Responding to Adam B’s post on Kos about how the Domenech affair impacts bloggers, Garance Franke Ruta says that blogs shouldn’t be afraid of regulation:
Adam B and Atrios are right in noting that nothing about the need for members of the press to make distinctions between online personalities who are also journalists and those who also work in politics implies anything about the F.E.C. But after a week in which liberal blogs and organizations, such as Media Matters for American, repeatedly called on the Post to make such distinctions, it’s a little peculiar to turn around now and say such lines are impossible to draw.
Nor ought concern for regulation to be considered “an elitish fetish.” Regulation has been at the heart of progressivism since early in the last century, and the regulatory state is something Democrats have been desperately trying to preserve over the past five years in the face of a Republican onslaught, because it is what has given America back its rivers and lakes, its national bird, and the ability to breathe clean air — among many, many, many other things.
This is true. But I think this blogging regulation proposal may be the first time anybody’s tried to regulate a problem before it even exists. I don’t get it. It’s theoretically possible that something nefarious could happen with blogs and money and politics, but so far it’s been nothing but citizens donating small amounts to politicians and causes at the behest of other citizens — which seems to me to be the essence of democracy.
Nobody was saying that Ben Domenech should not be writing for the Washington Post because bloggers should not be considered press. It’s because the Washington Post should not be hiring political activists to balance non-partisan journalists. Surely everyone understood that. If the Post had been smart enough to hire a “Blue State” blogger from among the ranks of activist blogs along with Domenech, I would imagine this would have taken much longer to unfold. (He would have been found out eventually.)
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that this issue is fundamentally about money in politics not whether certain uncredentailed people are qualified to call themselves “journalists.” And the problem with money in politics isn’t the money itself. It’s the concentration of big money and special interests buying off politicians that McCain-Feingold was designed to mitigate. There is simply no mechanism currently by which this is likely to happen on blogs. And might I make the bold suggestion that we wait until there is evidence that it has before writing legislation to stop it?
Why the big hurry on this? They haven’t even gone after internet commerce yet even though states have been lobbying for years that they are losing tax revenue. The reasoning has always been that nobody knows yet where the internet is going and nobody wants to smother the baby before it even opens its eyes. The same is true here. There will be plenty of time to assess the impact of online activism and partisan speech on elections. Leave it alone. All will reveal itself eventually.
Lil’ Benji strikes back and unwittingly reveals the working ethos of the modern Republican party:
Asked about the voluminous amount of documentation cited by left-wing bloggers and some conservatives’ decision to believe it, Domenech said: “In a lot of this stuff, it’s based on who you believe. And if you believe the lefties are right or if you believe someone who you know and who you’ve worked with is right, I guess the thing I would point out is that I’ve done my best to never do anything to raise any kind of question about this sort of thing. And if you look at the overwhelming bulk of everything I’ve written, you’ll find there is no question about it. The questions are about small things, a lot of them easily explainable, especially the things that come after college.”
Domenech believes in epistemic relativism (as well as moral relativism.) He thinks that truth is contingent upon who is delivering it. And he’s right as far as the right is concerned. They have proved that they will believe anything if it emanates from the tribe.
President Bush believes this. For instance, inspectors and Iraq. You can choose to believe him or you can choose to believe what you saw and heard and remember in acute detail, which was that inspectors were in Iraq before the invasion and found nothing at which point Bush pulled them out and invaded — an act he now says was precipitated by Saddam’s refusal to accept inspections. Anyone who sees this differently is a partisan leftist. As Rob Corddry sagely observed, “the facts are biased.”
Iraq is full of good news! The economy is great! George W. Bush is a brilliant leader on the scale of Winston Churchill and Alexander the Great! Who’re you gonna believe, the Republicans or your lyin’ eyes?
Lil’ Benji never studied much it appears. He was engaged in GOP partisan politics from about the age of 15. Apparently, he didn’t even have time to see the movies and listen to the CD’s he was assigned to review. All he knows is modern Republican ethics:
“While I appreciated the opportunity to go and join the Washington Post,” Domenech said, “if they didn’t expect the leftists were going to come after me with their sharpened knives, then they were fools.”
That’s true enough. They were fools for not expecting the left blogosphere to find out that Domenech was a phony and a plagiarist. And they were fools for assuming that the blogger from the racist RedState blog, the editor for the sleazy Regnery publishing, and the speechwriter for the unprincipled John Cornyn was anything but an unethical GOP operative. When will they ever learn?
The mere fact that reporters must risk their lives every time they attempt to report the “good news” means that the news, by definition, cannot be all that good. It means that all those new schools and soccer games and litters of adorable puppies exist in the shadow of horrible violence.
Don’t be fooled. The fact that life goes on in Iraq, even during a violent occupation, doesn’t mitigate the death and destruction that makes Iraq a daily story of unimaginable terror. Bush and his minions would like to make Americans believe it does, but it isn’t true. All we have to do is imagine if we would agree that a new school being opened in St Louis was newsworthy on a day when 30 people were killed while shopping at the Safeway down the street and four Catholic churches around the country were blown up.
It’s the violence, stupid. Until that stops, there is no good news.
I did want to make one last point before the Post hires a disgraced South Korean scientist to clone David Brooks and the kid fades into obscurity. This sad homeschooled little fellow, who failed to learn how the world works the way the rest of us do — in high school — was evidently considered quite the arbiter of popular culture in his crowd. His “Red Dawn” obsession gave us all quite a few laughs over the past few days. But it is no surprise that he plagiarized huge numbers of film and album reviews and stole outright a humorous essay from PJ O’Rourke (the only funny conservative on the planet) on how to party. These are things a true wingnut cannot understand.
The vast majority of right wingers are simply incapable of cool, even the frat rats like Junior, although the bonafide dorks always believe they are. (Karl Rove, mesmerized by the 23 year old Junior’s insouciant chewing and bubble blowing, says his first impression was “He was …. cool.”) They can’t help it. I don’t know why. Look what’s happened to Dennis Miller.
And now those opposed to Ben have googled prior writings that on the surface appear suspicious, but only because permissions obtained and judgments made offline were not reflected online by an out dated and out of business** campus newspaper. But that’s all the opponents want – just enough to sabotage a career, though in the process they will sabotage themselves. Facts have no meaning. Only impressions have any bearing on this. The charges of plagarism [sic] are false, meant to bring down a good and honest man. The presented facts to prove plagarism are specious — products of shoddy work.
Don’t you love the Austin Powers “This is not my Swedish Penis Enlarger” defense? Because the paper is out of business and nobody can produce any possible agreements, therefore the charges are specious, shoddy work. Y’can’t prove they didn’t have those agreements, can you? Riiiiiiiight.*
Well at least our Red State comrade got this right:
Facts have never been debate winners among the haters. This is another example.
Indeed, and that is why it is so deplorable that a hater like Domenech has a job at the Washington Post. Domenech called Coretta Scott King a “communist” surely knowing the communist canard was code among racists to vilify the Kings.
Of course, it goes without saying the Red Stater will claim those remarks of poor Ben were decent, intelligent, and fact-based. Which just goes to show how deeply far right wing hate will corrupt one’s soul.
*Oh, if only this amount of proof was something the right demanded from God’s Avatar Here On Earth, the man they call “Commander-In-Chief” whenever they can, to emphasize we owe HIm unthinking obedience.
[Update: Corrected and expanded after original post.]
**{Update: Thanks to our intrepid gang of commenters, I’ve learned this is a lie. The paper is not out of business. Go here for an editorial on Domenech mess. The extent to which the rightwing will lie never ceases to amaze me. The moral of the story is this:
If a rightwinger says, “Gee, the sun is shining, gonna be a beautiful day!” grab your galoshes and umbrella.
A nude Britney Spears on a bearskin rug while giving birth to her firstborn marks a ‘first’ for Pro-Life. Pop-star Britney Spears is the “ideal” model for Pro-Life and the subject of a dedication at Capla Kesting Fine Art in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg gallery district, in what is proclaimed the first Pro-Life monument to birth, in April.
Dedication of the life-sized statue celebrates the recent birth of Spears’ baby boy, Sean, and applauds her decision of placing family before career. “A superstar at Britney’s young age having a child is rare in today’s celebrity culture. This dedication honors Britney for the rarity of her choice and bravery of her decision,” said gallery co-director, Lincoln Capla. The dedication includes materials provided by Manhattan Right To Life Committee.
“Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston,” believed Pro-Life’s first monument to the ‘act of giving birth,’ is purportedly an idealized depiction of Britney in delivery. Natural aspects of Spears’ pregnancy, like lactiferous breasts and protruding naval, compliment a posterior view that depicts widened hips for birthing and reveals the crowning of baby Sean’s head.
The monument also acknowledges the pop-diva’s pin-up past by showing Spears seductively posed on all fours atop a bearskin rug with back arched, pelvis thrust upward, as she clutches the bear’s ears with ‘water-retentive’ hands.
“Britney provides inspiration for those struggling with the ‘right choice’,” said artist Daniel Edwards, recipient of a 2005 Bartlebooth award from London’s The Art Newspaper. “She was number one with Google last year, with good reason — people are inspired by the beauty of a pregnant woman,” said Edwards.
I have never been much for blog triumphalism. Aside from being self-aggrandizing, it didn’t seem to me to be particularly true that blogs would replace the mainstream media. But I am actually beginning to think that what we know as the mainstream press might end up going the way of the Dodo bird after all. It’s not because we are so great or even that we are capable of doing what they do. It’s because they have been manipulated for so long that I’m not sure they can function properly anymore.
Regarding complaints about the hiring of Ben Domenech, Howard Kurtz writes:
John Amato at Crooks and Liars says: “The Washington Post continues to become more and more a mouthpiece for the GOP by hiring a rightwing blogger.”
I don’t get it. One conservative blogger? It’s not like The Post doesn’t have a left-leaning blogger, or liberal columnists. Is the New York Times a GOP mouthpiece because it employs David Brooks and John Tierney? If people don’t like what Domenech has to say, don’t click on him. It’s not like you can say “cancel my subscription!” since the Web site is free.
Of course poeple don’t have to read him. But we do have to consider the obvious fact that Kurtz and the Washington Post believe that this blatantly partisan Republican blogger “balances” an allegedly “left leaning” White House critic. That they still don’t understand the difference between the conventions of overt partisan media and mainstream online criticism like Dan Froomkin’s column is painfully clear. That this particular blogger has been exposed virtually overnight as a racist and plagiarist proves that they had no idea how the right wing media works. Still.
But then, Kurtz didn’t understand the difference between rightwing talk radio and mainstream media either, even more than a decade after it was clear to listeners all over the country:
“Sure, he aggressively pokes fun at Democrats and lionizes Republicans, but mainly about policy. He’s so mainstream that those right-wingers Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert had him on their Election Night coverage.”
Neither he, nor those vapid anchors on NBC, apparently knew that Rush Limbaugh commonly fantasizes about “policies” like kicking half the Democratic party out of the country:
LIMBAUGH: We just had Stephen Breyer saying, oh, yeah, totally appropriate, we must import what they’re doing around the world in other democracies, it will help buttress their attempt to establish the rule of law, and we might learn something, too. Well, here’s something I’d like to import. I’d like to import the ability that the Brits are doing to export and deport a bunch of hate-rhetoric filled mullahs and imams that are stoking anti-American sentiment. Wouldn’t it be great if anybody who speaks out against this country, to kick them out of the country? Anybody that threatens this country, kick ’em out. We’d get rid of Michael Moore, we’d get rid of half the Democratic Party if we would just import that law. That would be fabulous. The Supreme Court ought to look into this. Absolutely brilliant idea out there.
Apparently, the mainstream press is so enveloped in the warm, cozy womb of the DC establishment that they either don’t know what is going on around them or they’ve been willingly co-opted. I saw that same kind of wide-eyed, naive wonder on the face of Bob Woodward recently, when he realized that junkyard dog Patrick Fitzgerald wasn’t actually a slavering liberal determined to expose all of his Republican sources going back to Deep Throat. It’s in the defensive posture of Jim Brady as he recoiled in horror at unwashed liberal masses daring to criticize his ombudsman’s glaring error. It’s demonstrated by the fatuous guilelessness of the NY Times creating a “conservative beat” in the year 2005, as if they just discovered Rock and Roll or bell-bottoms.
They are like sheltered children. They do not know when they are being played. Indeed, they don’t even seem to know the game exists.
Perhaps it would be useful, then, to try to figure out how this happened, and strange as it may seem, it can be traced to a specific moment in 1968 when, after the police beat up protestors and newsmen alike at the Democratic convention in Chicago, Joseph Kraft, the Richard Cohen of his time, wrote:
“Are we merely neutral observers, seekers after truth in the public interest? Or do we, as the supporters of Mayor Daley and his Chicago police have charged, have a prejudice of our own?
“The answer, I think is that Mayor Daley and his supporters have a point. Most of us in what is called the communications field are not rooted in the great mass of ordinary Americans–in Middle America. And the results show up not merely in occasional episodes such as the Chicago violence but more importantly in the systematic bias toward young people, minority groups, and the of presidential candidates who appeal to them.
“To get a feel of this bias it is first necessary to understand the antagonism that divides the middle class of this country. On the one hand there are highly educated upper-income whites sure of and brimming with ideas for doing things differently. On the other hand, there is Middle America, the large majority of low-income whites, traditional in their values and on the defensive against innovation.
“The most important organs of and television are, beyond much doubt, dominated by the outlook of the upper-income whites.
“In these circumstances, it seems to me that those of us in the media need to make a special effort to understand Middle America. Equally it seems wise to exercise a certain caution, a prudent restraint, in pressing a claim for a plenary indulgence to be in all places at all times the agent of the sovereign public.”
The “Middle America” that expressed such horror at the events in Chicago in 1968 did go on to elect Richard Nixon twice. (The Republicans have always had a direct line to the nation’s id.) But the forces that were pulling at the country then resulted forty years later in both a more conservative politics, a more liberal culture and an electorate as divided as ever. The elite media have never been able to wrap their arms around any of that. And they have never admitted that the insecurity that descended upon the establishment at that moment has been relentlessly exploited for maximum effect by the Republican party.
When the poobahs of the GOP read Kraft’s column they smelled blood and they haven’t let up since. Today, prudent restraint has become cowed submission to every republican complaint and an overweaning desire to please them with narratives of Democratic fecklessness. The Washington Post hears that Dan Froomkin, White House critic, is disliked by Republicans. Writers themselves feel uncomfortable with (and jealous of) the free-wheeling, critical tone of his online White House column, an irreverent style that is common in modern online journalism (see: sister site Slate.) They solve the “problem” by hiring the rabidly partisan 24 year old son of a Bush administration official.
This goes beyond bending over backwards. It’s gymnastic contortionism. They are as bewildered by the grassroots fervor of this modern polarized culture — and cannot see the forces creating them — today any more than they could see them in 1968.
This very day all the networks were indulging in another tiresome round of self-flagellation over this mind-numbingly predictable Republican campaign, (documented in this thorough report by Peter Daou) to convince the public that the liberal media is to blame for the country’s bad opinion of the war in Iraq. Howard Kurtz once again dutifully steps up to the plate and takes the first pitch right in the middle of the forehead:
BLITZER: …Howie, is it true, based on your observation of the news media, as the president, the vice president continue to maintain that the negative — all of our mainstream media reporting has tended to be on the negative?
HOWARD KURTZ, CNN’S RELIABLE SOURCES: Well, certainly not all of it, Wolf, and I don’t agree with that woman in West Virginia who said that journalists are doing this because they don’t agree with the Bush policy.
But I’ve look very carefully in recent weeks from the time of those mosque bombings through the third year anniversary stories of the U.S.-led invasion, and the tone of a whole lot of this coverage has been negative, has been downbeat, has been pessimistic, in part that’s because a lot of the news out of Iraq has not been good. But I think we may be reaching kind of a tipping point here that we saw in Vietnam where the press coverage seems to tilt against this war effort.
BLITZER: So you’ve seen a change in recent weeks? Is that what you’re saying?
KURTZ: Absolutely compared to say a year ago or two years ago. I think it’s not unconnected to the public opinion polls. I think journalists are finding it easier to ask aggressive questions of President Bush, to frame the stories more negatively in terms of the American presence there because they know a majority of the country now questions or disagrees with that war effort.
I do think, however, that a lot of journalists make an effort to talk to ordinary Iraqis and to report on signs of progress. But, let’s face it, in our business, the car bombing, the suicide attack, the attack on a police station, those tend to be top of the newscast, top of the front page kinds of stories. The other reconstruction efforts are less dramatic and tend to get pushed back.
BLITZER: It’s the same basically covering any story. Here in Washington, D.C., if there’s a major incident, let’s say a shooting incident, whatever. We don’t report, you know what, 99.99 percent of the kids went to school today, businesses were open, things were flourishing. But if there’s a horrible shooting incident, we’re going to report that in local media as well.
KURTZ: There certainly is a bad news bias in that sense. We cover plane crashes. We don’t cover safe plane landings.
But the additional complicating factor here, Wolf, as I know you know, is that it’s very dangerous for journalists in Baghdad. We’ve seen that with some of the deaths and injuries of journalists there. Most recently ABC’s Bob Woodruff. And so journalists are frustrated that they can’t tell more of the story of ordinary Iraqis and what they think about the U.S. presence there because they have to curtail their travels or travel with security details.
So when you add that to the natural tendency to play up violence, the dramatic pictures that television, of course, loves, I do think we are seeing more negative coverage now. And, obviously, it’s in the political self-interest of George Bush and Dick Cheney to highlight that because they are trying to make the case that things are not as bad as they seem in Iraq and the media are a handy target.
BLITZER: Very briefly, is there any sign of a backlash against the mainstream media because of our coverage of what’s happening in Iraq?
KURTZ: Yes, among conservatives, among military family members and others. A lot of people, as we saw that woman from West Virginia, blaming us for the situation there.
You can smell panic coming off the media in waves today. In 2006, there is nothing that screams “Middle America” (or perhaps the more accurate “Real America”) than the phrase “military families.” (Watch this video at Crooks and Liars of the modern Mencken, Jack Cafferty, having none of it and exposing Kurtz’s analysis for the sophistry it is by pointing out the obvious: the news is getting worse because the war is getting worse.)
Those journalists who haven’t taken the easy way out and simply adopted the GOP worldview (and there are many of them) are so paranoid that they can’t trust their own eyes and ears. They are perpetually vulnerable to the manipulations of a cynical Republican establishment that has been pounding the trope for forty years that if a journalist tells a story that is critical of conservatives, he or she is a liberal who is out of touch with the people.
The country is in the middle of several “wars” in both the literal and metaphorical sense. If it was ever called for, the time to “exercise a certain caution, a prudent restraint, in pressing a claim for a plenary indulgence to be in all places at all times the agent of the sovereign public” is long past. The public isn’t crying out for “balance,” particularly when those who claim to provide it have no earthly idea even how to define it. They are looking for truth. Plain, simple truth.
If the mainstream media hope to even be relevant, much less pressing a claim of plenary indulgence to be agents of the sovereign republic, they must wise up quickly and stop being agents of the right wing propaganda mills. If they don’t, they will finally lose the patience of their readers who will turn to the many alternative means of finding information.
I have very mixed feelings about how our country will fare with such a system. I think a thriving democracy needs a vital mainstream press. But since the mainstream press keeps getting punked over and over again by the right wing machine, you have to wonder if it really makes any difference anymore.
American’s increasing acceptance of religious diversity doesn’t extend to those who don’t believe in a god, according to a national survey by researchers in the University of Minnesota’s department of sociology.
From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.
Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public. “Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years,” says Penny Edgell, associate sociology professor and the study’s lead researcher.
Edgell also argues that today’s atheists play the role that Catholics, Jews and communists have played in the past-they offer a symbolic moral boundary to membership in American society. “It seems most Americans believe that diversity is fine, as long as every one shares a common ‘core’ of values that make them trustworthy-and in America, that ‘core’ has historically been religious,” says Edgell. Many of the study’s respondents associated atheism with an array of moral indiscretions ranging from criminal behavior to rampant materialism and cultural elitism.
Excuse me while I run down to Walmart and shoplift a copy of “Huck Finn.” (That is, if they have it. Twain was one of those degenerate unAmerican “A” words you know.)
