![]() RYANS RERUN (PART 1)! Lizza profiled life on the bus. Amazingly little has changed: // link // print // previous // next //
TUESDAY, APRIL 1, 2008 WORST DISSEMBLERS IN THE WORLD: Wow! When it comes to open demagogueryor, less probably, to world-class cluelessnessthe Posts Gene Robinson takes the cake at the start of this mornings column. Shorter Robinson: Hey, you big dumb rubes! This is pure deception:
Thats stunning. At this point, though, its hardly surprising to see Robinson do that. Well admit that we are a bit surprised to see the Post put this in print.
Whats wrong with Robinsons presentation? He starts by claiming that John McCain said the war in Iraq will last a century. Of course, that plainly isnt what McCain saidand Robinson seems to know that people
Wow! So said Robinson, in his accustomed role as dissembler and deceiverand scourge of political culture. What is wrong with Robinsons sentence? Duh! No one has to claim that McCain was talking about a long-term peacetime deployment like the U.S. military presence in South Korea. No one has to make such a claim, because thats what McCain explicitly said. (He was answering a question at a town hall meeting.) Here is the actual statement Robinson reinvents. As he does so, he offers this sub-text: Hey, you big dumb rubes!
Do people claim that McCain was talking about a long-term peacetime deployment like the U.S. military presence in South Korea? Sorryno one has to claim such a thing; quite plainly, that is what McCain was talking about. But readers of todays Washington Post wont be granted the basic dignity of knowing that elementary fact. In the manner of fixers through the annals of time, Robinson denies those readers the basic facts. In their place, he hands them instant name-callingand reinvented non-facts. At this point, this sort of thing is hardly surprising, coming from Robinson. But lets make sure were all quite clear on what he does in this passage. It may well be Robinsons opinion that what McCain envisions will never occur. Robinson is hardly a foreign policy expertand even experts lack crystal balls. But if Robinson thinks McCain is dreaming when he pictures an outcome like this, he is of course free to say soand to explain his view. But Robinson does something quite different here; he simply deceives his readers about what McCain really said. Of course, its hardly surprising to see this from Robinson, if youve been watching his work. In the past six months, you see, Robinson has become the smiling face of MSNBCperhaps the most relentlessly propagandized prime-time news network in cables short history. He goes on the air and smiles and smilesand hands you his networks propaganda. You might call it the banality of banality. Robinson comes on the air and smiles as he and his colleagues deceive you. This morning, Robinson takes this framework from Jack Welchs network and carries it into the Post. It would be hard to deceive a reader more baldly than Robinson does in that opening passage. But this has become SOP at MSNBCand we think the networks gruesome MO points the way to a troubling future. For the past six months, corporate-hired multimillionaires have relentlessly played you in this manner. Tomorrow, well look at Olbermanns latest high dudgeonand well consider the troubling future this cable nets conduct may portend. By the way, one final point: Nine years ago, Robinsons egregious bad judgment was being aimed at a White House hopeful named Gore. Along with the rest of his clan at the Post, Robinson worked very hard to slander Gore in 1999. You see, Robinson is the type of smiling fellow who very much likes to run with the herdand Gore, of course, is the type of fellow who now holds the Nobel Peace Prize. That said, how did Robinsons fixing work out for you then? That question should be in every pseudo-liberal mind as this smiling corporate dissembler tries to fix things for us again. Robinson fixed things so well during Campaign 2000 that his nation ended up in Iraq. But you know the rules of the corporate press corps! Those who were right get voted off the island. Those who were egregiously wrong get to smile, and deceive you, again.
TOMORROW: Should Keith be troubled by Fox?
By our count, it took Lizza exactly five words to start repeating McCains slogans for him. For ourselves, if we were reporting on this campaign, wed avoid repeating the name of that busunless we noted that the name is part of McCains decade-long branding. Yes, Virginia: You can report about life on that bus without instantly stating its name. McCains bus has a name for one reason. Lizza rushed to show the world how well McCains strategy works. Of course, asking mainstream scribes to observe such distinctions is like asking gorillas to use a bidet (to borrow the old Bill Maher illustration). Some things pretty much never change; death and taxes would be two examples, and reports about John McCains bus is the third. In the past month, Lizza scored a fair amount of cable time due to his busmans profileeven though he quickly described a scene as old as the hills:
The picture seems to be straight outta Plato. The acolytes sit at the great mans feet; he lets them listen as he tells jokes and praises himself for his Vietnam service. In fairness, there does seem to be one difference this year. Eight years ago, all reporters seemed to know that they had to say how much McCain hates discussing Vietnameven as they reported the latest circumstance in which McCain forced the subject into some conversation. (Example below.) This year, it seems the boys on the bus have been given permission to skip the part about McCains reticence. When they quote the hopeful citing Nam, they no longer seem required to say how much he hates doing it. In Lizzas rerun, its simpler this year. First, you get the name of the bus. Then, you get Vietnam. As we mentioned, Lizza scored some cable time from his portrait of life on the bus. This is somewhat strange, because, in large part, he typed a rerun; in many ways, his portrait seems like a copy of what was written eight years ago. In the following part of his profile, for example, we revisit several highly questionable aspects of the profiles that appeared during Campaign 2000:
Much of that is familiar from eight years ago, though Lizza has sanded a few rough edges from the Campaign 2000 profiles. Lizza hit the following points as he painted a familiar old picture:
In a slightly more rational world, these revelations would be cause for concern. But this is the world of the modern mainstream press corps, and so Lizzas most troubling statementthe statement that McCain won over reportershas produced little mention within the mainstream press, or anywhere else for that matter. On the New York Times op-ed page, the superlative Neal Gabler used parts of Lizzas piece as a framework for discussing the press corps love affair with McCain. (Opening sentence: It is certainly no secret that Senator John McCain is a darling of the press corps.) For the record, well guess that this is a secret for most voters, and even Gabler wrote an oddly high-fallutin piece about this inexcusable situation. Instead of anger about this love affair, we got airy speculation about the reasons for it. And when Lizza appeared on Hardball to discuss Gablers piece, Chris Matthews rushed to affirm the press corps inappropriate conduct. But then, what else is new? See THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/27/08.
So it goes in our modern political discourse, where journalists dont even bother pretending that they play these things straightwhere critics dont even seem to care about such profiles by Lizza. But then, why should someone like Matthews pretend to care about what Lizza wrote? After all, the Washington Generals of the career liberal world have accepted this conduct for the past dozen years. Over this period, there was little outrage from your liberal journals about the way McCain was treatedeven as Major Dems like the Clintons and Gore were getting eviscerated. Simply put, your liberal journals are part of the system which has produced such fawning coverage of McCain; their editors go on Hardball too, and they dont seem eager to rock the boats that give them such commercial/career advantage. Indeed, as we saw in Harold Meyersons recent Post column: Its virtually impossible to get these people to tell the truth about this system, let alone get angry about it. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/26/08. And so little has changed on this candidates bus; Lizzas profile was largely a rerun. In the past eight years, all good career liberals have learned to pretend that they are upset by Republican governanceby the war in Iraq, for example. But reading Lizza, we got to see how little has actually changed during this period. His profile sounded very much like the profiles which appeared during Campaign 2000. So, of course, did the cosmic yawning with which his profile was greeted. TOMORROWPART 2: Rerun! Mainstream reporters still run out of questions, just as they did in the past. SKIN CRAWLS: During Campaign 2000, Vietnam was clearly the principal forum used to assess McCains character. Rather comically, the profiles of McCain made two things fairly clear. First, the hopeful was constantly telling reporters that he hated to talk about Nam. I mean, Jesus, it can make your skin crawl, he was quoted sayingin 1998, in 1999 and again in 2000. But something else is clear from the profiles; despite his routine protestations, McCain seemed to bring up Vietnam in every conceivable circumstance. For example: Early in his Rolling Stone profile (Title: Happy Warrior), William Greider mentioned the way McCain always deflates the hero talk. But the profile ended like this:
The happy warrior, who just hated the hero talk, had selflessly raised the subject againand reporters had pulled out their notebooks. But this sort of exchange was common; indeed, the profiles routinely describe McCain being the first one to mention Vietnam. Theres nothing wrong with that, of course. But it was comical to see these conversations juxtaposed with credulous claims about the way the straight-talking hopeful just hated discussing the subject. How did they know that he hated such talk? Because he had told them so!
We chuckled a bit at Lizzas account of McCains very public phone call with Huntsman, in which he brings up Vietnam. Yes, this was an obvious rerun from the scene on the bus during Campaign 2000. We did note one improvement, however. Lizza didnt feel he had to say how much the happy warrior hates making such remarks. |