October 13, 2008
Here's LA Times political blogger (and former Laura Bush press secretary!) Andrew Malcolm arguing that the press isn't paying enough attention to nastiness among opponents of John McCain and Sarah Palin:
As a growing number of political bloggers,
including Wake Up America, have asked in recent hours, how long do you
think before the mainstream media starts reporting on scenes like a
Philadelphia event on Saturday where people wore T-shirts that bore an
explicitly crude reference to Sarah Palin? With 22 campaign days left,
might perhaps the Democratic ticket also feel the need to warn its
supporters to tone it down?
If these T-shirts showed up at a McCain event on people proudly
posing like this to proclaim that Obama was the N-word, do you think we
might have heard about it by now?
And here's the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes making much the same point:
This morning at a McCain rally here, a bearded young man in the
crowd responded to a McCain critique of Barack Obama by shouting:
"You're a liar John!" He then hoisted a young woman with an antiwar
poster onto his shoulders and began yelling antiwar gibberish as McCain
tried to continue his speech. When McCain supporters ripped up the
woman's sign, she unfolded another one and the spectacle continued.
Earlier, at a rally in Philadelphia, Obama praised John McCain's
service to America and called for a civil debate over the final days of
the campaign. He was lustily booed by his angry supporters.
And yesterday, at a McCain rally in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, another
angry heckler shouted "Liar" and other insults at McCain from the
crowd.
Can we expect stories on this disturbing trend? Don't bet on it.
You're be hearing this argument a whole lot more if McCain loses in November. So let's stop and consider a few points:
1. There's simply no Democratic parallel for the way the McCain camp, via Sarah Palin, has been actively stoking anger at Obama. You already know what Palin had to say about Obama "palling around with terrorists" (note the plural) and why that argument doesn't hold up. But you may have missed Palin's latest bifurcation of America into good guys and bad guys:
Help me, Ohio, to help put John McCain in the White House. He understands. He understands you. We understand how important
it is that this team be elected. For one thing, we know who the bad
guys are, OK?
We know that in the war, it’s terrorists, terrorists who hate
America and her allies and would seek to destroy us, and the bad guys
are those who would support and sympathize with the terrorists. They do not like America because of what we stand for. Liberty.
Freedom. Equal rights. Those who sympathize and support those
terrorists who would seek to destroy all that it is that we value,
those are the bad guys, OK?
Does "palling around with terrorists" mean that Obama "support[s] and sympathize[s]" with them? Of course it does. QED, he's one of the "bad guys."
2. Despite his recent call for a more elevated tone in the campaign's closing weeks, McCain himself has taken a pass on condemning the nastier remarks of his supporters when given a chance. Here he is, for example, ignoring a supporter who shouts that the "real Barack Obama" (McCain's words) is a "terrorist" (the supporter's).
Maybe McCain didn't here shout in question. But here he is again, during a TV interview yesterday, refusing to condemn Virginia GOP chairman Jeff Frederick's equation of Barack Obama and Osama Bin Laden. Again, where's the Democratic parallel?
3. As I've previously noted, the notion that campaign ugliness is a particular problem for McCain-Palin isn't just a liberal or media talking point. It's also been advanced by former McCain chief strategist John Weaver, who recently told Politico:
People need to understand, for moral reasons and the protection of our
civil society, the differences with Sen. Obama are ideological, based
on clear differences on policy and a lack of experience compared to
Sen. McCain....As a party we should not
and must not stand by as the small amount of haters in our society
question whether he is as American as the rest of us. Shame on them and
shame on us if we allow this to take hold.
One more thing: those T-shirts Malcolm mentioned? Apparently, their designer is a libertarian.
October 13, 2008
In today's New York Times, NBC News president Steve Capus says, basically, that Columbia Journalism Review's Megan Garber got it wrong on perils of having Andrea Mitchell--wife of former Fed chair Alan Greenspan--cover the financial crisis:
Steve Capus...called [CJR's] article “overly
simplistic.” The news division has allowed Ms. Mitchell to continue
covering the presidential election, even when the candidates have
debated the financial crisis, and has decided on a day-by-day basis what stories are not appropriate for her to cover.
“To me it’s a pretty easy balancing act,” Mr. Capus said in an interview Sunday. “She knows where to draw the line.”
However, what comes next suggests that NBC is changing its policy on what Mitchell can and can't cover:
That line, NBC has decided, exists when past economic decisions are
being re-examined. The fiscal policies championed by Mr. Greenspan, who
retired in January 2006, have come under scrutiny in recent weeks.
“In
any stories that look in the rearview mirror of how we got to this
point, Greenspan’s name will come up,” Mr. Capus said, and Ms. Mitchell
would not be the appropriate correspondent for the assignment.
Of course--and as I noted in a recent column--that that's precisely the sort of story that Garber singled out as problematic in her CJR piece.
In short: don't buy NBC's spin. Capus may not want to admit it, but the policy he describes sounds like a de facto admission that Garber was correct.
October 13, 2008
Currently on the front page of Drudge, with the headline "Obama goes door-to-door to drum up votes..."
No further comment--except that it'll be interesting to see whether and how this image gets used in the coming weeks:
October 13, 2008
In my recent column on media conflicts-of-interest and their disclosure, I credited the Boston Globe for finally realizing that the connection between its corporate parent, the NY Times Co., and the Boston Red Sox should always be noted.
But judging from today's Sox advertorial--which opens with the dubious claim, "When the Red Sox are up, it doesn't matter that the Dow is down"--I spoke too soon. So here, via a recent story that provided the necessarily disclaimer, is a brief reminder for the Globe's readers:
The Globe's corporate parent, The New York Times Co., owns 17 percent of the Red Sox.
Not so difficult, that. Just sixteen words!
October 13, 2008
It seems that John McCain's brand-new stump speech actually leans heavily on an old McCain argument--namely, that the opposition includes both Barack Obama AND that pesky Fourth Estate:
Let me give you the state of the race today. We have 22 days to go.
We're 6 points down. The national media has written us off. Senator Obama is measuring the drapes, and planning with Speaker
Pelosi and Senator Reid to raise taxes, increase spending, take away
your right to vote by secret ballot in labor elections, and concede
defeat in Iraq. But they forgot to let you decide. My friends, we've
got them just where we want them.
And why not? After all, it's worked so well up to now...
UPDATE: Politico's Mike Allen is unimpressed:
Allies are calling this “hitting the ‘reset’ button” on the campaign,
with McCain re-emerging after a long Sunday strategy session with a
feisty tack that uses candor and humor, at a time when his rallies have
become known for raucous rage and clumsy attacks.
But it’s more like hitting the panic button. McCain is appearing Monday
in Virginia and North Carolina — two states that are usually safe for
Republicans in presidential races and that he should have put away long
ago. But Barack Obama is pouring visits and staff into the former
Confederacy, and he has caught McCain in many Southern polls...
October 12, 2008
At first I thought today's Frank Rich column would stand as the definitive take on the McCain-Palin campaign's descent into incendiary xenophobia. But it's already outdated!. From CNN's The Ticker:
A minister delivering the invocation at John McCain’s rally in Davenport, Iowa Saturday told the crowd non-Christian religions around the world were praying for Barack Obama to win the U.S. presidential election.
“There are millions of people around this world praying to their god—whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah—that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons. And Lord, I pray that you will guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their God is bigger than you, if that happens,” said Arnold Conrad, the former pastor of Grace Evangelical Free Church in Davenport.
The remark was made before McCain arrived at the rally but the Republican nominee's campaign quickly put out a statement distancing itself from the remarks.
“While we understand the important role that faith plays in informing the votes of Iowans, questions about the religious background of the candidates only serve to distract from the real questions in this race about Barack Obama's judgment, policies and readiness to lead as commander in chief,” said McCain campaign spokesperson Wendy Riemann.
Wow. That's quite a denunciation.
October 10, 2008
So, John McCain has heeded his former chief strategist's advice and called out supporters who were engaging in over-the-top anti-Obama vitriol:
McCain was booed at a town-hall meeting here [in Lakeville, MN] when he rebuked a man who said he was "scared…to bring a child up" under an Obama presidency. "I have to tell you he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States," McCain said to audible disapproval.
The man was one of nine who appealed to McCain to confront Obama more forcefully, several of them raising specific controversies dominating news, including Obama’s relationships with Bill Ayers and the group ACORN. McCain seized the microphone from the hands of a woman who called Obama "an Arab," and scolded her.
"He's a decent family man that I happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues," McCain said, to scant approval.
Good for McCain. Problem is, the message he delivered in MN is fundamentally incompatible with the Obama-pals-around-with-terrorists line of attack that Sarah Palin has been making on the stump--and that the McCain makes in a new TV ad. So unless McCain's campaign changes its overall approach, it'll be hard to see his comments today as anything other than a symbolic show aimed at deflecting criticism.
October 10, 2008
This Politico piece by Jonathan Martin, who's been covering the Republicans during the presidential campaign, is an absolute must-read. First off, his description of the anger he's been seeing on the trail is chilling:
With McCain passing up the opportunity to level any tough personal
shots in his first two debates and the very real prospect of an Obama
presidency setting in, the sort of hard-core partisan activists who
turn out for campaign events are venting in unusually personal terms.
"Terrorist!” one man screamed Monday at a New Mexico rally after McCain
voiced the campaign’s new rhetorical staple aimed at raising doubts
about the Illinois senator: “Who is the real Barack Obama?”
"He's a damn liar!” yelled a woman Wednesday in Pennsylvania. "Get him. He's bad for our country."
Martin also gets a remarkable quote from former McCain consigliere John Weaver:
John Weaver, McCain’s former top strategist, said top Republicans have a responsibility to temper this behavior.
“People need to understand, for moral reasons and the protection of our
civil society, the differences with Sen. Obama are ideological, based
on clear differences on policy and a lack of experience compared to
Sen. McCain,” Weaver said. “And from a purely practical political
vantage point, please find me a swing voter, an undecided independent,
or a torn female voter that finds an angry mob mentality attractive.”
“Sen. Obama is a classic liberal with an outdated economic agenda. We
should take that agenda on in a robust manner. As a party we should not
and must not stand by as the small amount of haters in our society
question whether he is as American as the rest of us. Shame on them and
shame on us if we allow this to take hold.”
Slate's John Dickerson weighs in on the subject as well, and makes an interesting point about the relationship between McCain and the angry Republican id:
There was a time when John McCain would give it right back to the
hecklers at a John McCain town-hall meeting. It was part of his charm:
He would confront these hecklers and argue with them about his supposed
Republican apostasies on judicial appointments or immigration.
No
longer. Now hecklers help stir the room. The candidate and his audience
are in agreement about the grave national danger posed by Barack Obama
and the media.
We're in for an ugly few weeks.
October 09, 2008
Here's the truth-challenged WTKK host working to simultaneously A) whip up extreme anti-Obama sentiment and B) insert enough disclaimers that he won't get in trouble if anyone acts accordingly:
You have a job and I do too. My job, with your help, is to start today, or recommit today, with 29 days left in this campaign, to politically destroy Barack Obama. Our job is to undermine him in every possible legal way, to undermine his upcoming administration in advance, to destroy his ability to reach any governing majority, undermine and destroy his political ability to govern or to have any hope of a successful administration.
We must do this because a Successful Barack Obama administration equals socialism, our government being soft on terrorism, the UN running the defense of our country, our doom as a nation....
What’s your job, what can you do? Join me! Start the 2012 campaign right now. If we can’t impeach Obama then let’s throw him out at the earliest possible moment and that means start stopping Obama now. An attack campaign against Obama is worthy of the timeless principals of all American patriots. Obama is King George and we are the minutemen, and women. The United States of America will be saved only by us, and only by us opposing Obama and everything he represents. That is our duty. [emph. added]
Talk Evolution, eh?
(Via Universal Hub)
October 09, 2008
In which, among other things, I examine why people flipped out over Gwen Ifill last week, but keep quiet about Bob Schieffer in '04. (BTW, Schieffer's also moderating the third presidential debate nPublishext week.)
October 08, 2008
As Election Day gets closer and John McCain struggles to close the gap with Barack Obama, expect McCain and his surrogates to lean even more heavily on the William Ayers argument--wherein Obama's association with Ayers renders him unfit for the presidency.
Here's why this line of reasoning is nonsensical. Obama and Ayers met while working together on the Annenberg Challenge , an initiative funded by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, which was funded by the Annenberg Foundation, which was created by Walter H. Annenberg.
If Obama deserves condemnation for working with Ayers in Chicago, then certainly Annenberg--the Philadelphia communications magnate, former ambassador to Great Britain, Republican stalwart, and recipient (via Ronald Reagan) of the Presidential Medal of Freedom--should have been criticized for using Ayers to advance his educational vision. But I can't find a single example of a conservative making such a complaint.
Here, FYI, is what Colin Powell said when Annenberg* died in 2002:
In Walter Annenberg, I have lost a dear friend and our country has lost one of its greatest civic leaders. In all that he did, the good of our nation always came first to Walter. Whether it was serving brilliantly as our envoy to Great Britain, leading innumerable charitable and public causes, promoting education, or pioneering high quality programming on television, Walter worked passionately to advance the most fundamental values and interests of the American people. He did it with charm. He did it with skill. He did it with kindness. He did it with endless generosity and devotion.
It is no exaggeration to say that Walter's contributions have touched the life of every American for the better in one way or another. We at the Department of State are no exception. For decades, Walter and his wonderful partner in life Lee have led the effort to ensure that our diplomatic reception rooms here and in our embassies all around the world display to the world the very best of American fine and decorative arts. These extraordinary collections are national treasures and stand as an enduring testament to his deep love of our country.
Alma and I will miss Walter's great warmth and wisdom, and our hearts and prayers go out to Lee and the entire Annenberg family.
Note that there's no mention of Annenberg palling around with terrorists. Of course, maybe if Sarah Palin had weighed in....
*NOTE: Not Ayers, obviously, as I originally wrote.
October 08, 2008
I'm loathe to give even bad publicity to Sean Hannity's bogus anti-Obama infomercial. But this South Florida Sun-Sentinel post on Andy Martin, who played a starring role in the program, deserves to be quoted in full:
On an hourlong documentary over the weekend, Fox News aired an innuendo-driven program narrated by Sean Hannity called "Obama & Friends: The History of Radicalism."
Their star witness was Andy Martin, whose incendiary, unsubstantiated claims about Obama's past were allowed to go unchallenged.
What Fox didn't tell viewers: Martin has long been a fringe gadfly in the Florida political scene, an anti-semite repudiated by his own party.
In 1996, while running for a Palm Beach County state Senate seat, Martin was arrested after attacking a WPTV-Ch. 5 camerman during an attempted interview at the station's headquarters, while the cameras were rolling. In jail, he went on a hunger strike, claiming to be a "political prisoner." And after the election ended, he was given a one-year sentence and ordered to attend anger management classes.
That same election year, the Republican Party of Florida denounced Martin (who was running as a Republican) becuase of his platform in a prior political bid to "exterminate Jew power in America."
"There is no room in our party for someone who holds these type of views," said Tom Slade, then the GOP chairman for Florida, at the time. "Anthony Martin will receive neither support, nor encouragement, from our party." [emph. added]
That's just the start. Martin has run for offices ranging from Florida state Senate to governor to offices in Obama's home state of Illinois. (Gov. Charlie Crist trounced Martin in the Republican primary for the 1998 U.S. Senate race. Crist went on to lose the general.)
But on Fox Sunday, Martin was presented as a credible character on the question of Obama's personal and political associations in a program that got some 2 million viewers, according to this morning's New York Times.
Want to learn more about Martin's anti-Obama quest? Here's some additional reading.
UPDATE: Salon's Glenn Greenwald has quite a bit more on Martin here, and what he's got is damning. A sampling:
In 1986, he [Martin, then using a slightly different name] ran for Congress in Illinois under this campaign committee:
"The Anthony R. Martin-Trigona Congressional Campaign to Exterminate
Jew Power in America," and he wrote sympathetically of the Holocaust.
As The Washington Times described this year:
In
a New York bankruptcy case, he referred to a judge as a "crooked, slimy
Jew." During the bankruptcy dispute, he filed a civil-rights lawsuit
claiming Jewish bankruptcy judges and lawyers were conspiring to steal
his property. He asked a court to bar "any Jew from having anything to
do with plaintiff's property."
In another motion in the case, he wrote: "I am able to understand
how the Holocaust took place, and with every passing day feel less and
less sorry that it did, when Jew survivors are operating as a wolf pack
to steal my property."
As Greenwald notes, during Hannity's program, Martin got the following understated ID: "Andy Martin, Author & Journalist."
Incredible.
October 08, 2008
Today on Morning Edition, NPR's Renee Montagne reported from a debate-viewing party for undecided voters last night in New Mexico, a battleground state where Barack Obama currently has a slight edge. It strikes me as odd that anyone's still undecided, but get that some people might still be weighing the pros and cons of each candidate: maybe you like Obama's call for change but see McCain as more experienced.
The close to Montagne's story left me utterly baffled, however. Here it is:
[O]ne guest at last night's debate party may well have predicted how long the uncertainty will last. Jim Rivera [sp?] said he was leaving the party having made a decision. And that decision is, he needs more information.
"I will be looking and reading and following closely for the rest of the campaign here, probably until the day of voting," [Rivera said].
Uh...can someone please explain this mindset? We've been through contested Democratic and Republican primaries. We've seen both parties' nominating conventions. We've had two presidential debates and one vice-presidential debate. Obama and McCain's claims and counter-claims have been fact-checked again and again. And there's round-the-clock campaign coverage on the center, the left, and the right.
No offense to Jim, but how in God's name can anyone seriously say they still need more info?
October 07, 2008
Just got my hands on one now, and here's my reaction: never mind Joe Fitzgerald's moanings--the new, outsourced, Chicopee-printed Herald looks about 100 percent better than its predecessor.
If you have today's and yesterday's Heralds handy, put the two side by side. Tuesday's Herald has vivid color and crisp images throughout. Even Ron Borges' headshot looks good! Monday's Herald, meanwhile, looks fuzzy and washed out, and has a Page Three that's truly miserable (sorry, Jacob Phillips).
Yeah, the new Herald is quite a bit smaller. That's reasonable, since the paper doesn't have enough reporters and columnists to do justice to the older, bigger format.
In short: well done.
UPDATE: And yet... As the Herald's failure to get last night's Red Sox playoff victory into its first edition indicates, there are still a few bugs in the system. Given how important sports coverage is to the Herald's viability, this had better be an opening-night anomaly rather than a portent of things to come.
So what say you, Herald editor Kevin Convey? "In the early going," Convey said a few minutes ago, "we're being extremely conservative about our press times and deadlines to
make sure we get the paper out on the street. As time goes by, I expect that our ability to put complete information in more papers will increase to a considerable degree."
Convey also explained how the new, smaller format's going to affect the editorial product. "Two things are going to happen," he said. "The first thing is that we're making stories shorter. The page counts and story counts are the same as they were in the earlier paper; there are 3 or 4 stories per page, and there aren't any fewer pages. But the pages themselves are smaller, and the stories are going to get a few inches shorter in most cases."
"As needed," he continued, "we're going to squeeze some of the AP stuff out of the paper. That'll be our release point. We've already canned a few comics and trimmed up the TV grid."
October 07, 2008
In a speech delivered last month at Ithaca College and newly published at Alternet, the Talking Points Memo founder makes a compelling case that independent/alternative media can get at the truth more effectively than big organizations like CNN, which want to please everybody all the time. Note, as you read, that the implications of his argument are actually nonpartisan:
There are a number of reasons why
it's important that there be an alternative media, not a media culled
by a handful of major corporations. The one I want to focus on is the
way that the mainstream media consistently and, as part of the ethos,
prioritizes balance over accuracy in reporting the news -- particularly
political and campaign news. The way that John McCain has had a series
of specious commercials and campaign events in which either he or his
running-mate say things that aren't spin or stretching the truth, but
by any conventional English-language definition: lies, things that are
false and are said knowing that they are false. Until the last few
days, the headline would be: Lots of lying in campaigns, everybody's
sad about it.
There's a lot of reasons why that is a flawed
conception of journalism. It's not a personal fault of the journalists
in question -- that's the model they're trained to operate in. As the
concept of journalistic objectivity has evolved, it's become a corrupt
model of journalism, rooted in the economic changes of business in
journalism over the last half-century. Earlier in the last century, you
had a medium-sized city like Pittsburgh or Louisville or Phoenix, the
model of those newspapers was not that they would serve an entire
community.
But then there is CNN's model: Everybody should be
watching CNN, everybody. If that is your model, if you are the single
newspaper in San Francisco or Kansas City or St. Louis, you are just
highly constrained about how rigorous you can be in the accuracy of
your reporting. Because the whole model is: You are appealing to
everybody. With the conglomeration of media -- not just the major
corporations nationally, but even at the regional and city level -- you
have single news organizations that have something close to a monopoly.
It creates a great deal of pressure to embrace that flawed model of
journalism.
One of the things that is most important about
independent media is that you have news organizations not part of the
model where they ideally want to be everybody's dominant news source.
If that's not the case, you don't have that need to satisfy everybody
-- and that underlying need to prioritize balance over accuracy.
That's
why the existence of an independent media sector is so important. Also,
the more voices you have, the more takes on the news, you're just going
to have a more vibrant and diverse news ecosystem - as opposed to
having two or three gatekeepers that control the news.
(Via Romenesko.)