Tiddly Winks

by digby

I’m hearing a lot of complaining from people who are upset that bloggers and others are taking action against ABC when “nobody cared” about MSNBC’s outrageous behavior throughout the campaign, particularly towards Clinton. That’s actually not true. There was plenty of outrage among some bloggers, including yours truly, about MSNBC’s campaign coverage, particularly Chris Matthews’ disgusting sexist behavior. It’s true that it may not have been as loud and vociferous as it is toward ABC in the wake of their reprehensible debate, but it did happen. And it had an effect. Matthews was forced to apologize and he’s had to stop compulsively blurting out his obnoxious sexism masquerading as nursery school social psychology on the air. It’s not much, but it’s not nothing.

Eric Boehlert points out in his column this week that there is a perverse effect though, which I hadn’t realized and about which I will have to give some thought. Matthews star has actually risen as a result of his being the poster boy for sexist commentary. His buddies at the network and in the rest of the media have rallied around him since he was perceived to be under siege by a bunch of shrill, shrieking harpies:

This election season, we’ve seen a cavalcade of white, middle-age men express their deep, personal contempt for the first serious female contender for the White House. Contempt, of course, that has nothing to do with Sen. Hillary Clinton’s policies or her beliefs. Instead, it’s been an oddly personal disdain dressed up as political analysis.

The way Mike Barnicle on MSNBC said Clinton “look[ed] like everyone’s first wife standing outside a probate court.” The way Bill Kristol on Fox News said that among the only people supporting Hillary Clinton were white women, and “[w]hite women are a problem, that’s, you know — we all live with that.” The way CNN’s Jack Cafferty likened Clinton to “a scolding mother, talking down to a child.” The way Fox News’ Neil Cavuto suggested Clinton was “trying to run away from this tough, kind of bitchy image.” The way MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson announced that “when [Clinton] comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs.” The way Christopher Hitchens on CNBC described Clinton as being “sort of alternately soppy and bitchy.'”

That’s all taken place in open view. And while a blog swarm did engulf Matthews in January, followed by a forced, pseudo-apology by the host — and his attacks did prompt some women activists to carry picket signs outside the MSNBC studios — the openly sexist comments have produced very few condemnations from within the industry and even less soul-searching from the (mostly male) press corps. In fact, in Matthews’ case, the sexist outbursts have helped propel his career. That’s how he landed on the cover of the Times magazine.

Why? Because misogyny pays.

Depressing, but true. Matthews is more of a celebrity now than he was before, with his grinning face on the front of the NY Times Magazine and probably getting his contract renewed since he’s suddenly a “hot” commodity, even if he’s widely known as a freak show. (That’s long been a staple of successful cable TV. Look at O’Reilly.) So, as satisfying as it was that he was forced to curb his more obscene sexist observations, it may have actually helped him among his peers in the Village media. They stick together.

The outcry against Gibson and Stephanopoulos may have more traction, however. They are being taken to task by members of their own profession and the reviews of the debate were brutal. There may be some social pressure from within the village itself that could at least mitigate some of the silliness.

Unfortunately, it’s not going to happen over night. Judging from this little interchange today between Wolf Blitzer, Peter Fenn (Democratic strategist) and Kevin Madden (Republican strategist) it looks to me as if the villagers are reacting to the outcry by retreating to a very familiar storyline: Democrats are soft.

Blitzer: So what do you think. Is Obama tough enough to handle this kind of tough questioning?

Fenn: Uh, I certainly think they’re both tough enough. In fact, I think we’re talking about alligator skin here with both of these folks. But it’s funny. One complains about always getting the first question — that was Hillary’s a couple months ago. He says, “hey wait a minute, 45 minutes, no issues are discussed,” you know there’s a lot of back and forth, but this has been tiddly winks so far in this Democratic primary. It’s going to get real tough.

Blitzer: It’s small potatoes. Whoever gets the nomination can expect a whole lot worse in a general election campaign.

Madden: Oh absolutely. We were joking around before saying “there’s no crying in baseball” and this is one of those instances. When you run for president you are actually asking for the right to be humiliated. That is an odd thing but very often times in debates like these, that get very tough, where you get tough questions, you’re constantly probed and being hammered by the media, you can actually come out above, looking very presidential if you stand by those attacks and you come out ahead of them.

Blitzer: If you want to be president, Kevin is absolutely right, you have to expect that everything is fair game, almost every part of your life, and certainly your finances or anything like that.

Isn’t that great? Presidential candidates sign on for the right to be humiliated — by the press.(Has anyone told John “Sprinkles” McCain about this, because I don’t think he knows?) Apparently, Blitzer and these “strategists” believe the press has been holding back during the primaries (tiddly winks, small potatoes) and are planning to go nuclear during the general. At least that’s what it sounds like they are saying. After all, this question was about the debate and specifically the complaints about Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. I don’t know if these people know they are conflating what the Republicans will do in the general election with what the press is going to do, but it’s telling that they all agreed to the premise without batting an eye. If you ever wanted to know if the political media are an arm of the Republican Party, you don’t have to look any further than this conversation. Believe me, nobody’s warning John McCain about how hard the Democrats are going to go after him in the fall — or the press, for that matter. Everybody knows exactly what going to happen.

As I mentioned last night in my post about Greenwald’s new book, the idea that parrying stupid questions about a flag pin or sanctuary cities or a trivial anecdote shows how tough you will be as president is standard among the press corps.(At least in their treatment of Democrats — Republicans are assumed to be rough ‘n ready.) They let a halfwit dauphin coast to victory in 2000 and 2004 while killing the presidential aspirations of two decent, intelligent and politically battle hardened Democratic candidates with this death of a thousand small character smears. It’s what they will try to do again. We can see it coming clear as day.

I don’t know if it will work this time. But I do know that it causes them some confusion and unhappiness when we rise up and get in their faces about it. We may have helped Matthews become a hot commodity for this election season, but at least our TVs will be less polluted with his sexist remarks for a while. And perhaps the media will rally around Gibson and Stephanopoulos, but they are on notice that there will be a firestorm if they pull this crap again. It will make them think twice.

This is classic working the refs and it can be very effective. It’s how we got here in the first place: the conservatives made it job one to harass the media and call them on what they perceived to be a liberal bias. It worked. It can work for us too, maybe not at once, but over time, first in small ways then in large.

Update: Doesn’t everyone remember that the whole blogosphere went apeshit over Disney/ABCs The Path To 9/11? That was about a despicable wingnut movie that accused the Clinton administration of letting 9/11 happen. We’ve been harrassing them for a long time. This isn’t new and it isn’t partisan.

Remember this?

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