Month: August 2008

The Sporting Life

By Batocchio

Much of our political coverage amounts to gossip and bad sports commentary. When the Obama campaign rebutted McCain’s “celebrity” attack ad with one of their own, the AP reported that “McCain’s ‘celebrity’ taunts are bugging Obama,” taking their cues from GOP strategist Terry Holt, who asserted, “If the celebrity issue were not hurting them, they would have ignored it.” The Politico pushed the same angle in “GOP’s celeb-Obama message gains traction,” adding a dose of the GOP’s beloved gender attacks:

“This is a typically superfluous response from Barack Obama. Like most celebrities, he reacts to fair criticism with a mix of fussiness and hysteria,” McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said.

Ron Fournier’s hit piece on Obama over the Biden VP choice really boiled down to, “Obama’s weak, and scared of McCain,” repeated over and over again for emphasis. Sometimes, the shallow coverage favors the Democrat, as with LA Times blog Top of the Ticket’s “Barack Obama gets under John McCain’s skin,” but it’s still rather silly stuff, especially when that’s all there is to the story. Still, most of the recent “head game” stories seem to focus on Obama. If he’s attacked and says nothing, the charge must be true or he’s weak, and if he punches back, it must be true and he’s “rattled,” “upset” and so on. (Obama’s probably most been most effective when gently mocking, as with his tire gauge retort.)

The head games fascinate the press, but reality just ain’t that popular with them. Earlier this month, Bob Somerby chronicled how on Race to the White House, Rachel Maddow dared to mention that McCain’s off-shore drilling proposals “would really have no impact on gas prices for, I don’t know, a generation,” and then added, “That’s brilliant politics. It just has no basis in reality.” Her point was promptly brushed over by John Harwood and David Gregory, as well as Pat Buchanan, who remarked:

David, I’ve got to step in here because Rachel has really finally nailed one cold. Look, we’ve got $4 a gallon gasoline, $150 a barrel oil, and the Republicans are blaming Barack Obama for it, and they are succeeding with the issue and forcing him to change. That is a winner. Astonishingly good politics, a rarity for the Republicans lately.

The consequences of policies don’t matter. What matters is how everything plays. (At least Maddow’s getting her own show now.)

Digby’s post linking Eric Boehlert is a good reminder of how the game works. The degree of Clinton-trashing Boehlert documents is striking, while New York magazine’s “Obama Agrees to Roll-Call Vote for Clinton. Does That Make Him a Sissy?” plays into familiar dynamics. Somehow, I doubt that Hillary or Bill Clinton will deliver a true Mark Antony speech laced with nasty digs at Obama and a call for insurrection. I don’t doubt for a second, though, that some reporters will eagerly look for such digs. (It beats writing about health care.) Karl Rove trashed Michelle Obama earlier, suggesting she was unpatriotic. He loves to attack the strength. Rove’s remarked that he practices politics “as if people were watching television with the sound turned down,” and he had to be nervous seeing the happy Obama family last night and how well that played. (It’ll be interesting to hear what he says about Hillary Clinton’s speech, but I’d be surprised if he didn’t hit the divisiveness theme somehow.)

Rove’s a partisan hack, of course, but at least some viewers know he worked for Bush (although his work for McCain should always be disclosed). I’m more concerned about supposedly objective reporters. I keep coming back to these examples because the contrasts are so stark – the Obama tax plan would give more money to the middle class than the McCain plan, which would also make the rich even richer, and McCain’s plan for reducing the deficit amounts to wishing for a pony. By all means, let the McCain campaign have its say, let them defend their policies and critique Obama’s. But reporting the actual policies would be nice. (The competing tax plans have gotten some air time on TV, but it’s been pretty scant.)

Many of these issues aren’t that hard to cover, either, yet it’s far more common that we hear about Obama’s celebrity, or that like Bush before him, John McCain is a swell guy. And did you know he was a POW, but reluctant to talk about it? He’s a scrappy guy, a great American underdog story, poor little Admiral’s son made good, losing the primaries in 2000, counted out this time around, but bouncing back… I suppose McCain hasn’t gone full-blown into the “Aw, shucks” mode of Fred Thompson, and hasn’t yet hit the full Bull Durham mode of saying he’s gonna give the presidency 110%, he just hopes he can help the country, just wants to give it his best shot and the good Lord willing, things’ll work out… But McCain has been running mainly on his personality, on his persona, and has gone something like 146 consecutive starts speeches offering incoherent statements and unsound policies. He really has been the Teflon candidate.

McCain’s popular with the press, but he also benefits because so many of our political journalists have an awfully odd attitude toward their beat. As Bob Somerby observed back in June:

In short, these people hate knowledge, complexity; they hate the infernal need to explore. Let’s put it another way: They hate politics. It’s weird, yet the contrast constantly strikes us. Sports reporters love to talk about sports. [Richard] Cohen hates talking about politics.

Most of all, they hate talking about policies and their consequences. That would be boring – and more work. The sporting life, the gossip game, is both easier and more fun. Honestly, I think there’s a place for little side stories, learning more about a candidate as a person, biographical details, favorite movies and all that. However, especially when it comes to television coverage, often we receive little more than fluff, with not much substantive discussion. And if that weren’t bad enough, there’s generally favoritism to the fluff.

DDay’s post “If A Nose Grows In The Forest…” explored these dynamics earlier this month. After noting that NBC’s Chuck Todd “comes out and admits that he’s a sportscaster,” DDay observed:

Here’s the thing, though – in the case of the Village, it’s more like a home-team sportscaster. The guy who is paid the Raiders to cover the game, and he hates every other team and has no problem shaping the story to benefit his guys.

We’ve seen, many a time, how the press will vouch for Saint McCain. But while there are certainly plenty of godawful sportscasters, they tend to, y’know, report what actually happened. Even if we view the press as sportscasters, or even home-team sportscasters, our press corps lacks good play-by-play announcers, but is positively overflowing with really bad color commentators.

To strain this metaphor even further (and apologies to all non-sports fans), say the Green Bay Packers were playing the Chicago Bears and scored the first two touchdowns. If our political reporters were sportscasters, David Broder would insist that the Packers should let the Bears score, Sean Hannity would loudly proclaim that the Bears did score, and Cokie Roberts would misreport the score and then proceed to ignore the game.

I’ll be interested to hear the speeches tonight, not so much the commentary. Still, I must remember there’s always room for the coverage to grow far worse. Some day in the months ahead, we may see some enterprising news producer combine the worst of Bob Costas with the worst of Charlie Gibson, and bad debate questions will plunge to a new low: “Senator Obama, at the Beijing Olympics, Michael Phelps won an unprecedented eight gold medals, bringing pride to America, while his mother Debbie cheered him on every step and stroke of the way. So why are you raising his capital gains taxes?”

Update: Fixed some typos.
 

What’s The Story?

by dday

Katie Couric puts on her serious face and talks to bloggers, who then post about her talking to bloggers, and the universe explodes on itself.

Meanwhile apparently this is the Hillary Clinton convention and the Democratic Party is at war, although none of us know it.

And oh by the way: Pakistan’s government has collapsed (which is probably as it should be after Musharraf was dumped), Iraq’s Prime Minister reaffirms the need for a hard timeline for all US troops to leave Iraq, the Prime Minister has also cut oil deals with China and Russia, the Russians have recognized independence for South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and in the wake of yet another airstrike killing dozens of civilians in Afghanistan…

Frustrated by the mounting toll of civilian deaths from U.S. and NATO airstrikes in Afghanistan, the government of President Hamid Karzai called Tuesday for a full-scale review of foreign-led military operations in the country.

Our foreign policy is literally blowing up in our faces on multiple fronts, but the media is dead-set on whether or not someone with a sign somewhere is a PUMA or not.

grr

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Born Yesterday

by digby

If you read one thing as you watch the growing gasbag hysteria leading up to Clinton’s speech tonight, read this great piece by Boehlert. It’s all you need to know to keep this thing in perspective and understand why DFH’s like us complain about fictional narratives.

Most of the bloviators who are covering this allegedly unprecedented rift were around when these earlier events happened. They are, as usual, passing around pre-masticated oppo talking points (when they aren’t just making shit up.) There’s no excuse for this.

Also, if you haven’t seen this handy tool from Media Matters Action Network, check it out. Perhaps we should all send it to the press so they too can understand how the right manufactures scandals and then uses the media as their sales force.

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Try decaf
by Dover Bitch

You can always tell an election is nearing. The ads start airing during your shows. The bumper stickers become more visible during your commute. And Joe Scarborough begins his gradual, but inevitable transition from thinly-veiled, independent “journalist” to complete water-carrying GOP hack. It’s really the same script every election cycle and it usually blooms like a flower with an episode like today’s Morning Joe:

The only time he shut up during the entire segment (other than during the beginning of Mika Brzezinski’s newscast, which he interrupted and ended prematurely) was when David Shuster challenged him: to say “John McCain was wrong.”

SHUSTER: One final point: It’s very different to say, “Yes, we ought to take the Iraqis up on their word,” and at the same time say, “You know what, when John McCain ridicules that very point, he is wrong.” And if you want to say, right now — we can end this argument — “When John McCain ridicules the point that we ought to take up the Iraqis and get out of Iraq, and he ridicules that, he is wrong.” You can say that right now and that’s the end of this.

SCARBOROUGH: Well, actually, you’re trying to pick a fight with somebody that wasn’t fighting with you. As a guy…

SHUSTER: Well, you can end the fight by saying “John McCain is wrong.” Go ahead say it. “John McCain is wrong when he ridicules people who call for a timetable.”

[a few seconds of cafeteria din]

SCARBOROUGH: I.. wha… whuuu… miii… Where am I? Am I on Crossfire? I thought they cancelled that show… John McCain is John… OK… John McCain is wrong for blah, blah, blah, whatever you said. We’re not on opposite sides here.

This smackdown followed seven minutes of schoolyard taunts by Scarborough, including, in the most sarcastic tone he could muster, “Ooooh, you’re an independent! Why, I feel soooo comforted by the fact that you’re an independent! I bet everybody at MSNBC has ‘independent’ on their voting cards! Ooooh, we’re down the middle now!”

Truly embarrassing. You can tell the GOP is in trouble this year, because Joe usually waits until somebody mentions Mary Cheney before he percolates completely.

He’s probably still smarting from last night, when Keith Olbermann muttered, “Jesus, Joe, why don’t you get a shovel?” while Scarborough was praising McCain’s Karl Rove 2.0, Steve Schmidt.

Devaluing The Family

by digby

This is, of course, nothing new, but Karl Rove has once again proved himself to be a total jackass:

I don’t think she did too well on saying I love America. That wasn’t adequate enough because, look, people are gonna hear that, and then those that have paid attention to her earlier comments are gonna try and square those two off.

I thought it was heartbreaking that she had to say it at all, but the idea that it was inadequate is mind boggling. How could she possibly make it any more clear? Wrap herself in the flag and speak in tongues?

The idea that they are going to continue to attack Michelle Obama for being unpatriotic and “hating America” is pretty sickening. I guess it’s just part of their ongoing character assault on Obama in general, but it’s still very cynical. And I’m not sure it’s very effective, certainly after an event like last night. When you see them as a family with their two adorable little daughters, both Michelle and Barack are so incredibly normal, so relaxed and smiling, that these harsh “unamerican” attacks seem very out of place. Last night they sure didn’t look very “exotic” to me — they could have been any All American family I see every day down at the mall.

I find Barack to be very appealing when he’s around Michelle and the girls. I don’t know what it is — it’s some sort of subliminal thing — but I get a very warm and friendly feeling toward him that’s different than the more cerebral appreciation I have for him as a politician or inspirational feeling I get from his speeches. There’s some heuristic decision making going on there that I don’t understand, but I recognize it. I would imagine that Karl Rove is well aware of that effect.

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Thanks But No Thanks

by digby

Following up on Tristero’s comment below, I understand that some of the gasbags have come around to the idea that the Democrats can’t go after the Republicans because the American people are sick and tired of the partisan attack politics of Washington these past few years.

Isn’t that precious? The American people are sick of vicious, bloodthirsty Republicans which means that Democrats can’t mention the fact that Republicans are vicious and bloodthirsty.

As I wrote earlier, there seems to be some common belief among the villagers that because the cable shows have relatively small audiences that they have no influence. That might be true if the audience they do have didn’t consist mostly of the professional political class.

These people are being tremendously dishonest (or they’re just dumb) when they frame this election in those terms. John McCain has launched a non-stop character attack on Barack Obama and they advise the Democrats to be soft because the public is sick of Republican attacks. Yeah, that’ll work out.

I fervently hope the Democrats don’t agree with that nonsensical conventional wisdom and strongly attack the Republicans over the next three nights. That “advice” is a recipe for defeat.

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Avoiding Bush

by tristero

The latest news from Iraq:

A suicide bomber killed 25 people in an attack on a line of would-be Iraqi police recruits outside a police station in Diyala Province on Tuesday, Iraqi security officials said.

The security officials said the bomber, a man wearing an explosive belt, blew himself up at 10.45 a.m. near the line of volunteers who were standing outside a government building in the Martyrs’ district of Jalawla, 50 miles west of the Iranian border.

I find it hard to square news like this with general tone of the political conventions this year. One would expect Republicans to run like crazy from Bush’s war, of course. And everything else Bush.

But so far, the Democratic convention has gone out of its way to avoid the unpleasant fact that for the past eight years, the US has been presided over by malicious, willfully ignorant fools who have unleashed unspeakable carnage by invading, conquering, and occupying a country which never attacked the US; who have elevated torture to an official government policy; who looked on with indifference – to the extent they looked at all – as Americans drowned in their own sewage; who have systematically destroyed the American system of justice; who have wrecked the economy; and who have ensured that young Americans continue to receive an incomplete and distorted education about the world.

I could go on, and on, and on about the sheer incompetence, ignorance and betrayal of American values Republicans like John McCain represent. It’s not hard. So it simply defies belief that the Democratic convention would deliberately avoid – as it clearly has – mentioning Bush’s name, the worst president ever, and – not so coincidentally-a Republican. It simply defies belief that no one is making the point that McCain has proactively aided, abetted, and now seeks to continue nearly all of Bush’ misbegotten, if not criminal, activities. Yet that is what is going on. The predictable result? A nail-bitingly close race that should be a rout.

Meanwhile, the slaughter and the horrors Bush and his Republican henchmen inflicted on the world go on. And the likelihood that that they will continue in January, under a president who makes Bush look smart, increases.

It’s Bush, stupid. It’s Republicans, stupid.

Who’s Our (Sugar) Daddy?

by digby

So I appeared on a panel about the blogosphere and the media yesterday morning with Arianna Huffington, Chris Cilizza, Jonathan Alter and … Gregory Maffei? When I was introduced to him, I assumed that he was a writer with whom I was unfamiliar, which seemed odd, considering the nature of the discussion. It turns out he isn’t a writer. He is this guy.

Why, you ask, would a program at the Democratic Party Convention include someone who is a big McCain contributor? Welll…. it turns out that he is president of Liberty Media, which owns Starz, which is a sponsor of the program. Liberty Media is run by John Malone, who Al Gore famously dubbed Darth Vadar. Strange bedfellows, indeed.

He didn’t seem to think too highly of the blogosphere. And he was very, very worried about the future of journalism since nobody was paying for content. Very worried. Indeed, one might almost think that he had an agenda, although it was never explicitly discussed. It was very odd, but to be expected, I guess. Corporate sponsorship of political events isn’t actually free, now is it?

The rest of the panel was pretty much the usual boilerplate “bloggers are vituperative” etc. (Jonathan Alter said we have a psychological condition called “disinhibition” — like Alzheimers patients.) I had planned to say some things about the village and Cokie’s Law and Rush and Drudge, but the opportunities to speak were quite limited.

I did find one thing quite interesting, which is that Alter insists that nobody listens to the gasbags and pundits so we shouldn’t worry about them. I asked him how he thought people got their information about politics and he said from their talkative coworker or politically engaged relative and things like chain emails. It’s apparent that many in the mainstream media have not see the documentation and analysis that’s been done online about how the stories and themes of elections, as conceived by political operatives and political pundits, dominate the campaigns and color the voters impressions of the candidates. Maybe the inside of the bubble is too heady a place to be able to see the connections.

(In the meantime, perhaps I should just direct everyone to Bob Somerby…)

I find it difficult to keep my patience with the inevitable discussion about how the news media is losing money and can’t afford to do the all important news gathering on which we internet parasites depend. It’s as if this problem has happened in some vacuum in which journalism itself has no culpability. They brought a lot of it on themselves, particularly when they gleefully allowed Drudge to rule their world and Rush to be feted and groomed by mainstream conservative politicians without raising an eyebrow. (Live by the wingnuts, die by the wingnuts.)

Ari Melber asked the pertinent question about how a reporter can possibly fail to call out illegal and immoral acts like wiretapping and torture for what they are, under some misguided definition of objectivity or neutrality. Cilizza answered the question honestly, admitting that they don’t do a good job of it. Had there been time, I would have loved to have asked Alter what his feelings were on that subject when he wrote this piece back in 2001.

In this autumn of anger, even a liberal can find his thoughts turning to … torture. OK, not cattle prods or rubber hoses, at least not here in the United States, but something to jump-start the stalled investigation of the greatest crime in American history. Right now, four key hijacking suspects aren’t talking at all.

COULDN’T WE AT LEAST subject them to psychological torture, like tapes of dying rabbits or high-decibel rap? (The military has done that in Panama and elsewhere.) How about truth serum, administered with a mandatory IV? Or deportation to Saudi Arabia, land of beheadings? (As the frustrated FBI has been threatening.) Some people still argue that we needn’t rethink any of our old assumptions about law enforcement, but they’re hopelessly “Sept. 10”—living in a country that no longer exists.

One sign of how much things have changed is the reaction to the antiterrorism bill, which cleared the Senate last week by a vote of 98-1. While the ACLU felt obliged to quibble with a provision or two, the opposition was tepid, even from staunch civil libertarians. That great quote from the late Chief Justice Robert Jackson—”The Constitution is not a suicide pact”—is getting a good workout lately. “This was incomparably more sober and sensible than what some of our revered presidents did,” says Floyd Abrams, the First Amendment lawyer, referring to the severe restrictions on liberty imposed during the Civil War and World War I.

Fortunately, the new law stops short of threatening basic rights like free speech, which is essential in wartime to hold the government accountable. The bill makes it easier to wiretap (under the old rules, you had to get a warrant for each individual phone, an anachronism in a cellular age), easier to detain immigrants who won’t talk and easier to follow money through the international laundering process. A welcome “sunset” provision means the expansion of surveillance will expire after four years. That’s an important precedent, though odds are these changes will end up being permanent. It’s a new world.

Actually, the world hasn’t changed as much as we have. The Israelis have been wrestling for years with the morality of torture. Until 1999 an interrogation technique called “shaking” was legal. It entailed holding a smelly bag over a suspect’s head in a dark room, then applying scary psychological torment. (To avoid lessening the potential impact on terrorists, I won’t specify exactly what kind.) Even now, Israeli law leaves a little room for “moderate physical pressure” in what are called “ticking time bomb” cases, where extracting information is essential to saving hundreds of lives. The decision of when to apply it is left in the hands of law-enforcement officials.

[…]

Short of physical torture, there’s always sodium pentothal (“truth serum”). The FBI is eager to try it, and deserves the chance. Unfortunately, truth serum, first used on spies in World War II, makes suspects gabby but not necessarily truthful. The same goes for even the harshest torture. When the subject breaks, he often lies. Prisoners “have only one objective—to end the pain,” says retired Col. Kenneth Allard, who was trained in interrogation. “It’s a huge limitation.”

Some torture clearly works. Jordan broke the most notorious terrorist of the 1980s, Abu Nidal, by threatening his family. Philippine police reportedly helped crack the 1993 World Trade Center bombings (plus a plot to crash 11 U.S. airliners and kill the pope) by convincing a suspect that they were about to turn him over to the Israelis. Then there’s painful Islamic justice, which has the added benefit of greater acceptance among Muslims.

We can’t legalize physical torture; it’s contrary to American values. But even as we continue to speak out against human-rights abuses around the world, we need to keep an open mind about certain measures to fight terrorism, like court-sanctioned psychological interrogation. And we’ll have to think about transferring some suspects to our less squeamish allies, even if that’s hypocritical. Nobody said this was going to be pretty.

I would hope that he has thought some about that since then, considering that torture has now been thoroughly mainstreamed. If I see him around this week, I’ll ask him.

A lot of people became irrational after 9/11 and said things they probably wouldn’t say today. But unlike your average person, those with national stature as political writers and analysts have a professional duty to keep their heads about them. It is probable that the result of that very public musing about torture by “eventheliberal” Jonathan Alter was that the Bush administration believed it had far more latitude than the government had ever had before under law and custom. They did, at least from the media:

Media Stoke Debate on Torture as U.S. Option

By Jim Rutenberg
New York Times
November 6, 2001

NEW YORK In many quarters, the Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter is considered a liberal. Yet there he was last week, raising this question:

“In this autumn of anger,” Mr. Alter wrote, “even a liberal can find his thoughts turning to … torture.” He added that he was not necessarily advocating the use of “cattle prods or rubber hoses” on men detained in the investigation into the terrorist attacks. Only, “something to jump-start the stalled investigation of the greatest crime in American history.”

The column, titled “Time to Think About Torture,” is worrying to human rights groups. The sense of alarm was heightened because Mr. Alter is just one of a growing number of voices in the mainstream U.S. news media raising, if not necessarily agreeing with, the idea of torturing terrorism suspects or detainees who refuse to talk. On Thursday night, the Fox News anchor Shepard Smith introduced a segment asking: “Should law enforcement be allowed to do anything, even terrible things, to make suspects spill the beans? Jon DuPre reports. You decide.”

A week earlier, on the CNN program “Crossfire,” the conservative commentator Tucker Carlson said: “Torture is bad. Keep in mind, some things are worse. And under certain circumstances, it may be the lesser of two evils. Because some evils are pretty evil.”

The legitimacy of torture as an investigative tool is the latest in a progression of disturbing and horrific topics that news outlets are now presenting to audiences, like the potential of a biological attack on an American city or a terrorist nuclear strike, the kind that, as an article in The Economist put it in its latest issue, could cause the disappearance of a large part of Manhattan.

Some human rights advocates say they do not mind theoretical discussions about torture, as long as disapproval is expressed at the end. But they say that weighing the issue as a real possible course of action could begin the process of legitimizing a barbaric form of interrogation.

Journalists are approaching the subject cautiously. But some said last week that they were duty-bound to address it when suspects and detainees who have refused to talk could have information that could save thousands of lives. Plus, they added, torture is already a topic of discussion in bars, on commuter trains and at dinner tables. And last, they said, well, this is war.

Considering what actually happened, this was a big mistake, perhaps even bigger than the misjudgment about the war. You don’t have to be a philosopher or a priest to know that torture is immoral and illegal. A taboo was broken and I don’t know what it’s going to take for it to be reinstated.

*Oh, and just for the record, the four suspects Alter said refused to talk and so required psychological torture, sodium pentathol, “shaking” or perhaps “deportation to Saudi Arabia, land of beheadings,” all turned out to be innocent.

Update:

Love this comment:

From Wikipedia:

“Disinhibition is a term in psychology used to describe conditions of a person being unable (rather than disinclined) to control their immediate impulsive response to a situation.”

Like thinking torture was a reasonable response to 9/11.
JJF

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Riddle Me This

by dday

If a 30 year Democrat spoke at the RNC
Excoriated his former party
And endorsed the Presidential candidate of the opposite party
Would the media cover it?

Teddy

by digby

I’ve never watched a convention in my life that didn’t feature Teddy Kennedy. I’m glad to finally see him in person, even though it’s incredibly bittersweet. It will be strange when he is gone.

Nobody could ever get my Dad frothing like the Kennedys — Teddy especially. He has been the right’s boogeyman, their nemesis, their punchline for decades and he never let up and never gave in. They don’t make liberals like him anymore.

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