I’d like to think Jonathan Bernstein has a handle on why nothingburger scandals seem to pop up in the summer. I think his basic notion that the will of the press abhors a vacuum, so slow news days give us dumb controversies, is about right. But I’m only partially on board for this:
And what academic research tells us is that slow news days create scandals. That’s what Brendan Nyhan and other media researchers have found; indeed, Nyhan believes that the lack of scandal during Barack Obama’s first two years in the White House was caused, at least in part, by a series of very eventful news cycles. The mechanism, obviously, is that if there’s no major news, then minor news fills the hole, and if there’s no minor news, then we’ll hear plenty about stuff that if you squint just the right way might sort of pass for news.
Nyhan wrote that piece on Obama a year ago, and he predicted that unprecedented opposition party animosity was causing a tinderbox media environment that was set to explode any minute. That didn’t happen, of course, so either Nyhan’s whole premise was wrong (definitely possible), or there’s been so much news that reporters are too busy for scandals (not buying that one). I’m going to go for door number three: the Obama Administration hasn’t anything that people consider scandalous. They’ve made it easier on themselves by vetting appointees pretty rigorously, so even garden-variety DC hacks like Daschle didn’t make the cut. And they’re helped by a media environment where events like an undeclared CIA drone war in Yemen go almost unremarked. But perhaps the media isn’t writing anything because there’s so much nothing there that even they can see it clearly.
BGinCHI
Excepting of course the whole Birther thing and about 80% of what the Teatards think is happening in the country. Everything with them is a scandal, soup to nuts.
RaflW
It’s hart to imagine that a very smart, controlled and careful man would run a White House that was smart, controlled and careful and tended to have nearly no scandals.
Also, too, who could expect that government could ever run better than under an MBA president.
General Stuck
Big news to msm.
MITT ROMNEY ATE A WAWA?
LIBTARDS DOCTORED UP SOME VIDEO
The rest is hIsteria.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Better way to put I think is Obama has made sure it’s the other side that’s had the better gossip. That’s really what the press has degenerated to, tabloidism.
MattF
Remember this? (scroll down to ‘The Soccer Conspiracy’):
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201203090001
It’s not that the media haven’t tried, there’s just no there there.
Bulworth
Yeah but the faster gun thing and the national security leaks and the economy’s doing fine and CHICAGO THUG and MOST CORRUPT PRESIDENT IN HISTORY….
salvage
Yeah, no scandals.
While I applaud the advancement of equal rights and the stumble towards proper health care I can’t help but think that doesn’t mean much when Obama is killing people for the crime of standing next to guys that could be terrorist.
I know, I know, I can’t come up with a better idea to execute people without any sort of due process so that means that this is the right way to go.
Unless of course Romeny wins, then suddenly this will go back to being a problem like when Bush did it.
Villago Delenda Est
Well, theory is an attractive one, because it plays to the entire “the Village is made up of lazy assholes who would rather be eating cocktail weenies than actually doing their jobs” meme, but the real problem is that there are no scandals to report on. Please note that Clinton didn’t have any official malfeasance scandals, either — unlike Nixon (criminal conspiracies and cover ups) Reagan and Bush I (deals with terrorists to finance military adventures Congress had told them they could not engage in) and Bush II (war crimes and torture, not to mention graft for cronies).
Obama isn’t even giving them Clinton’s sexual dalliances. Despite all the talk about “Chicago politics” he’s squeaky clean…and it drives the Village nuts.
waynski
Or maybe they’re mostly lazy, navel-gazing hacks lying at the feet of their corporate masters? Occam’s razor. When you have one party’s candidate and his surrogates telling the most outrageous lies about the president everyday and that’s not a story…well. Dan Rather got fired for reporting something true about the sitting president. Do all the research you want. The answer’s right in front of you.
the Conster
Obama loves and is faithful to his wife and is a good father, and so is Joe Biden and I guess you can throw the Mittbot in there too. The only scandals that count are sex scandals, and since that’s a Republican thing, IOKIYAR so there’s nothing easy to report and moralize on, and reportin’ on policy iz hard.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@salvage: We said scandal, not the normal operations of the CEO of the worlds greatest military-industrial complex. And heck, he only makes $400K per year. Imagine how much more he would make if he would just fail.
Villago Delenda Est
@salvage:
You don’t get it, do you?
All those deaths are of people for whom the Village could not care less for.
Frankly, it’s a scandal that we’ve got unemployment as high as it is, but for the Village, that’s totally off the map. No one THEY know is unemployed, so it’s a non-problem.
This is about their perception of “scandal”, not about “The Bureau of Investigative Journalism” perception of “scandal”.
This post is about the Village. Focus.
eric
My guess; when times are good people can care about scandal; when times are particularly tough the trivial does not resonate because real world problems are kicking a$$, such as foreclosure, shrunken 401(k)s, unemployment, fear of unemployment, massive health care costs, etc
Steve M.
I think it’s two things First, people care about what affects them — so, Planned Parenthood, maybe; the economy, definitely; Fast & Furious, nuh-uh. Second, the wingers cry wolf about something new every few hours — their fellow travelers believe all of it and the rest of us just assume after a while that the likelihood of an actual wolf is staggeringly low.
Villago Delenda Est
Mistermix, is this Grease week? Because here we have another thread title lifted from lyrics in that flick…
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
Maybe there hasn’t been one singular scandal to report on because they’ve been treating his whole entire fucking presidency as a scandal and using it as excuse to shut everything down.
NonyNony
@salvage:
Those aren’t “scandals”. “Scandals” are generally petty pieces of bullshit that the press can hold up in their role as infotainers. Nobody is going to be infotained by reports of civilian deaths in Afghanistan. And it isn’t the infotainment industry’s job to question the military actions of a presidency.
The infotainment industry can only get involved when a “scandal” occurs. And “scandals” are quasi-ritualistic events that must involve either sex (Clinton-Lewinsky), abuse of power to enrich oneself at the taxpayer expense (Whitewater), or abuse of power aimed at the “other side” in a political fight (Watergate).
The infotainment industry hasn’t really needed much in the way of “scandals” though. The core demographic that is infotained by these kinds of “scandals” has become dominated by Fox News, so they’re the only ones who get any mileage out of them. It was different during the Clinton era when all of the 24 hour news networks could get play from a “scandal” and pump up their ratings. These days there’s no ratings bump in pushing “scandals” for anyone – Fox News can infotain their audiences with birther conspiracy theories and death panel threats and get the same effect, while the rest of the networks have found other topics that infotain their own audiences.
schrodinger's cat
The real scandal is that the media doesn’t report to educate and inform but to titillate and entertain. So many important stories go uncovered but fake news stories get plenty of play.
Violet
@Villago Delenda Est:
Was wondering the same thing. Please tell me we’re going to have “Journalism School Dropout”. Our media deserve that much at least.
Villago Delenda Est
@The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik:
Well, he is near, you know. That right there is scandal in and of itself. As the residents of Rock Ridge can confirm.
chopper
@salvage:
obama should be more like FDR, whose administration didn’t kill any civilians.
danimal
Door # 4: Roger Ailes and his minions were distracted by the GOP primary and haven’t ramped up the Obama scandal outrage machine yet. And they will…
Alternatively, Fast and Furious was supposed to be a bigger deal; turns out people don’t care as much as they expected.
salvage
I get that the Village is disinterested but I also get the feeling that Obama supporters are grateful for the indifference.
Saves them from having to give it though, action and uncomfortable decisions.
Anticipation response of some poster’s inevitable reply: Yes, Obama is better than Romney and Bush that doesn’t mean he should be allowed to commit blatant war crimes for fuck’s sake.
dedc79
Obama should make a Solyndra gold medal that says “This is the best you could do?”
Given how much time/effort Republicans have put into unearthing some kind of scandal, the fact that all they could come up with was Solyndra and some lame GSA travel expense “scandal” speaks very highly of how well this Administration has handled itself.
Steve
It’s hard to explain why Whitewater was a scandal for years while Solyndra went absolutely nowhere, despite the RWNM’s best efforts. Even Fast and Furious is barely getting mainstream attention. I don’t know what accounts for this.
salvage
@chopper: America has declared war on Pakistan? Really? I missed that headline! FDR bombed funerals did he and followed up with a “Double tap”? What history books do you read because mine seem to be woefully inaccurate.
Wingnuts on all sides, right or wrong, rule of law, meaningless when it comes to cheering on the guy you voted for. That’s America.
Redshift
@Villago Delenda Est: In my entire adult lifetime, Democratic scandals have been about sex or amounts of money that Republicans could find them in their sofa cushions, and Republican scandals have been about *undermining the operation of our government.*
In that context, the fact that the media pursue the Democratic “scandals” at all says something about the media, but it makes my head hurt to think about it.
catclub
@schrodinger’s cat: I was just posting in another htread that we do not get to see pictures of dead US soldiers. That would be impolite. Of course, other countries do see those pictures, as well as pictures of horrible things done by US soldiers/drones.
28 Percent
No scandals? Has everybody already forgotten CrashGate? What did the social secretary not know, and when did she not know it?
Oh the children! Won’t somebody think of humanity?
Villago Delenda Est
@Redshift:
Given that the “travelgate” scandal was such a big deal because it directly affected the White House Press Corpse, and no one else…
You see where this is going, don’t you?
Jennifer
That’s what gets me about the untethered rantings on most rwing sites – they keep throwing around terms like “most corrupt president ever!” but can’t really point to any examples of corruption. You’ll hear a lot of blather about his “unconstitutional actions” which of course, even if true, are not examples of corruption but rather of disagreement with wingnuttia.
It’s the same as with the birthers – none of them could begin to show you any proof of their loony conspiracy theory, nor would they be able to sketch out for you any coherent narrative of why an 18-year-old Ann Dunham Obama would have chosen to fly halfway around the world, to a country she’d never been to before and where she knew no one, to give birth to her first child, particularly when her marriage to the child’s father was already coming apart.
They simply believe what they want to believe and the fact that there’s zero evidence to support their belief, and a mountain of evidence showing that their belief is wrong never makes a dent.
We make a mistake when we hold up the birthers as the nuttiest wingnuts. They’re all nutty; the birthers just happen to cling to a belief that’s a lot more hilarious than the hobbyhorses the other wingnuts like to ride.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@salvage:
Protip, Kids: Don’t stand next to terrorists!
(This has been a PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT from the MIGHTY POTATO GOD!)
catclub
@danimal: Both Fast and Furious and Solyndra have deep roots in the previous administration. The only scandal is that the present admin did not root it out quicker. Not very useful for the GOP.
chopper
@salvage:
like a moth to the flame.
i’m sure your complaints about all the civilians killed by clinton just piled up. naw, he’s white.
jim pharo
“the Obama Administration hasn’t anything that people consider scandalous. ”
Perhaps you’re young and don’t know this yet, or have forgotten it, but the presence or not of actually scandalous behavior has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not there are scandals.
I think the author is right, and that the shit-storm the GOP has planned will be unleashed soon. Whether it’s “fast and furious,” Michelle’s questionable overseas travel, the hurt feelings of Marco Rubio, or some other damn thing, matters not a lick. The GOP outrage machine — like the news machine is both feeds from and feeds — will be in full swing any day now.
And for the record, I’m pretty sure the Obama regime is not materially less scandalous than any other. The only difference I can think of is that the President himself seems pretty honorable, so the scandal will lie in his failure to deal with someone else’s malfeasance (his family, his appointees, his dog – whatever).
The Thin Black Duke
Look, I can understand the need to unplug the brain once in a while.
It’s the same insane compulsion that drives health-conscious people tired of tofu and asparagus pizza to suddenly attack Fritos, Twinkies, and Big Macs. Of course, just as too much junk food will rot your teeth, too much junk news will turn your brain into pink jello.
And “scandals” is just another word for junk food; it’s garbage that’s easily digested and quickly forgotten with no nutritional value at all.
Unfortunately, you can’t tell the difference between news and celebrity puff pieces anymore. Edward Murrow is a forgotten ghost in the contemporary world of mainstream media these days. What’s left is word salad, bad noise and empty talking heads.
Mark S.
Look at me, I’m Mitt Romney
Lousy with the empathy
Won’t call out the teabagging louts
I can’t, I’m Mitt Romney
Weird Al I’m not; I don’t like that third verse. I was tempted to go with:
Look at me, I’m Mitt Romney
Please don’t bring up equity
mistermix
@Villago Delenda Est:
DougJ’s “Greece is the Word” got me on a total Grease earworm, for better or worse.
Felinious Wench
Have to fill the 24-hour news cycle, and if there’s nothing new to report, they have to find something. I’m convinced this is also a reason we have all of these pundits filling up dead air time.
It’s a root of much evil…and is why I’ve just turned it off unless something major is going on to make sure they have some relevant content. Otherwise, it tends to be noise.
chopper
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:
just declare war. apparently, if war is declared, then dead civilians don’t matter at all.
cmorenc
The real scandal the GOP keeps trying to expose is that SOMEHOW A NI*clang! STOLE THE WHITE HOUSE FROM US UPSTANDING MIDDLE-AGED WHITE FOLKS! The Presidency was parked right here in our suburban garage, and the Ni*clang! brazenly stole it with help from Acorn, and we later found the body up on cinder blocks, stripped of parts and tires!
Lojasmo
@salvage:
Has any president ever been charged with “war crimes”?
My feeling is no.
salvage
@chopper:
Ha! Ha! Yes! I am a racist! That’s it! There can be no other reason whatsoever for my complaints about Obama! Nope, he’s Black and I hate that sort of thing. Otherwise I would certainly be complaining about a thing that happened over a decade ago. Sure enough at the time I was yelling “You go Billy! You so White you must be right!”
Another wingnut tactic, keep it up Chopper, you make my point so eloquently you fucking idiot you.
salvage
@Lojasmo: No, but we can hope that one day America tries to the whole “nation of laws” thing, it looks good on paper…
chopper
@salvage:
interesting thesis. i’m going to consider that one a while.
jesus, you’re so easy to troll it’s almost not even fun.
amk
you libtards just wait for mr steve king’s ‘lawsuit’ against obummer for violating constushun in making the ‘illegals’ legal. That’s gonna be the big september/october/november/december surprize.
chopper
@salvage:
well it is true, only recently dead civilians actually matter. once it’s been a few years, fuck em, they’re only a statistic.
Villago Delenda Est
@chopper:
Pure win.
Culture of Truth
FDR bombed funerals did he
What an odd standard. But it’s entirely possible some of the 10,000 people killed in Dresden were attending funerals held for other 10,000.
Linda Featheringill
If scandals tend to involve sex and/or money, the Obamas probably aren’t scandal-prone. As far as I can tell, neither Mr. or Mrs. Obama is available to mess around with outsiders. They seem to be content with each other. As far as money goes, I get the feeling that the Obamas feel that they are wealthy, that they will be well off for the rest of their lives, that their children will be very well taken care of, and everyone in the family will have a secure old age. I think they feel that they have enough.
Contentment is a strong defense against scandal.
Litlebritdifrnt
@cmorenc:
One of the callers to my local RWNJ radio show yesterday called POTUS “a socialist, liberal….” then said “no I won’t go there” you just know he stopped himself from dropping the NIclang.
Bill Mahr’s piece on that was classic. “It is just sticking in their throats”
chopper
@Culture of Truth:
i’m sure they didn’t actually have burials, since the allies were just going to come along and cremate their dead family members anyways.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@salvage:
You need to read more history Salvage, FDR ordered the napalming of whole Japanese cities that burned men, women and children to death by the tens of thousands. Of course there are those that would argue that those fire bombings were relatively compassionate since those civilians were slowly starving to death due to a US Naval blockade.
salvage
@chopper: Oh, so you’re only pretending to be an idiot.
Well done, you fooled me completely.
Villago Delenda Est
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Absolutely on target. It’s painfully obvious that they want to break that taboo and say that magic word. The entire SC Rethug primary was about nominating a candidate who, in the Presidential debats, would put that uppity…person…in his proper place. Preferably, by saying that word in his face.
That would be just orgasmic for that crowd. The afterglow would melt the Greenland ice cap.
salvage
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: FDR ordered an attack on a country that America was at war with?!?!? HOLY CRAP! Now I see, because of that Obama is totally right to attack first responders after attacking a funeral.
If only I had know about the FDR argument when Bush was bombing
civiliansterrorist enablers then I could have cheered it all on.Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Culture of Truth: Thanks, I couldn’t remember the city.
Brachiator
@mistermix:
The GOP has to take their scandal based victories where they can, so we have little things like this:
And so, of course, as grass is green and snow is cold, “McGurk’s nomination had faced serious opposition in the Senate, where Republican John McCain charged he lacked the necessary experience to lead the huge American embassy in Baghdad and six of the party’s nine members on the Foreign Relations Committee wrote Obama urging him to drop the nomination.”
Because, of course, the nominee displayed serious lapses in judgement, even though he divorced his wife and married the woman with whom he was having an affair. Because, of course, the GOP takes morals and ethics so seriously. And Gramps McCain is the model of moral rectitude, his own marital failings notwithstanding.
As an aside, while people continue to have old style concerns about civil liberties violations, wire taps and surveillance drones, the plain fact is that the Internet knows all, and there is, for example, an easy link to some of Brett McGurk’s emails to his love muffin. It’s not like the old days, where reporters had to at least take a little more time to follow a trail to find Senator Gary Hart and his main squeeze on the Monkey Business.
Davis X. Machina
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I demand a return to piloted aircraft delivering bombs, preferably of the dumb, iron, gravity type.
Drones lack that all-important human touch.
Culture of Truth
Yes, first responders were killed when FDR was President. Did a declaration of war make it right? Do you think the people killed would feel that way? At least that guy on Chris Hayes had the courage to call FDR a war criminal.
Your reluctance to do likewise makes question whether your concern is truly with civilian deaths and the law or is merely a trollish excuse to attack President Obama.
Culture of Truth
Sadly Brett McGurk is another Bush holdover.
Culture of Truth
The reason people brought up FDR was not to justfy drone attacks but to test your sincerity. You flunked the test.
Brachiator
@Culture of Truth:
FDR a war criminal?
That’s a good one.
So, let’s see. The US should not have entered the war? Should we dig up FDR’s bones and put him on trial?
Of course, Teddy R was probably a war criminal as well. Was there any US president who was not a war criminal?
And since the citizens vote these guys into office, doesn’t this make every citizen complicit as well?
Which makes it all the more hypocritical that the GOP would now oppose him.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
Hey, this was an O’bummer appointment. That makes all the difference in the world!
John McCain? Intellectually honest? This is the guy who was subjected to torture and couldn’t find it in himself to voice opposition to the deserting coward’s policy of torture.
McCain is an intellectual and moral void.
Culture of Truth
@Brachiator:
Indeed, but it was important to draw out, because Jeremy Scahill called Obama a murderer, but digging a little deeper, all he meant was “civilians killed somewhere, sometime.” By getting him to call FDR a murderer too, it took the wind out of the sails of his umbrage.
taylormattd
Met a girl, craazy for me.
Met a boy, cute as can be.
arguingwithsignposts
@salvage: AUMF. You might want to read about it. It’s a ‘thing.’
rea
@salvage: While I applaud the advancement of equal rights and the stumble towards proper health care I can’t help but think that doesn’t mean much when Obama is killing people for the crime of standing next to guys that could be terrorist.
Do the civilian casualties in WW II render the New Deal unimportant for you?
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est:
The only good thing in this mess, and it is minor, is that Obama did not drop the guy, but let him withdraw his own nomination.
On the other hand, the GOP consider the Iraq diplomatic mission to of huge strategic importance, and yet screwed over a nominee for an utterly trivial reason. These bastards are relentless.
The other bit of trivia here is that it seems like just yesterday where McCain wailed about Obama not reaching out to him for advice. I wonder if it would have made any difference to McCain’s opposition here.
danimal
@taylormattd: Tell me more, tell me more, tell me more.
Damn you, BJ, now I’ve got the earworm.
Boohunney
Slow news cycles are the Devil’s workshop…..
YoohooCthulhu
@salvage:
You know who’s really responsible for that, though? Senior military. And the President isn’t going to change it. The only thing that can change it is our military having less money.
The problem is, when you possess an expensive military apparatus with worldwide reach accompanied by high-ranking high profile military “experts”–it will beg to be used. If a threat doesn’t exist…well, these military folks have to justify their existence somehow and they will FIND one. The only way to get them to lower their action threshold on threats is if they’re actually incapable of acting on everything–i.e. if they have limited resources. And the president, buck-stopper though he may be–is not a national security expert. He relies on people who have grown up in this establishment–who are inextricably attached to its mindset–as the only real authorities to get advice from.
The other issue is–every fucking country does this. The US has more resources, but NO country gives much of a fuck about citizens other than its own. Why? Because the American people largely don’t care. In some sense he’s obeying the popular will.
Is it smart from a long term strategic perspective? No. But all the short-term incentives (electoral, careerwise for the military/security personnel, financial for the companies who make weapons) line up for it. Until the American public actually gets its head out of its collective ass and starts caring about this sort of stuff, nothing’s going to change. And politicians aren’t going to lead on this.
Now you say, Obama is betraying his campaign pledge. Not really. He argued in favor of being smarter diplomatically and using more “soft power” in negotiations–but he was always a hawk on Afghanistan and asymmetric warfare.
tam
My conservative parents seem to be obsessed with the composite characters “scandal”. Even though I’ve linked them to this article, they’re still upset, insisting that the president “lied.”
Of course this is nonsense, but I don’t know how to deal with it. How many times can you say “but most autobiographies are written this way” before it sinks in? Or should I just forget it, and resign myself to the notion that they’re lost to the FoxNews borg now?
chopper
@salvage:
well, it was like shooting civilian fish in a barrel.
Lojasmo
@salvage:
So interesting, then, that you accuse obummer of “war crimes” when many other presidents have down much worse, and NONE have even been accused in court of “war crimes”… Could it be you don’t know the meanings of the words you so easily utilize? I suspect so.