "reporting," they are making shit up. It "sticks" because they do everything they can to make it stick. And many of us were chump enough to think that if the media reported it a lot, it was important. "Remember Al Gore’s eye roll?" No, I don’t. Why the hell should I?
John Cole
Yes.
JK
@Svensker #29,
Newt Gingrich can go f–k himself. He’s scum. He once called Bill and Hillary Clinton "counterculture McGoverniks".
George McGovern was a bomber pilot during WWII. Last time I checked, Newt Gingrich had no military service. Gingrich should shut the f–k up. He’s the ultimate chickenhawk.
Did Gingrich or any other Republican blowhard ever criticize Ronald Reagan for trading arms for hostages? If Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton had traded arms for hostages, Republicans would have demanded impeachment immediately.
DanSmoot'sGhost
Yes, and to what effect? Do we imagine that the country is a tail being wagged by the media dog?
It isn’t. Self government still works, Nov 4th proved that, and constant pearl-clutching over "the media" makes about as much sense here as it does over in rightyland, where the mantra is "Liberal Media!"
The media doesn’t run the country. The right hasn’t figured that out, but they’re stupid. That shouldn’t stop us from figuring it out.
anonevent
@flounder: Gore – and by extension the rest of us – would have benefited from the insta-polls from this elections debates. Especially since Gore would have captured bin Laden on the Mad TV set.
Zifnab
@Napoleon:
Hey, I can’t argue with that. Gore distanced himself from a popular soon-to-be-ex-President, he tried to play to the middle and actively dodged his own impressive green credentials, he let himself get Rove’d rather viciously, and he left a lot of people questioning whether there was really a difference between him and Bush. That was the really tragedy of the Clinton legacy – you couldn’t tell the parties apart anymore.
But saying, "Gore should have won the election by 5 points" and pooh-poohing a partisan SCOTUS shut down of the recount process are two very different verdicts. I mean, does Coleman deserve to take the MN Senate seat because Franken should have done better than a 312 vote victory margin? That’s a shitty way to run a Democracy.
Cpl. Cam
@Richard Bottoms:
Richard, what is even the point of politics or any of this if you are just going to become the thing you hate? It’s not just their crummy policies that set Republicans apart, it’s their crummy sociopathic win-at-any-cost attitude too.
Paul in KY
I actually thought VP Gore was quite restrained in his exasperation over the stream of wacky BS that was coming from Bush, Jr.
Maybe, in hindsight, he should have just gone all in & started pounding the lectern, pointing at Bush Jr. & laughing at the stupid shit he was saying.
Or he could have kept a completely poker face, I guess…
Zifnab
@DanSmoot’sGhost:
It doesn’t "run" the country, but it does put a heavy weight on peoples opinions and beliefs. Ten years ago, where did you go for national news? Newspaper, TV, radio. The wingnuts were slowly clenching their grips on all of them.
So if you don’t catch the Presidential Debate and you want a recap on your way to work, what are you supposed to think when the big headline in the paper is "Al Gore sighs alot!" What do you do when you turn on Meet the Press and get treated to Wingnut Talking Head Theater? Where do you get reliable news? How do you even know what the issues of the election are? The media was running a continuous Bush campaign commercial. Is there really surprise that people got swayed?
Punchy
This doesn’t sound work-safe.
Tsulagi
Yeah, I held my nose when I voted for Gore in 2000. Just about every mannerism of the Inventor of the Internet (yes I know that was overblown) irritated me. Lot of people said I should vote Bush.
But Al’s invention was working in 00 and everything I found about Bush and Cheney pointed to suck. The main decision decider for me was remembering during the primaries when McCain during an interview confronted Bush over the black-baby and other Rovian bullshit making the rounds in SC. Bush weasled and whined all around saying he wouldn’t denounce the bs as he didn’t know for sure it wasn’t true. Gutless.
Actually, when Florida blew up I started liking Gore more. He stayed to fight, while little Bushie did as he was told going home to sit while daddy’s men fixed it. Confirmed for me he was a gutless spoiled brat. But no one could ever have anticipated the extent we came to know.
Dennis-SGMM
@Punchy:
Relax; they’re just talking about teabagging.
Napoleon
@Zifnab:
I am not "pooh-poohing" the POTUS power grab. People were complaining about how the press treated Gore, and although I think the complains were right that was not what put Gore in the place where people like Scalia could steal the election, but instead where the dumb things Gore did that you mention (distancing himself from Clinton was one of the stupidest moves I have ever seen from a presidential candidate).
DanSmoot'sGhost
Yes, according the right, it weighs people’s beliefs to the left, because it is a Liberal Media?
Which way do you claim that it sways opinion? The right has no data to show that it pushes anyone to the left. Do you have data?
It’s a rhetorical question. There’s no data showing any particular effect that I know of. Absent that, what are we talking about?
Balconesfault
@DanSmoot’sGhost:
But as an advertising agency for specific policies, they can generate huge financial bonanzas for those who invest in them.
What was the ROI over the last 8 years for Murdoch and other controlling shareholders in companies that own our national media? Defense contracts to GE. Tax cuts for billionaires. A continued toothless FCC boosting the values of Clear Channel.
A primary dogma for today’s Republicans is the right to acquire a valuable resource, and profit from it while they run it into the ground. And they bought a media that had a high degree of credibility among the American people, used it to sell a laughable doctrine of Laffer Curves, privatization, union-busting, and neoconservative foreign policy to the public.
And now the public has increasingly come to regard that once valuable resource, now hollowed out perhaps beyond repair, as useless. That’s ok because lots of money was made while the one thing that gave the media value – credibility – was mined and sold off by people who had no real interest in the asset itself.
Paul in KY
Jesus, John. I just watche dthe clip you posted & they were sitting about 7 feet from each other to begin with. So he walked over till he was about a foot and a 1/2 and made his point. Oh, boo hoo he’s going to eat Gov. Bush’s face!!!
I know you have seen the light, but you still get caught up in the rightwing BS about VP Gore’s ‘character’. VP Gore knew what a crazy sockpuppet he was & I think showed admirable restraint when witnessing the vile snake oil Bush, Jr. was spouting.
I’m glad you at least think he ‘was right on the issues’. Piddly little things they are.
DanSmoot'sGhost
Well, that isn’t recent. The CW in the 70’s was that the media were biased and useless. We are approaching the fourth or fifth decade of that point of view being widely accepted.
In fact, it’s so pervasive and has been for so long, that the media’s main personality is one of a beleaguered and misunderstood community of well meaning people. Who doesn’t laugh at that? Listen to them scream when somebody "blames the media" for anything at all. They have no clue.
But the point is, self government continues to work despite the absence of a benevolent and competent press. That is the great takeaway from the whole situation. It would be nice to have a better press, but we don’t, and we aren’t getting one soon.
Meanwhile, the world grinds on, and we elected BHO, and here in Arizona, a longtime red state, we elected a Dem "unmarried" woman governor twice, along with new Dem congresscritters.
It’s worth mentioning just for the record that I’ve changed my mind 180 degrees on this subject in the last year. DougJ can show you an email from me last year in which I joined him in crying over the loss of America to a shitty media. I don’t believe that any more. I think that along with a lot of other people, I had let the media convince me that they are a lot more important than they really are. That is their main goal, to convince you of that. And they do a pretty good job of it.
But, as in so many other ways, they are liars on that subject. And they know they are. They can pivot in ten seconds from "We the media are abuzz with ….. (fill in crap here) …. and so you should pay attention to it" to "Blame the media? We are just observers and reporters, we aren’t responsible for anything!"
Which of those two non-exclusive lies do you prefer?
DougJ
Tell that to someone who doesn’t have health care or has kids in Iraq.
JK
Along the lines of Gore’s mannerisms at his debate, what about the insane amount of airtime devoted to Obama’s bowling score? In both cases, the MSM went bananas over meaningless BS. Thankfully, the public was smarter when it came to the bowling story.
Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews were rolling on the floor laughing and implying that Obama was a sissy because he didn’t know how to bowl. Thank God, he knows how to play basketball. Otherwise, the sissy meme might have stuck.
TR
Glenn Beck had a guest faint on his show. Looks like the power of his stupidity can actually knock a man out.
DanSmoot'sGhost
Get serious, man. You don’t lack healthcare because of the media.
You lack healthcare because a huge interest with unlimited financial resources has mounted a long campaign against healthcare reform.
You might want to have lunch with Bill Frist and talk this over.
Self government works when the people act in their own self interest. Period. When the people demand access to healthcare that is as good as the rest of the Western world, they will get it. In fact that is essentially what you are going to see happen in the next year.
Will the moneyed interests again tilt the playing field enough to prevent reform? Watch and see. I don’t know, I certainly hope not. There’s not another person in here with a more vested interest in that reform than me.
But if those moneyed interests win and we lose, it won’t be because of the media. It will be because we have sold out the government to the moneyed interests in this context, once again. That’s why we have the banking crisis. That’s why we have an almost unregulated food supply.
The United States of Corporations is your real enemy, not David Broder. Not the dying Washington Post.
Fencedude
@Ed in NJ:
hah, Goldberg looked like he wanted to reach through the camera and smack Hannity. Also can Hannity not shut the fuck up for five seconds?
DougJ
I have health care. The lack of universal health care in this country is due primarily to media neglect of the issue.
If you don’t understand that, I don’t have time to argue with you.
Interrobang
Al Gore’s accent makes me crazy, but if I were an American, I would have voted for him.
Which is not to say that every time Bush said "new-cue-ler" or something, I didn’t want to hit him in the mouth with a slice of rotting fish wrapped around a large cement brick. Frankly, I’d rather listen to erudite speech in a country-bumpkin accent than whatever the fuck mushmouth it is that Bush attempts to speak. But Gore’s accent still makes me nuts. Every time I hear the guy speak, I think, "Come on, you’re way too educated to speak like that." And yes, I probably am an elitist classist snob, but I’m also a foreigner, so that probably has something to do with it.
The Cat Who Would Be Tunch
@DanSmoot’sGhost:
Yeah, self-government does work…eventually. But at what cost, especially during phases where self-government results in choosing incapable leaders?
DanSmoot'sGhost
You are wrong about this, and the whole subject of the effect of media in this country.
Moneyed interests are the reason why we have the healthcare system we have in this country. Government by corporation and lobbyists.
The people are not dependent on the media for their ability to change this. Harry and Louise were not created by the media.
You don’t "have time" to argue about this? Why, because you are too busy advancing your incorrect view ten times every damned day and making snarky replies when you have no actual argument in a challenge?
Maybe if you took time to research the actual history of the relentless and vicious war against healthcare reform, you wouldn’t need to defend your wrong view against its obvious lessons?
JK
@DanSmoot’sGhost,
Thankfully, Obama beat McCain but the MSM did an atrocious job of debunking the urban legend that he was a secret Muslim. Obama probably lost millions of votes as a result.
Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly have legions of fans who believe every word they say. Their programs have filled the void created by the decline of newspapers, news magazines, and network news.
The power and influence of these rabble rousing demagogues should concern anyone who values critical thinking and honest, civil discourse.
DanSmoot'sGhost
Then don’t wait. You don’t need the media’s permission or a note from David Broder, or even DougJ, to change the status quo.
The mighty media elected either Rudy Giuliani or Hillary Clinton president, because that is the contest they wanted.
The people disempower the media simply by asserting their true power to change things. If that lesson isn’t obvious from the last year, then what is?
DougJ would have you believe that the media caused the Iraq war. I assert that it was an abdication of power by the congress that permitted it to happen, and that the media were just camp followers. On the day that the people insist on a different model for government, they will start to get it.
DanSmoot'sGhost
Bah. Concern is for the concern merchants. Concern is what the demagogues sell.
Informed self interest and public action trump the blowdried demagogues. I don’t think Rush Limbaugh runs the country just yet. Maybe in upstate New York, where peoples’ brains are frozen from the shitty weather, sure, but not in the whole country.
Mnemosyne
@DanSmoot’sGhost:
This is a really good point. It seemed to me throughout this election that the really big news (that the media would never report) was that people were ignoring the talking heads and going out to get information for themselves. The usual suspects among the national commentators were talking themselves blue in the face, but people just weren’t buying it anymore.
It did have a lot to do with the wide availability of the internet, how many more people are using it, and how many more resources are available (newspaper archives, etc). Wingnuts could claim that Obama bought his house with Tony Rezko’s help, but people could go straight to Obama’s interview with the Sun-Times and see for themselves that it wasn’t true. Fact checking of the media was able to keep pace (mostly) with the media’s claims.
Ed Drone
I like to think of the media as "the thumb on the scales." I think that’s why I don’t feel so strongly about "cameras in the courtroom (or the SCOTUS)" — though something like C-Span might not be so bad.
In any case, the ability of journalistic media to distract, and the inability of the media to properly discern what is and what is not important, make it vital to call their attention to what is vital and important, even to the point of rubbing their noses in it.
Ed
Martin
‘Network’ came out in 1976. It was clear enough to the masses then to dump money into a movie about it.
Mnemosyne
@DanSmoot’sGhost:
Now I have to disagree with you: you are vastly underestimating the power that the media had in the 1990s. When Andrew Sullivan ran Betsy McCaughey’s story in The New Republic that included several demonstrable lies about the Clinton health care plan, the only thing the media told people was that the story was "controversial," not that it was a pack of lies, and not many people had access to the story or to the text of the health plan to check it out for themselves.
The difference now is that when a controversy comes up, people can examine the evidence for themselves from the comfort of their own homes. They don’t have to go down to the library, check out that issue of the New Republic or get the microfilm of it, and sit there to read it (or photocopy it to read later). They just call it up from the online archives at the New Republic or go to the White House website and get the PDF of the plan.
People aren’t disregarding the media because they’ve smartened up. They’re disregarding them because there are so many more ways for them to check up on the original sources and see what the misquote or the trimmed quote really was.
geg6
@John Cole:
John, it hurts me to do it, but I gotta call bullshit on that. Somerby wrote about it long ago (don’t have time to look it up) and I vividly remember the insta-polls unanimously calling Gore the winner. It was only the constant whining of the Bush talking points about Gore’s so-called "odd" behaviors by the MSM that left that impression. And, again, I point out that no one remembers this to this day the way the media paints it. I’ve asked people like my neighbors and the people at the local pub (none of them very political or partisan) how they remember it and they seem to remember the same way I do. Several of them expressed puzzlement as to why the media painted it the way they did and in how anyone could have voted for Bush if they watched the debates.
And McCain wasn’t invading anyone’s personal space. He was wandering around like he didn’t know where he was or why he was there. That’s what turned people off in that debate. The whole old man looking lost thing that reminded them that Reagan probably had Altzheimer’s while POTUS. People said as much to me.
jerry 101
We have a chance to change a big part of the stupid. Cancel your newspaper subscriptions and quit going to their websites.
The sooner the newspapers die, the better off we all are.
The idiots who call themselves "reporters" are the dregs of society. Most of the DC press corps should be in Los Angeles, covering the latest Jessica Simpson scandal.
geg6
@DanSmoot’sGhost:
I really don’t think you have a clue as to what makes a democracy work if you are serious about your pooh-poohing the poisonous effects of our current media on our political affairs.
The media, in my opinion, are as responsible for the Iraq War, the 2000 debacle, and the collapse of our financial infrastructure (and, really, the actual infrastructure) as Bush, Cheney, or Congress.
And if you don’t get that, you don’t get anything. My mother was an award winning print journalist, so when I say how avidly and gleefully I watch the slow and painful and, hopefully, permanent demise of today’s MSM, it is a serious charge I’m leveling. They have given up any right they may have had for me to defend them or even tolerate them. They are useless. In fact, they are worse than useless. They are destructive and should be killed off like rabid pests. They’ve have already infected our society, bringing us the wonders of W and the Permanent Republican Majority for the last 8 years. I say it’s time to wipe them out before they do it again. And they will if we let them.
The Cat Who Would Be Tunch
@DanSmoot’sGhost:
I think most of us here didn’t wait. We tried changing the status quo in ’04 but failed, remember?
I haven’t been around this blog long enough to know if DougJ’s has indicated this in the past. However, in the posts I have read, I don’t think he claims that the media ’causes’ anything. Rather, I think he’s asserting the media are ‘enablers’ which is a subtle but distinct difference. Unfortunately, humans have a tendency to believe things when something is said often enough and by a big enough group. Hence, while the MSM doesn’t control government, they certainly do influence people by changing their perceptions on topics. I would assert that influence can be more powerful than direct control at times.
Hey, I have no argument with you there. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when people in the government have no idea of how it works. Sadder still when it’s over a responsibility that’s clearly and unambiguously laid out in the Constitution. But again, how far do you think that Bush would’ve gotten with the war, let’s say the media, had been pointing this fact out constantly? Maybe the war would’ve still gone ahead, sure. But I’m pretty certain it would have had a noticeable impact come election time in 2004. And before you say it, I don’t think that people not knowing their government’s responsibilities is because of the media.
The point remains. The role of the media is to inform people. If the media, i.e. MSM, is misinforming people, sure, they can move on to better sources. But the core problem is the time it takes for people to figure that they are, in fact, being misinformed and then making decisions based upon that misinformation.
JK
@The Cat Who Would Be Tunch: The role of the media should be to inform. The problem with too many members of the media is that they feel their role to entertain and amuse.
Person of Choler
You are now fully prepared to rationalize Obama’s first big pooch-screwing whenever it happens.
Don
Why are you people playing along with Fletcher’s macguffin? The terms won or lost may be stupid when talking about a debate but that’s something that Gore and Bush had direct impact in. Gore could have gotten better media training or made different choices in the moment and it would have made a difference.
Fletcher’s questioner, on the other hand, paralleled two comparable incidents. Obama may have made some top-level calls, but crediting him with the success of the mission is moronic. The media can report on how people react to the direct actions of a person and it makes perfect sense. Reporting on their reactions to an incident and then assigning that reaction to a person who did nothing more than greenlight it does not.
Dave_Violence
Why shouldn’t Barry O take credit for this little victory? I give him credit, ‘cos it’s due him.
PaulB
With all due respect, you’re not exactly presenting any evidence, either. Yours is a personal opinion, unbolstered by any real data other than a recent election victory. You may well be correct, but the case you’re making thus far is uncompelling.
If you want to look at the effect of the media on our national discourse, look at the polls.