Elizabeth Edwards To Chris Matthews And Rest Of Media: Ahem -- John And I Are Still Here
(January 5, 2008 -- 2:45 PM EDT // link // )
One of the things I'd been wondering was whether John Edwards' slim victory over Hillary for second-place in Iowa would shift the media dynamic of the race and get people to cover it as more of a three-way contest. In general terms, it's already obvious that the answer is No.
On this score, I'd really be remiss if I didn't share with you these wonderful quotes from Elizabeth Edwards on Hardball, where she chastised Chris Matthews and the rest of the political media for slighting her man.
First, Elizabeth was asked whether John would be able to survive if Barack Obama won both Iowa and New Hampshire. She observed that John had come in second in Iowa in 2004, that he had gotten short-shrifted in coverage then, and that this was happening again:
ELIZABETH EDWARDS: ...we had the "Dean scream" in `04, which sort of made second place, which John had -- not mean as much because you all covered that, as opposed to the second-place finish.At another point, Matthews and Elizabeth had this exchange:Now, of course, you`re covering Hillary`s third-place finish instead of John`s second-place finish. So we`re still fighting against you guys.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I don`t know how John Edwards wins this thing as long as those two are fighting for the nomination. They seem to get in the way. Doesn`t one of them have to get knocked out?Great, great stuff. Elizabeth's short-lived career as a media nudge has been one of the more entertaining -- and salutary -- sideshows of Campaign 2008.ELIZABETH EDWARDS: If knocking -- if John`s finishing second isn`t enough to get him in the conversation with you guys, yes, we have to knock one of those two off in order to get him into the conversation.
Now, I recognize that news orgs have a dilemma on their hands in deciding whom to cover and how to apportion resources. And I also realize that the candidacies of Hillary and Obama are both historic in ways that Edwards' effort isn't. But in a general sense there's no question that the media's treatment of the Edwards campaign has really been an ugly failure on many levels.
Though Edwards had all along been very competitive with Hillary and Obama in Iowa -- a state in which victory is supposed to be hugely important, according to the pundits themselves -- Edwards's campaign was never treated with anywhere near the same scope or seriousness that the others were. The coverage has often been tinged with a snide dismissiveness. This hasn't palpably changed with Edwards' second-place finish in Iowa.
Aside from the historical dimensions of the Hillary and Obama candidacies, there have basically been three reasons that explain the treatment Edwards has gotten: The media loves a two-person race; Edwards' populism was automatically assumed to be a phony and ineffective gimmick because of his personal wealth; and finally, his lack of campaign resources in comparison to Hillary and Obama allegedly meant he could never be seriously competitive.
It hardly needs to be stated that none of these reasons should have determined the extent and tone of Edwards coverage to the degree that they did. Nonetheless, since getting lots of coverage and being treated as Serious by insiders is essential to raising big bucks -- which in turn is essential to getting Serious coverage, which in turn is essential to fundraising, and so on -- these reasons, as frivolous and insubstantial as they are, may end up having played an outsize role in determining the outcome of Campaign 2008.
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Memo To Big News Orgs: It's Not News Every Time Bloomberg Tells Us How Wonderful He Is
Look, this is getting ridiculous. Mike Bloomberg -- who is attending a summit this coming weekend with retired politicians on how to save our nation from the horrors of partisanship -- has told us again and again in recent days how low his opinion is of the current Presidential candidates.
(January 4, 2008 -- 4:24 PM EDT // link // )
Bloomberg -- who has repeatedly denied that he's running for president -- is obviously saying this type of thing at least partly because he wants people to keep talking about him as a potential Presidential candidate. This is not a hard thing to figure out.
And so, at a certain point it should stop being news every time Bloomberg does this. Right?
But the big news orgs keep lavishing coverage on Bloomberg each time he says this stuff. Bloomberg panned all the presidential candidates on Wednesday, saying that they are all offering meaningless bromides to the nation's solutions. Bloomberg wasn't really specific about who or what policy proposals he was criticizing, but this earned him big articles from many news orgs anyway.
Today, Bloomberg again criticized the solutions being offered by the major presidential candidates. He again wasn't particularly specific. But yet again this earned him more coverage from The Times, and Bloomberg's upcoming summit to bipartisanship will get yet more media attention.
Look, at a certain point, we should start asking ourselves whether this stunt deserves any more attention. Many of the major candidates are offering detailed solutions to the country's problems. When Bloomberg falsely says none of them are, he's just playing a different rendition of the same tired old tune that has it that only a "nonpartisan" leader can solve our problems. The idea is that there's no way any of the ideas harbored by these candidates can be any good, since they all belong to the major political parties, which we already know are the cause of all our problems because David Broder and Mike Bloomberg told us so.
Really, until Bloomberg declares that he's running for president, and until his criticism has genuine specificity, what he has to say about the presidential hopefuls just isn't news anymore. Stop covering it already.
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NBC's Andrea Mitchell: Hillary Speech Felt Like A "Funeral"
(January 4, 2008 -- 9:26 AM EDT // link // )
Check out how NBC's Andrea Mitchell characterized Hillary's speech last night after losing the Iowa caucuses:
"This room was, until about five or six minutes ago, completely empty. This is a manufactured 'celebration.' It really felt more like a funeral as people started strolling in from upstairs where they had obviously been gathered. This is unlike anything that I've ever seen, a completely empty, dirge-like event."Oh, come on. Some people lost a political race and were upset about it. You would hope that commentators would at least try to conceal their eagerness to write Hillary's obituary. Whoever you're backing in this race, can't we just agree that that we should let this process play out and be decided by, you know, the voters? This is just absurd, yet this sort of stuff is already everywhere.
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Obama Still Answering Questions About His Religion From Voters Who Don't Know He's Christian
(January 3, 2008 -- 6:13 PM EDT // link // )
Mark Halperin has posted a press pool report that recounts a scene in Iowa today where Barack Obama faced still more questions about his religion from voters who have no idea that he's a Christian:
He reached over the counter and shook hands with workers at the Subway sandwich shop.Just to hit this point again, this sort of stuff reminds us just how much is at stake -- and how much may be at stake again soon -- when we do things like demand that The Washington Post state firmly and unequivocally that rumors of Obama's Muslim past are false.Zanata Moore-El asked Obama if he was an atheist.
“I’m a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ,” Obama replied. “Don’t read e-mails.”
E-mails have circulated in recent weeks saying Obama is a Muslim or an atheist or took his oath of office on a Quran instead of a bible, none of which his true.
“I hated having to ask him that,” Moore-El said. “But I heard he was like an atheist. I don’t want a president who’s an atheist. I’m a firm believer in God. I just really wanted to make sure because I really wanted to vote for him and he has some good topics and everything.”
This could only get more pressing, not less. A recent poll found that more than 80% of Americans don't know that Obama is a Christian. If Obama becomes the Dem nominee you can bet that the rumors of his shadowy Muslim past will ratchet up a thousand fold. And if you don't think that this sort of thing can make a difference in a general election, you're kidding yourself.
But if one big news org's report aggressively call the rumors out as false, another report will follow suit, and another, and another, and so on. And just maybe we might end up with an electorate that's at least a tad informed on the question.
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A Note On NY Times Edit Page Editor Andy Rosenthal's Claim That Bill Kristol's Critics Are "Intolerant"
(January 3, 2008 -- 10:58 AM EDT // link // )
Via Romenesko, I urge you to read Charles Kaiser's dissection in Radar magazine of the Times's decision to hire Bill Kristol.
As many of you know already, the Kristol hiring was greeted by an explosion of criticism in the liberal blogosphere and elsewhere, prompting Times edit page editor Andy Rosenthal to describe Kristol in startlingly positive terms and to label critics of the deal "intolerant." Needless to say, this pissed people off even more. Kaiser adds some key context:
What makes this all the more mysterious—and depressing—is the fact that Rosenthal continues to produce one of the most intelligent and fiercely antiwar editorial pages in America.This is really critical to understanding why the Kristol hiring is such a friggin' disaster and why people are so riled up by it. As I've noted here before, the Times edit page doesn't get the credit it deserves for being a key voice of sanity at crucial moments when much of the liberal opinion-making establishment has collectively lost its mind. The Times editorialized against the war right on the eve of invasion, was an early critic of Bush and has taken a sledgehammer to the current Dem Congressional leadership's craven capitulations to Bush and the GOP.
Now, on to Rosenthal and his claim that Kristol's critics are "intolerant."
One of the key premises of the liberal blogospheric critique of establishment political journalism, as I understand it, is that there's such a thing as legitimate media criticism -- that getting the big news orgs to do better journalism and to upgrade the quality of our discourse will ultimately better serve progressive ends. Many journalists and pundits have of course falsely dismissed such criticism as mere partisan gaming of the refs -- as an effort to bully the big news orgs into pumping out lefty propaganda. The refusal of many media figures to acknowledge the real aims of the liberal media critique is a key point of tension between the traditional media and the lib bloggers and other critics.
The hiring of Kristol and Rosenthal's prickish dismissal of criticism for it dumped gas on that fire, exacerbating that tension in a big way, which explains why folks were so ticked off about it. Few media figures have done more to pollute and debase our discourse than Kristol has, and if there were ever a legit topic for criticism, this indefensible granting of a prized journalistic platform to Kristol is it. That someone who presides over arguably one of the most progressive institutional voices in the land would describe Kristol's journalism positively and dismiss criticism of the deal in somnolent David Broder-esque terms reminds us yet again just how hidebound, clueless, and even prone to intellectual corruption some attitudes remain, even among our liberal journalistic elites.
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Reporters Agree: Hillary Is A Cold Fish
(January 2, 2008 -- 3:28 PM EDT // link // )
You already knew this, but reporters really, really don't like Hillary, as this account of an encounter between Hillary and the press today confirms yet again:
Hillary stepped onto the parked press bus in Indianola for about 90 seconds to deliver bagels and coffee, and I'm not sure what this says about Clinton and the press — the chill, I think, comes from both sides — but it was a strange moment. She expressed her sympathies that we're away from our families and "significant others," tried a joke at the expense of her press secretary, and paused. Nobody even shouted a question, whether because of the surprise, the assumption that she wouldn't actually answer, or the sheer desire to end the encounter.This is a strange and telling encounter. Hillary brings reporters bagels, says some conciliatory stuff. They sit in silence. Hillary leaves. Reporters mock Hillary, with one suggesting that the bus is colder than the outside air because of Hillary's presence.One reporter compared the awkwardness to running unexpectedly into an ex-girlfriend.
"Maybe we should go outside and warm up," said another, as Clinton exited into the freezing air.
The takeaway, obviously, is that reporters think Hillary is a cold fish -- that even if she did bring them bagels, she just doesn't like them very much.
Now, obviously, one doesn't want to read too much into a single incident like this. But it gives me a chance to hit on one of this blog's themes again -- the strange inability of some in the press to connect Hillary's disdain for the press with its 15-year treatment of her.
The other day, after putting up a post on this topic, I was chastised by someone who I have great respect for. This fellow accused me of a lack of nuance and pointed out that Hillary often does wear a frigid mask towards the press and that the Clinton campaign happily uses the press to its advantage when it can.
Yes, of course these things are true. The point here is not merely that Hillary is nothing but a martyred victim. The point, rather, is that it's deeply weird that reporters and commentators so frequently seem unaware that there's a connection between Hillary's hostility towards the press and their own treatment of her for 15 years.
After all, maybe one of the reasons Hillary is cold towards the press at times is that they say things like this:
HOWARD KURTZ: Hillary Clinton, let's say she doesn't win Iowa. Let's say she gets edged out by 1,000 votes. Is the press going to savage her as a loser?Just a thought.DANA MILBANK: The press will savage her no matter what, pretty much.
Anyway, this episode seemed like a telling one indeed.
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New Year's Plans At The Horse's Mouth
(January 2, 2008 -- 11:55 AM EDT // link // )
First off, a happy new year to all of you hearty regulars who have stuck with this site, and to everyone else, too.
A couple quick notes on what's happening here in 2008. First off, this blog is going to be making much greater efforts to actually engage the media figures who pop up here regularly. The idea will be to see if we can get them to respond to reader criticism more directly and/or to discuss the issues that are frequently raised here and elsewhere.
Which brings us to Richard Cohen's amazing column in The Washington Post yesterday. Its first sentence was this:
John Edwards lied about the cost of his haircuts.Now, this blog followed the media's coverage of the haircut pretty closely. And I don't remember Edwards ever being caught lying about the cost of the haircuts. And indeed, both Steve Benen and Atrios quickly called out Cohen's crack as false.
This is pretty straightforward. If Cohen has evidence that Edwards lied, he should say so. And so I sent Cohen this email today:
I don't recall this happening, though I may well have missed it. I was wondering, could you point me towards any evidence that this happened? And if it turns out that this is false, will you consider running a correction?My guess is Cohen won't answer this, since doing so would likely require that he admit to a falsehood. But if he does answer, I'll let you know.
Anyway, in addition to trying to engage your media figures more, this blog has other plans: It's undergoing a redesign, and will be relaunched with a working comments section as soon as we're able, hopefully by the end of this month. Stay with us.
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Dan Froomkin's Hard-Edged Polemics Are More Popular Than David Broder's Mushy Centrism
(December 31, 2007 -- 1:05 PM EDT // link // )
Over the weekend The Washington Post published a list of its top ten most popular opinion pieces of 2007, ranked by page views. It was gratifying to note that three of these were written by Dan Froomkin, while exactly none was written by David Broder (or David Ignatius, for that matter).
Mushy, platitudinous sermons about centrism just don't get people clicking the way hard-edged, and yes, partisan polemics do, it seems. In a sane world this might inspire WaPo's editors to listen to their paper's readership, rather than their own ideological leanings, and consider giving Froomkin a platform rivaling Broder's in the dead-tree edition of the paper one of these days. Not that he needs it.
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Memo To Bloomberg And Company: The Way To Reduce "Partisan Gridlock" Is To Further Weaken The GOP.
(December 31, 2007 -- 10:17 AM EDT // link // )
Updated below.
By now, you've probably heard that Michael Bloomberg and a bunch of retired politicians are going to hold a summit at the University of Oklahoma this week to talk about how desperately the nation needs a nonpartisan and independent leader like, you know, him to come in and lead the nation out of partisan gridlock.
This story, fittingly, was first leaked to The Washington Post's David Broder, a St. Paul-like figure who has long preached the virtues of the Beltway Gospel of Bipartisanship high and low across the land. Predictably, this planned gathering is already garnering the sort of awed and respectful coverage that greeted the formation of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group nearly two years ago.
So here's the question: When these bearded elders descend on Oklahoma later this week, will anyone ask them what policies they stand for, beyond "breaking partisan gridlock"? Will anyone ask them where they stand on the issues? Will anyone ask why we're supposed to believe that their actual stances have any chance of creating "bipartisan unity" at all?
These questions are kind of relevant. Partisan gridlock happens because people -- and by extension, political parties -- disagree about stuff. One party wants to do one thing on a particular issue. Another party says No. The first party offers a few concessions. The second party still says No. That's where "partisan gridlock" comes from -- underlying disagreement on issues -- and in our current case, the fault for our "partisan gridlock" isn't equally distributed between the two parties. Rather, it's almost exclusively the fault of the Republicans.
You aren't allowed to say this, but it's true. If you don't believe me, ask the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. They proposed a bunch of solutions to Iraq. The Democrats largely embraced these solutions. The Republicans, by contrast, didn't. As a result, the ISG's proposals didn't happen -- even though they had been authored by a distinguished bipartisan panel. The Republicans have been the near-exclusive cause of gridlock on multiple other issues, too -- issues upon which there is already majority agreement on how to proceed. In reality, the best way to end partisan gridlock is to further weaken the Republican Party, which is tying government in knots and preventing it from carrying out the will of the majority on a host of fronts.
Holding out the promise of bipartisan unity without saying why it is that your stances on issues will do anything at all to create that unity -- as Bloomberg and friends are doing here -- is just a sucker's game designed to get these folks the sort of fawning attention that they're already getting. One hopes that the press will start asking these worthies some tough questions about where they stand on stuff and why we should be listening to them.
Update: Glenn Greenwald has the definitive take-down.
Update II: Speaking of David Broder, The Washington Post has released some new info that suggests that Dan Froomkin's aggressive anti-Bush polemics are far more popular with readers than is Broder's mushy centrism.
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