Via James Wolcott, Driftglass explains why David Broder was a shitty journalist:
David Broder — this “Dean of the Washington press corps” — totally missed out on covering the greatest story of his time; the utter collapse of the American news media and the mutation of the GOP from a political party into a dangerously fascistic cesspit of oligarchs, lunatics and rubes.
It was a story which his background and years of hard work had almost uniquely prepared him to cover, and one that was literally staring him in the face for much of the last 20 years.
And he completely fucking blew it.
David Broder might or might not have been an asshole. He had a certain perspective, that the most important thing was that the center must hold. From such a perspective, the Republican party’s descent into insanity was surely the biggest story of his lifetime. And yet he never wrote about it. Maybe it was safer for him professionally to avoid the topic, maybe he was just an idiot.
In any case, whatever else he might have been, David Broder was a failure as a political journalist. No number of eulogies from totebag heroes like E. J. Dionne and Hendrik Hertzberg (the Hertzberg piece isn’t that bad) can change that.
brettvk
How fortunate for him that he was able to monetize denial.
hilts
“Totebag Heroes” should be a new subject tag. Shame on Dionne and Hertzberg.
MikeJ
When one of the two parties is totally fucking insane, pretending you’re a centrist is saying you don’t mind be at least 50% totally fucking insane.
To use John’s analogy, it’s like having a pizza that half peperoni and sausage and half hubcaps and glass shavings.
hilts
The perfect blog to visit after reading Driftglass’ priceless post on Broder
http://dirtyhippies.org
beltane
Umm, David Broder didn’t miss the greatest story of his time; he participated in that story, and certainly not as one of its heroes.
Redshirt
I doubt he was allowed to write about it, being Dean of the Village and all. That would have been an express ticket to the Shanty Town far, far away from the Village.
Linkmeister
I found a link to Driftglass’s post in comments here yesterday. Just FYI in case you weren’t aware how connected your commenters are.
Emma
I will never forgive Broder his crack about Bill Clinton. “It wasn’t his place?” Really? The American people had decided he was, you closet totalitarian snob.
petorado
Broder didn’t miss the story. He used it as the basis for his mythology of being the “dean of the Washington Press Corps.” By trumpeting his conceit of the noble middle, Broder polished his brand as being from a former time when dickishness in Washington wasn’t so overt and reasonableness was tolerated. When Rome was burning, Broder was busy marketing his image.
The Dangerman
When we get to raising the debt ceiling, we’ll see how long the coalition of oligarchs and the lunatics hold (I’m figuring the rubes are too rubish to figure it out).
beltane
@Redshirt: If he truly was the Dean of the Village he could have “put it out there” (Thanks Cokie)at one of their many cocktail parties as is the prerogative of any courtier worth his salt. In a sense, Broder was the Dean of an institution that no longer possessed any real power. The beltway media exists solely to provide the illusion of a free press to educated, yet naive, middle class liberals of a certain age.
hilts
@Emma:
This is the perfect epitaph for David Broder:
PeakVT
He had a certain perspective, that the most important thing was that
the center must holdle centre, c’est moi.Fuck the god damn center.
MikeJ
Cher’s worst song evar.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
Hertzberg:
.
Hardly hagiographic, Doug.
Steeplejack
@MikeJ:
True dat. That was on the Vegas Comeback Tour No. 2, right?
Warren Terra
@Emma:
I’d thought that was Sally Quinn, but I’ve just Googled it, and while it was “reported” in a column by Sally Quinn, it was indeed her quoting David Broder.
geg6
Fuck David Broder. Fuck him sideways and upside down 12 ways to Sunday. He’s the perfect example of everything that is wrong with the msm and this country. I hope that, if there is a god and afterlife, that he suffers every eternal torment there is.
And can I just sat that Wolcott is one of the infinitesimal number of Villagers that I love.
srv
Doug, I know it’s usually appropriate just to say nice things about the dead, but in future could you be more even-handed and discuss the less rosy parts of their career?
Elia
“But today I’m remembering David Broder simply as a kind man. I’m thinking particularly […]”
OK aside from the fact that, being a young man, I never experienced the era in which Broder wasn’t comically out of touch–not to mention corrupt–am I wrong in thinking this is an annoying post simply because, well, who cares? Like, honestly, could there possibly be more than 20 people who would be interested in this piece? I guess it doesn’t matter cause it’s just one blog post or whatever but I’m just struck by the total lack of thought as to what his readers might want to spend their time reading.
In other words: tell it to your fucking livejournal, man.
EDIT: And fwiw I think the whole idea that someone was shmuck up until the moment he died, during which we can only remember the good moments; but then becomes a shmuck again once sufficient time has passed is really stupid. If people don’t want to have their legacy examined upon their death then they shouldn’t go into fields where they become public figures. I’m pretty sure in Europe they don’t bother with this disingenuousness the way we do here, but I could be mistaken.
slag
Gotta agree with Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel) on this. Hertzberg’s post was misrepresented here. Or, at the very least, my expectations upon clicking on it were not met when I read it. Which makes you suspect, DougJ.
Tom Q
This (very nice) piece gets waywardly at I think the key to what we were talking about in a previous thread: folks like Broder (and the older voters he personifies) were deeply offended by the loudness, the confrontation that marked much of the 60s. This turned quickly to resentment, which became the group’s defining political emotion. They’ve let that feeling ossify…
…to the absurd point that they now don’t realize or just won’t acknowledge that the noise and confrontation is coming entirely from their side. They hated something so much, they turned into its mirror opposite.
That it’s a classic literary theme doesn’t make it easier to swallow in reality.
salacious crumb
David Broder spawned establishment fucktards like David Gregory, Katie Couric, Tim Russert, Bob Woodward and other media jackasses. and lets the guy was war monger cheer leading the Iraq war every step of the way until even the generals directing the war got tired of it, and yet he was there, cheerleading.
Arlene
geg6 – I love Wolcott too but he isn’t a villager. He writes for Vanity Fair and lives in New York City on the West side, I believe, the home of bleeding heart liberals. And it must have killed Broder that despite the villagers loathing Bill Clinton and going through that ridiculous impeachment that good old Bill was the most popular ex-President.
t1
I tell you what, you work as a journalist for 40 more years and then well pass judgment on you, too.
David Broder shat out things bigger than you, boy.
Chris Grrr™
@beltane: B-b-but he’d been on the job for a long time. You’ve gotta acknowledge (if not envy) longevity, the wisdom of years, outlasting the more fiery upstarts and all that. Also, too.
Doug Hill
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel):
You’re right, why did I think it was so bad the first pass through?
Doug Hill
@t1:
I’ve seen his books and I can’t argue you with you.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
Luckily we will be able to go on talking about Broder into perpetuity. Or even forever. Also. Too.
MikeJ
@Doug Hill: It’s bad form to use a pseud just to give yourself a straight line.
Chuck Butcher
I suppose a person could be forgiven for thinking that since the 60s ended over forty years ago that they would cease to be an issue. You could think that but it seems you’d be seriously mistaken.
Mike in NC
@Draftglass:
This is completely WRONG, of course: the correct term is cesspool, not cesspit. Everything else is OK…
Cat Lady
Fail Safe. Great movie, scooped by Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. You know why Hollywood can’t make any good movies like that anymore? Reality has lapped imagination, and the only stories left to tell are little personal tales of redemption or failure, otherworldly fantasies or pixellated regurgitations of our cultural myths. David Broder lived and breathed that black and white world of Fail Safe, where serious presidents like Henry Fonda, most likely a Republican, were Very Serious People Who Knew How To Save The World And Punch Hippies While Serious. Broder was the perfect grey suited 50’s male who knew what he knew, forever and ever amen. Hopefully, his passing is just the beginning of the end of that, and good fucking riddance.
freelancer
@Mike in NC:
You notice in making light of his word choice, you misspelled his name, right?
Wag
George Carlin had a bit about our reverence for the dead and our unwillingness tomahawk ill of them. To paraphrase, the recently deceased is described as an asshole, “but a well meaning asshole.”
I think this describes the ideal eulogy for Broder. He and his fans no doubt believe that his heart was in the right place, but that does nothing to negate the asshole ideal of Broder’s “both sides do it” BS journalism.
John Emerson
I just scratched Dionne off my list of tolerable journalists.
mouth
Remember when he wrote how he considered Karl Rove his friend, that he ate quail with him over at Rove’s house etc?
Rove: member of WHIG – White House Iraq Group, designed to sell the Iraq war to the American people (do wars based on the imminent danger need to be ‘sold’?), Rove, who attacked the war heroism of Kerry while glorifying th deserter Bush, Rove who is quoted of saying of an opponent “We’ll fuck him like he’s never been fucked!”; Rove, disciple of Lee Atwater, who said “You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff.”
Broder: friend and dinner date of Rove. Some center!
iriedc
Dear Doug Hill — I used to feel a twinge when you took your shots at “totebaggers.” But no more… I threw in the towel on NPR last year and simply refuse to give them another dime. And I’ve been giving to them since I was a broke grad student in the late 80s.
ETA — I’ve hated David Broder’s writing since the 90s, even back when I thought of the WaPo as my local paper. I’m proud to have seen through his pretender status early.
Catsy
@srv: I see what you did thar.
srv
So #4’s fire was out, #3 (the one with plutonium) is releasing water vapor, which maybe radioactive, and possibly #2 also.
News sources talk peaks of 1000 millisieverts, but the NHK live is talking as though that should be micros…
Live: peak 6400 micro, so 6.4 milli. Lower now.
MikeJ
@srv: I know *I’m* doing #2 also.
Kathy in St. Louis
I’ve never understood the unwritten rule that one should never speak ill of the dead. If the person was a lousy journalist, partisan, and thickheaded in life, how did dying erase all that? I’ve been reading articles on Dave Broder’s inside Washington chumminess with all things establishment and conservative for years. Now that he’s dead, I see no reason to pretend he wasn’t some partisan hack. Dying changed nothing about his work.
srv
@MikeJ: We are all doing #2 now.
The “vapor” appears to be floating inland, but the video is poor. Listening to the voices of the anchors and translators, they all sound like they’re on the edge of nervous breakdowns.
MikeBoyScout
And as nature will have it, the Dean of the Washington press corps be in a state of decomposition just like his buddy Tim Russert very soon. And just like big Tim, no one will remember Broder or the pablum he wrote in less than 20 years.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Doug Hill: Not to worry, both sides do it.
catclub
@MikeJ: I larfed, I did.
piratedan
it’s a damn shame that he couldn’t rise above his own pettiness and actually be the freaking voice of reason and moderation, we sure could have used one.
Arundel
@geg 6: As said above, Wolcott is no Villager, he’s a NYC cultural aesthete and chronicler with a taste for punk and ballet, who writes beautifully, and not often enough. (He’s also immensely generous at recommending and championing very worthy bloggers writing out there, and he’s never wrong.)
And no offense to Driftglass, but Wolcott himself was far more precise and cutting. I think it was already quoted here. Wolcott’s a treasure.
TenguPhule
May a sick cat wee on Broder’s grave. Sometimes being dead is not enough for forgiveness.
mclaren
Well, y’know, when you’re the head conductor on the Crazy Train, it’s kind of hard to complain about where the train is headed.
Mike (Hammer) Kay
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHJoj9IqeKg
Jebediah
@t1:
Well, put it on his tombstone then. “He had a giant anus and made people-sized poops.”
Villago Delenda Est
David Broder also had an uncanny sense of where the future was, when he predicted the political comeback of the vile deserting, warmongering shitstain George W. Bush.
We’re still waiting for that.
cokane
I fail to see what Broder did as a journalist. All these eulogizers talk about him as a significant journalist. What story did he break?
People who only write columns can be journalists too. So maybe he didn’t break any stories, or get some awesome investigative scoop, maybe he contributed to our understanding on an issue? Is there a major issue where he did that?
Peter
“David Broder of the Washington Post is generally acknowledged to be the ranking wizard on the campaign trail this year, and five days before the [Wisconsin primary] he caused serious shock waves by offering to bet — with me at least — that McGovern would get more than 30 percent, and Wallace less than 10. He lost both ends of the bet, as it turns out — and I mean to hunt the bastard down and rip his teeth out if he tries to welsh […]”
That’s from Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail, by Hunter S Thompson, where there are several more comments on the debt.
I read that book the other week, and decided to look Broder up.
I found this article that he wrote about his coverage of the 1972 Democratic primary campaign of Ed Muskie, who I think Broder and others reported, as ‘crying’ when he made an impassioned defense of his wife against slurs from the Manchester-Union Leader and other scurrilous sources.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_v19/ai_4696993/
If nothing else, at least Broder had the sense to self-reflect on the pack mentality of journalism – and how, when a group of people travel together with a campaign for long periods of time, the stories they write are very similar, and all influenced by each others.
So when the narrative became, ‘McGovern is no longer the anti-politician, he lacks principles’, after McGovern accepted Eagleton’s offer to retire the VP slot, David Broder and the other journalists were the ones who came up with that ‘angle’ and harped on it.
Thompson interviews McGovern in the book and various others, who say Eagleton lied blatantly during the vetting process, and that his mental problems were much more severe than was ever made known – and that he’d spent voluntary time in mental hospitals for, I think it was implied, violent behaviour, though I may be wrong.
Anyway Thompson tried to get the medical files, no one could access them. So the truth didn’t come out – and McGovern came off looking like a rotten cold-hearted bastard.
Thymezone
I think the saga of its descent from the nobility of the William Randolph Hearst era, to the present day, would make a great novel.
agrippa
Making no excuses for Broder; but, most of the press missed that story. They have been missing it for along time.
The “news media” has collapsed. Newspapers and broadcast media are all owned by Jerry Seinfeld. Not that it ever stood up too damned well to start with.
Pack mentality: “When one comes,they all come; when one leaves, they all leave.” (Gene McCarthy)
Chris
@PeakVT:
Bien dit, mon pote. Vraiment très bien dit.
And this history nerd always enjoys such references.
Chris
Amazing how completely everyone freaked out about “radicalization” on the left during the 1960s, compared with how taboo it is to talk about the radicalization on the right.
In fact, people would still rather write about left-wing extremism, which is how you have Obama attacked as “the most radical president in history” when he puts through a health care plan that was mostly lifted from the Republican proposals of a decade earlier.
Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta)
@MikeBoyScout:
Did Broder have any offspring? My biggest beef with the late elder Russert is that he inflicted his son upon us all.
Daddy made sure that I’m going to have to suffer that tepid, insipid mediocrity on my TeeVee for the rest of my natural life.
themann1086
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
And:
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
But I want to know whether Sarah Proud and Tall has any Broder stories.
Paul in KY
@t1: He called them ‘columns’.
Paul in KY
@Arundel: I wish I could write like Mr. Wolcott. Probably the best blog writer, as far as stringing words together & using great vocabulary to make a word picture.
Paul in KY
@Peter: The funny thing is nowadays a Republican nominee would think ‘rotten, cold hearted bastard’ was a campaign-plus.