Tuesday, 12 August 2008
Exercises in Political Inanity
Congress is on a long vacation, so elected officials and appointees aren’t available now for the Sunday political talk shows out of Washington which leaves TV folks talking to themselves. This an exchange that took place last Sunday on ABC-TV’s This Week hosted by George Stephanopoulos. The speakers are Cokie Roberts, an ABC political analyst, and Victoria Clarke:
ROBERTS: …As we've talked about before, in this year that should be such a Democratic year given all the other indices, he is tied in the polls and stage-sided in the polls and going off this week to a vacation in Hawaii -
VICTORIA CLARKE: (former Pentagon spokeswoman): Right.
ROBERTS: - does not make any sense whatsoever. I know his grandmother lives in Hawaii and I know Hawaii is a state, but it has the look of him going off to some sort of foreign, exotic place. He should be in Myrtle Beach, and, you know, if he's going to take a vacation at this time.
CLARKE: Well, and -
ROBERTS: And I just think that, you know, this is not the time to do that.
This may be one of the slimiest or, maybe, dumbest attacks on a candidate I’ve ever heard. Here is video of the entire conversation (with some extraneous material) and no one on the panel challenges Ms. Roberts. [1:43 minutes]
Senator Barack Obama spent some of his childhood years in Hawaii, his grandmother still lives there and why shouldn’t the senator take a few days off with his family, especially in these doldrums of the dog days of summer leading up to the Democratic Party Convention in a couple of weeks?
What good are political pundits? All they ever talk about is strategy as if they were experts at running campaigns, which they are not. Why aren’t they giving us background, history and potential options and solutions on the crucial issues facing our country? It is not like there is any dearth of them to talk about. But I have not seen a single documentary - even a short one – in mainstream TV media with any useful information about the economy, global warming, fuel and food prices, water shortages, Iraq and Afghanistan, healthcare, immigration and everything else.
Print media is no better. Where are the in-depth investigations of these same issues laying out how we got in these messes, comparing the candidates’ proposals and vetting them against facts?
You won’t find them in The New York Times or the Washington Post or local newspapers or Time or Newsweek and U.S. News - although the last at least makes a stab at it now and then.
I began subscribing to the three news weeklies in high school, so that’s about half a century of reading them. It’s not that I need the news; I read daily papers for that. But they served to catch me up on anything of importance I missed and because they are so deeply middle-brow, they kept me informed on the tenor of the times.
That hasn’t been so for a long time. These days the first 25 or 30 pages of the news weeklies – often more than a third of the magazine – is taken up with out-of-context quotes, silly lists of basest of pop culture, two- or three-sentence “overviews” of complicated events, subjective scorecards of what’s in or out and who’s winning and losing at – well, it’s hard to know.
God help us, the back page commentary in Time this week is, inanely, about what kind of dog the next president should have in the White House. The choice, according to columnist Nancy Gibbs, is “critical.”
Years ago when it was my job to know which celebrities were marrying, divorcing, in rehab or sleeping around, I often joked that I had got my reading of People magazine down to four minutes flat. I can do that with the news weeklies now and I’ve decided to drop them next time renewals come due. There is nothing there I can’t get online and anyway, in the 24-hour news cycle we live with, they have become an anachronism. Time is writing about Paris Hilton’s McCain rebuttal video this week - so two weeks ago.
There is much more good information online. Google Alerts bring me daily lists of links on any topic I set up. Sure, some of it is trash, but a lot isn’t. You quickly get to know which links to click.
There are hundreds of newspapers and magazines and aggregators online with better information and commentary than the weeklies. There are scholarly publications, too, from the left, right, center and even the edges of sanity with more depth than anything mainstream media has offered in years.
And among the ignorant political blogs are others from hard-working bloggers who, with none of the resources and contacts of big media, scour the web on their topics of interest – subjects crucial to all our futures - and bring together the best reading there is on them with links to the original material. On television, South Park has more interesting points of view on social issues and some political ones than many of the trivial TV pundits although I appreciate Bill Moyers' long and well-prepared interviews, but those are available online too.
If sliming Senator Obama for taking a short break in one of the 50 states (I suspect Hawaii would have something to say about being branded less American than Myrtle Beach) is what Cokie Roberts and her cohorts think is politics, it’s time to stop hanging on to outdated media and switch to the web full time. There is real information here.
[At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Linda Hillin reminds us how evocative scents can be in A Smell From the Past.]
Posted by Ronni Bennett at 05:54 AM | Permalink | Email this post
Comments
I'm with you all the way, Ronni. I only read magazines in doctor's waiting rooms, and I can't remember the last time I watched network news. I do look in on the BBC nightly news to get the perspective of the outside world in an English language format. The rest is all online for me. I read your blog every morning, first thing.
Posted by: Gary White on Aug 12, 2008 6:41:21 AM
These big media outlets are owned by the same people that are intensely lobbying in Washington...they want to make sure we are "pre-occupied" with trash so we don't get a whiff of what is really going on...It was bound to work for a number of years while the past accumulation of "authority" helped float their ridiculous stories...but that is changing now...they are the last source I go to now...good post.
Posted by: stacie on Aug 12, 2008 7:58:02 AM
I was in a doctor's office yesterday, waiting for my husband, and there was a big pile of Time Magazines. I flipped through and could not find one new story I wanted to read that had substance. I read somewhere that a former People editor was hired at Time a couple years ago. We get our news from NPR. I guess what you are complaining about is the trickle down of the "dumbing down" of America. How can we change that? Any suggestions?
Posted by: Alexandra on Aug 12, 2008 8:01:36 AM
Amen !!!
Posted by: Darlene on Aug 12, 2008 8:28:05 AM
May I recommend the Economist? It's pricey, but I feel as if I'm getting an unbiased, or less than biased take on the US scene. And it's the news magazine that Time decided (last year) that they were in competition with.
As my mother once told me...Life magazine is for people who can't read and Time magazine is for people who can't think.
Posted by: Steven on Aug 12, 2008 9:25:08 AM
I've done something in the last two weeks that surprised me. I've actually subscribed to Salon. I didn't have to -- I could read it online for free and did for years, especially Glenn Greenwald.
But some of these outlets have to find a way to bring in income to support their reporting. So I figured I'd chip in some of what I no longer spend on magazines and newspapers.
Posted by: janinsanfran on Aug 12, 2008 9:25:23 AM
Ronni,
Watching television news is like reading a newspaper that has only headlines and story titles.There is no article to read;just the headline.
They shout out things like "McCain in Chicago" " Obama to rethink Offshore Oil Drilling" " McCain accuses Obama of flip flopping"
You now have the headline so you wait through 4 commercials for the story. There IS no story. They never seem to get back to the explanation of the headline and what is behind it.TV news is non existent.. Don't wait for it. It never comes. All we ever get on TV is opinion, not facts...
I now turn on my computer and see dozens of headlines on the news pages. Some interest me and some don't. I simply click on the story that I want to know more about and ignore the others. I am brought right up to the minute on what it is that I want to know.
I still enjoy the daily paper but not for any news content. I like the funnies and the puzzles.... For news I'll stick to my computer.
Posted by: Nancy on Aug 12, 2008 9:25:42 AM
Boy you said a mouthful with this. I have come to also dislike these pundits who seem absolutely stupid. For real facts, actual statistics, I go to Daily Kos. It got a lot of criticism from the right because some of the writers there are very passionate about their subject (so are those on the right) but Kos is a statistic man and he puts it out for anybody who cares or wants to know. So many vote on emotion.
The smartest thing Obama could have done is take a vacation with his family this week. He needs the break but these people need to think about his small children. They have given up a lot of time with daddy and these are precious years. Amen that he values them enough to take that time. Fall won't be fun. And the ignorance of suggesting Hawaii is not okay boggles the mind. Those two women ought to be replaced sooner than later.
Posted by: Rain on Aug 12, 2008 9:26:49 AM
I used to buy magazines like Time and Newsweek. Sometimes People. What a waste of my hard earned dough. Now that I'm semi-retired & love to save, I read the same mags in my library or go to Chapters, where I can sit in a comfy big easy chair and read for a couple hours, then put the books/mags back and buy a regular coffee, not the $5 one with a ton of sugar and cream. Check how much ice they put in the fancy coffees. About half the container. Man some of us are suckers for waste. Egos. Big ones.
Posted by: doctafill on Aug 12, 2008 9:30:47 AM
Agree. I was SO disappointed to see that. Do they think we're idiots?!? Do they not mind looking like idiots themselves?!? They ALL need to go back to journalism school. I'm so sick of 'em.
Posted by: Nikki on Aug 12, 2008 9:47:31 AM
The snippet from the Stephanopoulos show was interesting, not for the information (there wasn't any) but for an extremely short bit on the news about a strategy Hillary Clinton rejected which would have stressed Obama's birth and early life in Hawaii and time in Indonesia to paint him as exotic and un-American. Or perhaps not American enough. The piece noted McCain's new add which touts him at future AMERICAN President ALL AMERICAN's want. (my emphasis) It also said there are Republican film crews working in Indonesia. I guess the campaigning will get very nasty soon.
As for the rest--I haven't seen a Sunday talking-heads show for years. They make me want to throw a brick through the screen. The stories we do watch lack many significant details, analysis, and informed commentary. Some of the readers can barely read the words on the screen coherently. Most of my news comes from the web through Newsfire or through the blogs I normally visit or through the google searches I have set up. That is far more informative and much easier on the blood pressure.
Posted by: Mary Walker on Aug 12, 2008 11:21:11 AM
I saw this talked about over here too:
Posted by: steve Garfield on Aug 12, 2008 11:25:02 AM
I just re-read my comment and realized that I didn't say exactly what I meant. Ronni, your piece was very informative. The Stephanopoulos talking heads were not. They were interesting only because of the link in my memory to the news story I heard over the weekend. Sorry for my confusion. Sometimes my brain outruns my fingers.
Posted by: Mary Walker on Aug 12, 2008 11:26:55 AM
There is plenty of 'political ignorance' to go around.
Lots of people talk about things on which they have almost no accurate information, just a lot of 'hearsay'.
For example on this blog. I have read all kinds of incorrect information concerning nutrition, drugs and exercise. This is something that I have a great deal of actual knowledge of.
What bugs me about the 'blogosphere' is that you get the idea that when someone writes something, that they have some actual knowledge to back it up. Certainly Ronni has an immensely knowledgeable background concerning politics, news publication, celebrity (and its downfalls) and, of course, being in 'our' generation. So I pay attention to what she has to say within those contexts, and I may read her other entries, because she writes well and I find it interesting, but would not take that information to the bank.
Now as to Cokie Roberts' comments. I must respectfully disagree with Ronni's 'opinion' (I am not a political pundit. I am an upper middle class American Professional Engineer, who is also an 'old' lady). I think that Obama taking a vacation in Hawaii (grandmother or NOT) is a very strange political move. (Remember: ALL things done during a campaign are political moves.) Most people that I know (including myself) have never been there, and would never have the money it takes to squander on such a trip. Obama's wife rakes $316,000 just from her 'not for profit' hospital job. (I don't make that kind of money and I WORK for a living.) That's plenty of money to make a trip to Hawaii. But the guy is trying to appeal to 'us' - you know, the folks that go to the 'public beaches' for maybe a few days a year.
Does anyone who contributes to this 'blog' make anything like $300k? Well, except for the doctors and not-for-profit hospital employees ;-> I rather doubt it from the comments I've read.
Hawaii is seen as extravagant and exotic. That was Roberts' point. I don't care whether it is a state or not. I don't care that his grandmother is there. He could send her a ticket and they could all party on Myrtle Beach. It would not point out the obvious 'us' and 'them' status of the Obamas.
I have only contempt for those that pander to the middle class and then shove something like that in MY face. Am I alone in that feeling? Apparently on this blog I am but not on a lot of others that I have read - equally erudite and informed. Cokie Roberts was, in my humble opinion, right on the money.
So, Nikki, somebody thinks that "we're" idiots, but I don't think that it's Cokie Roberts.
Obama is a smart, slick (or if you are a supporter, you could say 'saavy' equates to the same thing) politician, and he knows enough math to know that 'half the people are below average'.
Posted by: anonymous on Aug 12, 2008 12:16:04 PM
anonymous:
For nearly five years on this blog, I have removed comments from anyone calling themselves "anonymous", especially those who leave bogus or no email addresses or blog links as you do. And I have banned their IP addresses to prevent future comments.
Your comments have been indulged because they pertain to the topics of the posts or comments, even though your tone is usually combative which is often the first signal of attacks to come. Personal attacks in forums, blogs and other online gathering places will always destroy the community if allowed to persist.
Today you comment:
"Lots of people talk about things on which they have almost no accurate information, just a lot of 'hearsay'.
"For example on this blog. I have read all kinds of incorrect information concerning nutrition, drugs and exercise. This is something that I have a great deal of actual knowledge of." (sic)
I have never knowingly dispensed information here that is false or incorrect. I carefully separate my opinion from published material I quote, I always link to those sources and I correct errors when they are pointed out to me or, on occasion, when I have discovered them myself.
I should have stuck with my first instinct about anonymous comments. And now I have.
Posted by: Ronni Bennett on Aug 12, 2008 1:53:13 PM
Cokie Roberts is a total tool. I used to respect her, now it's totally gone. Her behavior over the last few years is abysmal.
Posted by: donna on Aug 12, 2008 2:11:32 PM
Oh and Ronni, no need to put up with any commenter here who is abusive, anonymous or not. It's your space. Don't let anyone be rude and abusive to you.
Posted by: donna on Aug 12, 2008 2:14:56 PM
Wow--to quote anonymous:
"Hawaii is seen as extravagant and exotic. That was Roberts' point. I don't care whether it is a state or not. I don't care that his grandmother is there. He could send her a ticket and they could all party on Myrtle Beach. It would not point out the obvious 'us' and 'them' status of the Obamas"
Wow! Hawaii is exotic? I've been there on my meager non-college educated earnings coming from the East Coast. Tropical yes, exotic, meh. Who cares where he goes? What would be a political move would be for Obama to spend his family vacation in someplace like Pittsburgh (nothing against Pittsburgh, I actually love the city).
I used to really admire Cokie Roberts also. Now, not so much.
Posted by: possumlady on Aug 12, 2008 2:47:40 PM
This is why I and so many other thinking people are turning, like you, to the Web full time for news and information. The only thing I listen to on radio or watch on TV is PBS and BBC. I find CNN International on TV can be informative, too. It comes from CNN bureaus around the world and occasionally gives me a good glimpse of what other peoples think of us and our political highjinks! I hope that the corporate broadcast media drowns in its own s**t in retribution for what it is doing to the PUBLIC airways. Wish we could rescind all of their FCC licenses and start over again !!
Posted by: Miki Davis on Aug 12, 2008 3:02:05 PM
Choose the rich guy you want to vote for.
How silly to think that anyone but a rich person could become president.
Posted by: Hattie on Aug 12, 2008 3:58:01 PM
Ronni, I fully agree with you about the deterioration of the weekly news magazines. They've lost their franchise as a source of hard news and as a purveyor of meaningful commentary. Similarly, the quality of cable news is almost as sad. Maybe they've just got too much air time to fill and not enough profound punditry.
Posted by: Mort Reichek on Aug 12, 2008 4:15:12 PM
Kick "anonymous" out! If you feel strongly about your views then you should be willing to own them or keep your mouth shut. And what's this with vacations to exotic places? We're not talking Figi or even Cozomel, Hawaii is one of our 50 states and where Obama spent part of his youth why not take a break while you can and let the Olympics get most of the coverage. I'm sick to death of ABC and had already stopped watching it. And as for "anonymous", it may be time to get a real life -- one with a name.
Posted by: Sylvia Kirkwood on Aug 12, 2008 5:51:24 PM
We dropped our subscriptions to the news magazines a couple of years ago for the same reasons you give, Ronni. Our local newspaper has really cut back and is about in the league of the news magazines, and we're thinking of dropping it, too. We haven't watched network news in years. These days we get our news from NPR and the web.
My concern is not for those that read this blog and people like them, who are savvy news readers that get their news from a variety of sources, most of them "non-traditional." I would call them the elite, except that the word has come to be a pejorative.
My concern is for those who do listen to network news as if it were words from heaven. Those that do hang on every word of the tv pundits. Those that do believe that everything in print is true. And those who fall for the distortions of people like the Swift Boaters.
These people are the vast majority, unfortunately. They let other people think for them, and do not have an opinion they can call their own. And they form the majority of voters, too.
Maybe I'm the one being elitist, but I am deeply unsettled over this election, and it's all because of this majority of unthinking voters.
Posted by: Mike Nichols on Aug 12, 2008 6:04:16 PM
Cokie Roberts = Smarmy + Snide.
The sad thing is, back when she covered the White House for NPR in the early '80's, Roberts was a good reporter. Now she's just another inside-the-Beltway type who sees herself as a player.
Myrtle Beach? Who on the West Coast thinks of that as a place you pop off to for vacation? Hawaii is a lot closer!
Posted by: Citizen K. on Aug 12, 2008 8:25:03 PM
Plus, Roberts wants Obama to bag a visit to his grandmother so that he can vacation in a state that still flies the Confederate flag on the Capitol grounds.
Posted by: Citizen K. on Aug 12, 2008 8:31:54 PM
Obviously, Anonymous hasn't spent much time reading on this blog or checking out supportive links you provide for items you present as fact, Ronni. I experience your opinions, suggestions, those of others who comment, for resolving identified national issues, other subject matter, informative and thought provoking whether or not I agree.
One factor that attracted me to this blog has been the high quality of writing and credibility of information you present here. Even readers with their comments are held to similar high standards and accountability. Anyone, as I did, who doesn't carefully check the supporting sources of their facts for whatever the reasons can rightfully expect to be questioned.
I also highly value the tone of this blog, the usual civility with which most communicate. I appreciate the effort you make to be certain this blog retains that quality and encourage you to continue to do so.
We're all welcome to provide "political analysis" as to why or why not politicians do what they do. I don't earn 300k, but have made trips to Hawaii where I have family. I "extravagantly" go there because I value family and consider a trip ticket very worthwhile, especially since they are no longer able to travel to the mainland. I find it conceivable others may do the same. I think some might attribute such action as reflecting a person's family values.
I'm far more interested in having national issues discussed than these petty meaningless comments of Roberts and Clarke. If this is the best analysis they can come up with, I can only assume they were desperately trying to come up with something new or different that hadn't already been said. They must have been grasping at straws to fill the program time. If they were truly serious, then I think it's time to bring in some new people on that show.
TV news shows of all kinds including the one you mention have long since deteriorated. Increasingly print publications have, too, as I seriously consider dropping subscriptions to mags and papers which I find myself reading less and less, simply because of poor content. I'm sick to death of all the celebrity coverage, but then I never did read or watch much of it. Frankly, I realized a year or so ago that I've been keeping most of my subscriptions to support print and their staffs. I still find curling up with words on paper preferable to a machine.
(Tried to post this about 13 comments ago, but for some reason Typepad wouldn't accept it, other strange things, then I lost connection to Internet for extended time when in the middle of net activity which has been an ongoing problem since our Earthquake -- may have shook up more than I knew.)
Posted by: joared on Aug 13, 2008 1:16:10 AM
Another post I agree with. When I heard Cokie Roberts say that, I felt the same way most of you do. I'm terribly concerned with the dumbing down of America. Go visit some schools and feel hopeless about the future of humanity the way some of us teachers do. How has this happened?
Posted by: Joy D on Aug 13, 2008 1:58:09 AM
I have taught college journalism students. They arrive with the idea that their main job is looking good -- and other people will write their lines. This is their excuse for knowing little of grammar, spelling, and punctuation. The newsmen and women I knew when I joined the profession, back in the days of inky pages and guys running around with fedoras with a handwritten card that said "press" in the hatband, were well read. They had read all the great literary stylists, biography, history, psychology, and bit of everything else. My students hate reading. Their sense of history does not even extend to their birth dates. Their emphasis is ratings, not serving the lofty goal of citizenship -- which is why the second amendment protects a free news industry alone of all commercial enterprises. This is the harvest we reap when education becomes a consumer service, and the customer is always right, and therefore deserves a B just for paying tuition. Don't get me started.
Posted by: tropigal on Aug 13, 2008 10:06:21 AM
As far as alternative ways of getting news, my kids swear by The Daily Show and I like The Nation.
Posted by: Citizen K. on Aug 13, 2008 11:30:46 AM
Actually I found the amount of time This Week devoted to John Edwards affair a whole lot more disgusting than Cokie Robert's comments. It must have been more than half of the round table.
The show started off by discussing why political woman don't have affairs. How irrelevant is that?
Posted by: Marion on Aug 13, 2008 11:19:15 PM
Some of the folks need to remember that All the world is not on the "east coast"...
Posted by: Judy W on Aug 13, 2008 11:47:00 PM
Marion...
Re: "The show started off by discussing why political women don't have affairs..."
Are we sure they don't? Maybe they just haven't gotten caught.
Posted by: Ronni Bennett on Aug 14, 2008 6:29:35 AM
Why do the "Anonymouses" of the world lack the guts to sign their names to their rants? If I were you, I would require at least a nickname.
Posted by: Audrey Vest on Aug 14, 2008 2:45:35 PM
