I’d like to apologize in advance for subjecting you to some idiotic drivel one of Sullivan’s stunt stand-ins wrote yesterday, about the awesomeness of old media.
So repeat after me: David Broder was a superb journalist. Look in the mirror every morning and say it three times. Say it loud, say it proud. When your efforts to tell multiple sides of the story, to set your opinions to one side, to go find things out, and to get your facts straight—when those efforts lead bloggers to accuse you of “high Broderism,” tell them you accept the compliment. And offer to help them reach the same level someday.
David Broder may have been a good straight reporter (when he wasn’t smearing Ed Muskie with lies) back in the day, but it’s ridiculous to say that one shouldn’t use an opinion column to express opinions. In fact, Broder expressed opinions constantly in his column, he told us how much he hated Harry Reid, how much he liked Karl Rove, how much he thought John Kerry was a know-it-all, etc. The fact that his opinions were often personal rather than policy-based doesn’t make them not opinions. Anyway, he had opinions about policy too: Obama should invade Iran to boost his re-election chances, Bowles-Simpson will save us all, etc.
The larger trouble here, as is always the case when old media types argue with the blogosphere, is that they conflate reporting with opinion writing, using the word “journalism” as a catch all. Obviously, all sane people have the utmost respect for Dana Priest, James Risen, Nick Davies, and their ilk. That doesn’t mean we have to love David Broder’s senile opinion column dodderings. These have nothing to do with each other. How can this idiot not know that?
Valdivia
I refuse the click to see who it is. That blog is crap when he is on vacation.
DougJ in Damascus
Someone named Jonathan Rauch. I actually like one of his fill-ins, Zoe Pollock, the others are uniformly awful.
ornery
Oh. Sully said something.
Thank you for the very valuable information.
srv
I miss Broder like I miss Franco.
Linda Featheringill
Good morning, folks.
Is it Saturday again? Already? Wow.
“They” say that time goes faster as you get older but I haven’t experienced that until this year [I am 67]. Strange sensation.
Anyway, don’t worry about what the village people have to say or what the Koch brothers have to say. They will grow old and die just like the rest of us.
I’d like to see Murdoch & Co. get into enough trouble in the US to shake loose their propaganda machine. Do you think it would help if we agitated for investigations? Perhaps contacting our congresscritters?
mistermix
Setting aside the politics, Broder was, above all, boring, and his writing was at best serviceable. That’s the part I don’t get about all this Broder worship – if your work is going to pass the test of time, it should be at least interesting, and you ought to be something of a literary stylist. Broder’s work is the opposite.
bkny
here’s another priceless broder quote about bill clinton from one of the most noxious washington post sally quinn columns evah (and endless fodder):
“He came in here and he trashed the place,” says Washington Post columnist David Broder, “and it’s not his place.”
arguingwithsignposts
Who the fuck is jonathan rauch?
And writing a blog post in defense of old media? Irony, you’re soaking in it.
beltane
@DougJ
Jonathan Rauch has been a second-string wanker for at least 20 years. I’m surprised he hasn’t gained more prominence among the Beltway set for his craptastic work. That said, it is sad to see that the Villagers are not only incapable of practising journalism, they don’t even know what it really is.
I’m sure that if the useless Broder were still with us, he would be tut-tutting about how barbaric Nick Davies and The Guardian are, and how mean the President was to the well-meaning Eric Cantor.
Cat Lady
Has anyone wondered just once what David Broder would say about anything that’s happened since he died? Anyone? Bueller?
arguingwithsignposts
@cat lady:
No, because everyone knows what broder would say: “both sides do it.”
kay
I feel like they’re defensive because Rupert Murdoch took over a whole country’s political system, and he’s a media mogul. One whole country. We think it’s one, anyway.
While I realize traditional media also exposed him, it’s still a very disturbing and alarming revelation, considering their staunch defense and constant use of the “few bad apples” line re: FOX and all.
Maybe I’m overanalyzing it, but when they talk incessantly about themselves (which they do a lot) it’s always right after they massively screw up.
dan
That blog is worse than crap when he is on vacation. Alex Massie licking Rupert Murdoch’s balls all week was especially sickening.
Kane
Although some in the old media remain threatened by the blogosphere, the blogosphere is not the enemy. In large measure, the blogosphere is the result of the old media’s failures in journalism. Oftentimes the harshest critics in the blogosphere of old media are those who simply want old media to do its job. As long as there’s a yearning for more information than what the old media is willing to provide, the blogosphere will remain a vital alternative.
Valdivia
thanks DougJ. I like Zoe too, she is his underblogger though, so she is more into the Sully-Borg mindset I think and blogs like he does.
SiubhanDuinne
@srv #4: This just in. David Broder is still dead.
@Linda Featheringill #5: I’m just a bit older than you (will turn 69 in a couple of weeks) and I’ve actually been experiencing that whole time speeds up thing for two or three decades. It’s an ancient and universal phenomenon, but that doesn’t make it any less weird.
Wait, what?? It’s SATURDAY again??
ChrisNYC
Wow, what a courageous position over there at Sullivan’s blog.
They will step up and defend “the dean of the Washington press corps,” a person who had a powerful microphone for thirty years, and who parleyed that microphone into well-paid speaking engagements before DC lobbyists. Impressive. Real public service there.
Scott
Rauch is trolling. He knows Broder was shit — the entire tone of the piece is “Ha ha, I’m going to get so many people mad with this one!”
Violet
I saw this last night when I skimmed the Sully C-team last posts last night and wondered if DougJ would post on it.
DougJ, you are exactly right. Broder may have been a good journalist at some point, and might even have had the skills to continue to be one, but he wrote an OPINION column, and pandered his OPINIONS on Sunday shows and elsewhere. He spent the second half of his career spouting his opinion, not writing factual articles.
I guess the good thing that came from Jonathan Rauch’s post is that we know now, if we weren’t sure before, that he can’t tell the difference between fact and opinion.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@SiubhanDuinne: Simple explanation for why time speeds up. We don’t experience time as a linear thing. We experience it as a fraction of how long we’ve been around.
So when you’re 8, summer lasts forever. It’s 3 months out of the 96 you’ve experienced, or 1/32 of your life. When you’re 60, it’s 1/240th, a much smaller amount. So summers don’t last as long, the older you get.
The equivalent length of time to a 60-year old is 1/32 of 60 years, or 22.5 months.
This has been CATSQ.
Villago Delenda Est
Broder’s entire career of mediocrity was based on a leak from operatives of the ’68 Nixon campaign on who Nixon’s running mate was going to be.
The utterly corrupt criminal named Spiro Agnew.
SiubhanDuinne
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason #20:
Thanks. That’s pretty much the explanation I came up with (or someone pointed out to me) a long time ago, but you explained it more elegantly.
Doesn’t explain, though, why I’ve been experiencing it rather intensely for 20-30-40 years, while Linda F., only a year or so younger than I am, has only just started noticing the phenomenon.
piratedan
another case of the Village writing for the Village, it’s like Children of the Corn, except its beltway punditry.
Amir_Khalid
Some days of the week, The Daily Beast’s blog server just ignores me, and I get timed out when I try to go to a blogger’s page there. So I’ve given up reading Andrew Sullivan as a regular thing, and found it no loss at all.
This Jonathan Rauch, true to his surname, is just blowing smoke. His distinction between “old” (i.e. print) media and bloggers is pure bullshit. Both deliver journalism to their audience, or at least they’re supposed to. In that sense they’re the same thing, just differently packaged. The differences he cites between them are bogus; insofar as they exist, they are the differences between people at publications that are struggling and people at publications that are doing well.
As to Rauch’s loud and proud praise of David Broder, that’s really funny. Broder was no bellwether of opinion. He valued consensus and decorum above all else. They have their place, but Broder was not one to recognize when other things were more important — for instance, when a prevailing mindset had outlived its usefulness. It is not praise to say of a pundit that he was the one sheep who always knew to stand exactly in the middle of his herd.
Ruckus
How can this idiot not know that?
The answer is in the middle of your question.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Ruckus beat me to it. But you knew that, and I knew your question was rhetorical.
worn
Seconding what Scott said…
If you read Sully’s blog this week you’ll know Rauch has been engaging in this schtick since Monday. He came right out of the gate with a huge piece of link bait, one in which he took a crotchety old man “you kids get those newfangled internets off my lawn” kind of approach. It’s obvious to me that Rauch likes the ‘old’ media better than the new but was emplying hyperbolic language so as to cause a kerfluffle. I thought “With my triumph over the blogosphere complete…” gave a pretty good indication of where his tongue was planted. Plus, he wrote a pretty good piece years ago called “Caring For Your Introvert”, which at the time I read it was somewhat revelatory. But maybe that’s because I evidence all the manifestations he describes. To a tee.
None of the above should be construed as a defense of David Broder. Reading his words was like eating chalk. And not the flavored kind.
JP Stormcrow
[email protected]: “He came in here and he trashed the place,” says Washington Post columnist David Broder, “and it’s not his place.”
And that is only the second most fatuous Broder quote in that article. For me the winner is: “The judgment is harsher in Washington,” says The Post’s Broder. “We don’t like being lied to.” Helluva a contempt for your audience there, faux regular guy.
So repeat after me: “David Broder was a dick. Look in the mirror every morning and say it three times. Say it loud, say it proud.”
drkrick
Especially since they loved being lied to by Reagan and GW Bush, and never forgave the DFH contingent for not accepting LBJ’s lies. What they don’t like is having the voters make them cover someone who hasn’t been pre-approved by the cool kids table.
PhoenixRising
Ranch is a sloppy, irresponsible shill for the status quo.
He doesn’t accept comment on his so-called “ideas”, which is unfortunate because he could learn a lot from the rabble who dispute his notion that compromise is always the right path.
I beat him like a rented mule 2 years ago, but he’s above acknowledging those of us who don’t get a shot at the NYT op-Ed:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/02/22/700542/-Open-Letter-to-Jonathan-Raush,-todays-NY-Times?via=blog_673627
Eric U.
The best thing about Broder is that he didn’t leave an heir to remind us of him. Unlike Tim Russert. May the deities save us from future “journalists” like those two.
Thymezone
Even in death, Broder continues to bedevil you.
You are two of the three people on earth who could have listed a set of Broder’s malapropisms without looking them up.
JP Stormcrow
[email protected]: Especially since they loved being lied to by Reagan and GW Bush
Yeah, that was the injury added to insult; after “trashed the place” and “don’t like being lied to”, he and the rest of the beltway hacks barely raise a whimper when GW shows up. I still don’t completely get it. Massively destructive assholes. Imagine a “Clintonian” press scrutiny of Abramoff, Gannon, Iraq war profiteering (starring Watergate instigator and liar L. Jean Lewis as Chief of Staff in the Inspector General’s Office of the Pentagon!), twenty other things in the first four years.