Billmon. Go.
Beltway Drama Queens
The #dickwhisperer is concerned:
World leaders arriving in Washington for President Obama’s Nuclear Security Summit must have felt for a moment that they had instead been transported to Soviet-era Moscow.
They entered a capital that had become a military encampment, with camo-wearing military police in Humvees and enough Army vehicles to make it look like a May Day parade on New York Avenue, where a bicyclist was killed Monday by a National Guard truck.
In the middle of it all was Obama — occupant of an office once informally known as “leader of the free world” — putting on a clinic for some of the world’s greatest dictators in how to circumvent a free press.
The only part of the summit, other than a post-meeting news conference, that was visible to the public was Obama’s eight-minute opening statement, which ended with the words: “I’m going to ask that we take a few moments to allow the press to exit before our first session.”
Reporters for foreign outlets, many operating in repressive countries, got the impression that the vaunted American freedoms are not all they’re cracked up to be.
Sorry you weren’t allowed to report on what kind of cheese they ate while negotiating privately ABOUT NUCLEAR SECURITY, you jackass. By the way, this is what he is really upset about:
Over the weekend, Obama broke with years of protocol and slipped off to a soccer game without the “protective” pool that is always in the vicinity of the president in case the unthinkable occurs. Obama joked about it later to Pakistan’s prime minister, saying reporters “were very upset.”
Clowns.
I Pity Anyone Who Isn’t Them Tonight
At the Pulitzer site, the page on the commentary prize explains a hell of a lot about our current media culture.
For example, “witty” seems to be Pulitizer-code for conservative. Like Kathleen Parker (“perceptive, often witty”), Krauthammer’s ’87 prize called him “witty and insightful”. I think Parker’s alright, but how perceptive is it to file a whole column on the Stupak compromise without even mentioning the Hyde Amendment?
As for Krauthammer, I suspect he was better before the war, which might explain his ’87 prize. Not so for Friedman, who got the prize in 2002 for “his clarity of vision, based on extensive reporting, in commenting on the worldwide impact of the terrorist threat.” Suck on that.
That page also lists every Villager who will never be fired, including MoDo (’99), Ruth Marcus (runner-up in ’07), and of course Broder, who was the third recipient of the commentary prize in 1973.
The Dullness of Being Right
Andy Bacevich had yet another interview with Bill Moyers the other day, and the video and transcript are now online. Bacevich makes a succinct and reasonable case for why our Afghan adventure should be ended, and what we should do instead:
First of all, we need to assess the threat realistically. Osama bin Laden is not Adolf Hitler. Al-Qaeda is not Nazi Germany. Al-Qaeda poses a threat. It does not pose an existential threat. We should view Al-Qaeda as the equivalent of an international criminal conspiracy. Sort of a mafia that in some way or another draws its energy or legitimacy from a distorted understanding of a particular religious tradition.
And as with any other international criminal conspiracy, the proper response is a police effort. I mean, a ruthless, sustained, international police effort to identify the thugs, root out the networks and destroy it. Something that would take a long period of time and would no more succeed fully in eliminating the threat than the NYPD is able to fully eliminate criminality in New York City.
The whole thing is worth a listen. Unlike Gerson or Brooks, Bacevich is a minor media figure who is rarely quoted or published in the Times or the Post, simply because he is consistent, straightforward, honest and right.
BoBo Brooks, New King of the Media Village Courtiers?
I’m sorry, DougJ, but it looks like Matt Taibbi may despise David Brooks even more than you do. The man who delivered the ultimate smackdown on Thomas Friedman reports a new nadir for our modern op-ed courtiers:
David Brooks: … Unlike 90 percent of America, I was rooting for Duke last night. This was widely cast as a class conflict — the upper crust Dukies against the humble Midwestern farm boys. If this had been a movie, Butler’s last second heave would have gone in instead of clanging off the rim, and the country would still be weeping with joy.
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But this is why life is not a movie. The rich are not always spoiled. Their success does not always derive from privilege. The Duke players — to the extent that they are paragons of privilege, which I dispute — won through hard work on defense.
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Gail Collins: I’m sorry, when the difference is one weensy basket, I’d say Duke won neither by privilege nor hard work but by sheer luck. But don’t let me interrupt your thought here. I detect the subtle and skillful transition to a larger non-sport point.
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David Brooks: Yes. I was going to say that for the first time in human history, rich people work longer hours than middle class or poor people. How do you construct a rich versus poor narrative when the rich are more industrious?
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I had to read this thing twice before it registered that Brooks was actually saying that he was rooting for the rich against the poor. If he keeps this up, he’s going to make his way into the Guinness Book for having extended his tongue at least a foot and a half farther up the ass of the Times’s Upper East Side readership than any previous pundit in journalistic history…
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Only a person who has never actually held a real job could say something like this. There is, of course, a huge difference between working 80 hours a week in a profession that you love and which promises you vast financial rewards, and working 80 hours a week digging ditches for a septic-tank company, or listening to impatient assholes scream at you at some airport ticket counter all day long, or even teaching disinterested, uncontrollable kids in some crappy school district with metal detectors on every door.
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Most of the work in this world completely sucks balls and the only reward most people get for their work is just barely enough money to survive, if that. The 95% of people out there who spend all day long shoveling the dogshit of life for subsistence wages are basically keeping things running just well enough so that David Brooks, me and the rest of that lucky 5% of mostly college-educated yuppies can live embarrassingly rewarding and interesting lives in which society throws gobs of money at us for pushing ideas around on paper (frequently, not even good ideas) and taking mutual-admiration-society business lunches in London and Paris and Las Vegas with our overpaid peers.
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Brooks is right that most of the people in that 5% bracket log heavy hours, but where he’s wrong is in failing to recognize that most of us have enough shame to know that what we do for a living isn’t really working. I pull absolutely insane hours in my current profession, to the point of having almost no social life at all, but I know better than to call what I do for a living work. I was on a demolition crew when I was much younger, the kind of job where you have to wear a dust mask all day long, carry buckets full of concrete, and then spend all night picking fiberglass shards out of your forearms from ripping insulation out of the wall.
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If I had to do even five hours of that work today I’d bawl my fucking eyes out for a month straight. I’m not complaining about my current good luck at all, but I would wet myself with shame if I ever heard it said that I work even half as hard as the average diner waitress.
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Then again, maybe I’m looking at this from the wrong perspective. Would I rather clean army latrines with my tongue, or would I rather do what Brooks does for a living, working as a professional groveler and flatterer who three times a week has to come up with new ways to elucidate for his rich readers how cosmically just their lifestyles are? If sucking up to upper-crust yabos was my actual job and I had to do it to keep the electricity on in my house, then yes, I might look at that as work.
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But it strikes me that David Brooks actually enjoys his chosen profession…
Read (as Peggy Noonan would say, savor) the whole thing. I actually feel sorry for Gail Collins, who seems to have been stuck with the difficult task of distracting Bobo from sharing his Pundit Thots with some innocent bystander who might be driven to beat him senseless bloody for being an obnoxious tool.
BoBo Brooks, New King of the Media Village Courtiers?Post + Comments (206)
The Narrative Reigns Supreme
The GOS mid-day open thread includes “BREAKING: The vice president eats a sandwich.” And sure enough, it leads to this story:
ABC News’ Karen Travers reports:
When in Rome, do as the Romans do – and when in Philadelphia, eat a cheesesteak.
This afternoon Vice President Joe Biden dropped by Pat’s Kings of Steaks, a cheesesteak mecca in South Philly, after a fundraiser for Rep. Robert Brady (D-PA).
Biden pulled up to the local landmark in his motorcade with the congressman and his wife and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter.
Brady ordered sandwiches for himself and the vice president and the foursome sat at a table outside.
According to the local pool reporter, Biden “scarfed down the whole sandwich” – a “Whiz witout,” which cheesesteak aficionados will know comes with Cheese Whiz and without onions.
That’s because, as the narrative goes, Joe Biden is a “man’s man,” a “regular Joe,” if you will. Of course he ate a cheesesteak “the right way.” HE RIDES THE TRAIN TO WORK AND YOU WANT TO HAVE A BEER WITH HIM! He’s one of us! Unlike a certain faggy windsailing Frenchman:
If Sen. John Kerry’s presidential aspirations melt like a dollop of Cheez Whiz in the sun, the trouble may well be traced to an incident in South Philadelphia on Monday.
There, the Massachusetts Democrat went to Pat’s Steaks and ordered a cheese steak — with Swiss cheese. If that weren’t bad enough, the candidate asked photographers not to take his picture while he ate the sandwich. Shutters clicked anyway, and Kerry was caught nibbling daintily at his sandwich — another serious faux pas.
Because if anyone knows a thing or two about manliness and the way to order and eat a cheesesteak, it’s a Yale graduate and Skull and Bones member working at the Washington Post named “Dana.” That’s who wrote this- mocking the machismo of the decorated Viet Nam war veteran, John Kerry. The profound lack of self-awareness in our media is stunning, and makes you wonder if DougJ is right that most of them are simply sociopaths.
But yeah- it is news, because the narratives must be maintained. Biden is a regular “Joe” who eats his cheesesteak like a man and says the “f-word” and it is cool. Kerry and others are dainty out of touch elitist east coasters who like spicy mustards and exotic lettuces. If these stories disappeared, reporters might have to abandon the narrative and actually think, and let us think for ourselves. And you can’t have that.
All the News That is Fit to Fact Check
Also via Washington Monthly, this excellent news:
As you may know, we’re trying out some new things on THIS WEEK. Two weeks ago we started live-tweeting of the show (which will next happen at 10 am ET this Sunday).
This week we’ve invited Pulitzer Prize winning website PolitiFact to fact-check the newsmaker interviews featured on the program.
The idea was first proposed by NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen and I thought it worth a try. PolitiFact editor Bill Adair, the St Petersburg Times’ Washington bureau chief, and I know each other from fact-checking forums and such (I was at the Fact Check desk during the 2004 elections) so I asked him if he’d be willing to give it a try. He was.
Good for Tapper.
With that having been said, I think it is important to reflect on how screwed up things are that we now need to team independent fact checkers up with our news media. Our news media. The folks whose sole job is to inform us with… facts.
We live in a media environment in which a several decade assault on facts and the truth has taken us to the point that our news coverage is rarely if ever factual but is instead, fact-based. Colbert called it “truthiness.” Our media is so terrified of being called biased, that what we get now is not a clear presentation of facts, but of a he-said she-said mess, and where facts have a “liberal bias.”
So while I think this is great, we need to realize what is going to happen next, should this catch on- a full on assault on the independent fact checkers. Just like they went after the media, just like they went after the academy, just like they went after the sciences, and just like they have gone after anyone else who has dared to stand in the way of their lies, if the notion of independent fact-checking gains popularity, and the truth starts to seep back into our discourse, expect the Brent Bozell’s and the Newsbusters and the Hannity’s and the rest of the well oiled wurlitzer to try to tear down the independent fact-checkers and the folks like Jake Tapper who work with them. You can bet on it.