The Love Bus
Once on a charter fishing boat off Miami, I noticed a discreet sign on the topdeck:
Marriages performed by the Captain are valid only for the duration of the voyage.
I assume the same protocol holds true for a campaign bus such as the “Straight Talk Express.” All the journalists who have fallen in love with John McCain — to the point of being blinded to his endearing faults, contradictions, blunders, and closet Bushism — will eventually go back to their wives, and husbands, but mostly wives.
In their post-traumatic sycophancy syndrome, they may begin to remember what their job was supposed to entail when covering a candidate. They can detoxify from excess consumption of free booze and spare ribs, get treatment for their busted moral compasses, and, one by one, recover feeling in the five w’s of a classic news lead – none of which stands for “Who cares about the actual facts?”
But their lovesick symptoms may get worse before they get better.
McCain just bought a Boeing 737 with a plush interview area, and his aides say that reporters will have to “earn their way in” to that privileged precinct – fair warning to any who have so far failed to be comprehensively unprofessional.
A similar band of groupies once traveled with George W, looked deeply into his eyes, and knew in their hearts that anyone who was fun to have a beer with, blithering idiot or not, would make a perfectly gorgeous president.
The Fourth Estate is currently running about eighth and is about to be lapped by the blogosphere.
In the current issue of The Nation, Eric Alterman and George Zornick chronicle just how blind love can be when it’s the love of a gaggle of mainstream media reporters in thrall to a charming shape-shifter running this way and that for the presidency.
On the question of flip-flops alone, here is their closing summary:
The anti-torture candidate supports torture.
The pro-immigration candidate opposes immigration.
The candidate who opposes tax cuts for the rich (now) supports them.
The pro-campaign finance reform candidate has a campaign that is run almost exclusively by lobbyists, and exploits loopholes in the law to skirt spending limits – even the laws the candidate wrote.
The candidate who opposes ‘agents of intolerance’ in the Republican party embraces them.
The candidate with the foreign policy experience frequently confuses Sunnis and Shiites and misreads Iranian influence in the region, but is proposing permanent war.
The candidate who claims to be a fiscal conservative wants to bust the budget.
The candidate who claims to take global warming seriously does not want to take any serious action to address it.
They can’t find a single issue on which McCain has stood his ground against his party’s extremists – including all of the above, plus judicial appointments, Roe v. Wade, and same-sex marriage.
But you would hardly know that from reading the fawning reports of the mainstream political journalists, on or off the bus. Alterman and Zornick quote “spontaneous testimonials” for McCain, untempered by facts, from Jake Tapper (Salon); Jacob Weisberg (Slate); Fareed Zakaria and Michael Hirsch (Newsweek); Terry Moran (ABC); Chris Matthews and Mika Brzezinski (MSNBC); David Nyhan (Boston Globe); Richard Cohen, Dana Milbank, and David Broder (Washington Post).
Candidates have always been a bit slippery (though McCain takes the cake). Journalists are supposed to keep them honest. Now that the major media reporters have gone over to the dark side, it’s up to a few unblinkered publications like The Nation and to bloggers like DailyKos , TPM, and Andrew Sullivan to pick up the torch.
Still, one can always hope. For any of the big media managers who repent of their sins, here is the path to redemption:
Reassign your McCain reporter to Obama (ignore the tears and tantrums) and your Obama reporter to McCain.
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To augment The Nation’s expert flip-flop analysis, I’ll offer the following, cribbed from The Editors over at The Poor Man Institute:
Having one’s plane shot down does not make one a statesman. Sitting in Vietnamese prison does not teach one how to create and execute policy. How could it? If you doubt me, consider: John McCain’s foreign policy is identical to the failed foreign policy we have followed for the past eight years, a policy crafted by a guy who steadfastly avoided service in Vietnam (or, for that matter, Texas.) One can’t be a great statesman and policy guru AND crib everything from the worst, most unpopular president in American history. You can’t be a great foreign policy mind AND an idiot. You would have to be an idiot to think otherwise. You would have to be a respected pundit.
Further, being a prisoner of war does not necessarily give one political courage. John McCain has changed his position on every issue you can think of, all in the name of political expediency. McCain’s fellow Arizona Republicans know he has “no core, [and] his only principle is winning the presidency.” Even official Bush Court Jester ROFLMAO Cohen knows McCain has no convictions, sees it with his “keen eye”, and yet finds it less telling than Barak Obama’s decision to change campaign tactics, because John McCain soul was purified in a POW camp. But this makes no sense. You can’t be steady and fearless and true AND shamelessly change your position on every substantive issue there is. Something can’t be both true AND contradicted by every piece of verifiable evidence. You would have to be an idiot to think otherwise. You would have to be a respected pundit.
Comment by Mark — July 2, 2008 @ 4:26 pm
Amen.
But McCain keeps getting away with it — because, as The Poor Man says, the kewpie dolls now serving as respected pundits are acting like idiots.
Comment by Al — July 2, 2008 @ 9:28 pm
I have been watching this phenomenon for months. How can a guy be so blindly supported by the mainstream media and blogosphere and half of the party? Yes, welcome to the nightmare.
Comment by mike — July 3, 2008 @ 12:09 pm
The “journalists” — who used to serve as our watchdogs (at least some of them) — have been co-opted into the entertainment business. Their main objective is to maintain favored access with the people in power or the candidates they’re covering. It used to be that Washington reporters would keep their mouths shut about sexual transgressions of administration or congressional figures but would hold them to acccount on matters of public policy. Now they feast on sex scandals — because those boost ratings and circulations — but they’re willing to wink at cute little bits of dishonesty that result in killing 4,000+ Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, or that cost two million Americans their homes or undermine the U.S. constitution. They don’t want to point that out and then get shut out of interviews or other forms of access by the criminals in power. The MSN will never fix this of their own accord because now they’re part of a profit-driven corporate culture, not a news culture. If there’s any hope of repairing this perverted system, it lies in the growing strength of the blogs and other independent sources of facts and opinions on the Internet.
Comment by Al — July 3, 2008 @ 5:07 pm
My point above is that I think Barack has benefited by a new media “with agenda” much more than he has suffered. Unfortunately, now, there are just as many BAD journalists on the left as there are on the right. It was a lot easier to name Fox News as the chief culprit back in the late 90’s as they pursued a Clinton impeachment. I’m not sure if the future is with blogs however, they seem to be mostly editorial instead of reports so they are opinions with no requirement for fact and no threat of job loss. Check out “the Daily Howler” for a site that bird dogs the all the print and TV “”journalists”
Comment by mike — July 4, 2008 @ 11:13 am