Able Archer

Politico looks out for its interests

Politico editors John Harris and Jim VandeHei see a pattern, and they don’t like it one bit.

All those Obama flacks in the media are piling on ABC News’ Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos for the anchors’ performance in last week’s Democratic debate.

My, oh my, but weren’t those fellows from ABC News rude to Barack Obama at this week’s presidential debate.

Nothing but petty, process-oriented questions, asked in a prosecutorial tone, about the Democratic front-runner’s personal associations and his electability. Where was the substance? Where was the balance?

Where indeed. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her aides have been complaining for months about imbalance in news coverage. For the most part, the reaction to her from the political-media commentariat has been: Stop whining.

There are a few reasons this is an interesting argument. First of all, it relies on one dubious premise: that critics of the debate found fault only in the questions the moderators asked Obama.

Although it’s true Obama took the greater share of nonsense questions (“Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”) almost all of the criticism of the debate I have read—and the criticism I have written—did not focus on Obama’s interrogation.

The problem was not that Gibson and Stephanopoulos were too hard on Obama. The problem with the “debate” was that the moderators used what should have been a public forum (ABC, after all, makes millions from the privilege of broadcasting on the public airwaves) in order to reiterate “controversies” that were created by the corporate media in order to fill broadcast time. This was done while serious questions about government were put off until the end of the debate, and even then those questions were mostly vapid and were intended, like the questions on the medley of "controversies," to throw the candidates off and force them to make mistakes.

But there’s another reason it’s interesting to see this spirited defense of ABC News in the pages of The Politico. The newspaper is a property of Allbritton Communications, whose main business is owning and operating nine ABC network affiliates.

Allbritton owns ABC affiliates in Washington, D.C.; Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, and Aniston, Alabama; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Little Rock, Arkansas; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Lynchburg, Virginia; and Charleston, South Carolina.

Now, I've never worked for the Washington Post, so I might be wrong here, but if you are the head editor of a publication run for profit by a company whose main business interest is in the success of the ABC network, and you plan on writing a defense of ABC News, you ought to disclose who writes your paycheck.

—Douglas Carlucci

Bad news

Wednesday, ABC News’ hairspray-and-make-up “journalists” held a two-hour celebration of inanity. Every “culture war” trope was given a live airing—for the most insidious, about whether or not Barack Obama “believed in the flag,” the pressmen hid behind American Everywoman Nash McCabe in a pathetic effort to distance themselves from the ridiculous accusation. Neither of the “journalists” moderating the debate had the courage to say what was on their minds: “You’re different than us and the Republicans say you’re weird. Do you love America?”

While the pair of broadcasters held court with the candidates on behalf of the Republican disinformation apparatus, events in this country and around the world were causing chaos in the lives of millions of people.

A years-long increase in the price of food was causing bread riots in foreign countries and insecurity among the American middle- and working-classes.

A couple hundred miles off our coast the prime minister of Haiti was voted out by opposition lawmakers after a bread riot in front of the presidential palace. Chaos in Haiti could send hundred of thousands of refugees to American shores, but you won’t hear much about it here. There’s only so much time to broadcast, and, clearly, as much of it as possible needs to be dedicated to Obama’s bowling scores.

In this country, increased prices and uncertain employment have caused the most precarious economy since the 1970s. Companies dependent on consumer spending are cutting their payrolls as the consumer economy goes through its first painful contractions.

The gradual erosion of the paycheck has become a stealth force driving the American economic downturn. Most of the attention has focused on the loss of jobs and the risk of layoffs. But the less-noticeable shrinking of hours and pay for millions of workers around the country appears to be a bigger contributor to the decline, which has already spread from housing and finance to other important areas of the economy.

While official unemployment has risen only modestly, to 5.1 percent, the reduction of wages and working hours for those still employed has become a primary cause of distress, pushing many more Americans into a downward spiral, economists say.

The news is not well-hidden. The articles on the food supply and the payroll recession were both on the front page of today’s New York Times. But for most broadcasters, who despite all evidence to the contrary call themselves journalists, among the most pressing issues facing the nation’s political leaders is Obama’s supposed ties to a former 1960s radical and (still) Clinton’s silly statements about a trip to Bosnia she took 12 years ago.

Is there an effective way to make it clear to the most pathetic and adolescent members of the media that real people—people who have to work to feed their families, and are having a hard go of it lately—don’t care about their petty personality politics? How can Americans who don’t earn millions of dollars “reporting” on politics for network television make it clear that when journalists talk about “electability,” they should be talking about the value and reasonableness of the candidates’ policy proposals, not some imaginary rubric by which the candidates are compared to the Average American?

I’m not asking these questions facetiously. This is a real problem. We are in a presidential campaign that is the most important in decades, where real, life-and-death matters like a worldwide economic crisis and a failed colonial expedition are what the winner will have to deal with in January, and all evidence shows that the media, not even coming close to recognizing the gravity of the problems, is actually becoming more inane and less responsible in its reporting on politics.

It was 60 minutes into Wednesday’s “debate” before the moderators made their first, tentative efforts to question the candidates on what they would actually do as president. I assure you, who does and does not wear flag lapel-pins will not be the most important problem facing the country in January 2009.

—Douglas Carlucci

The Arugula Libel

One more thing about "elitism."

What is most interesting, and least mentioned, in any discussion of this or that candidate's supposed "elitism" is the profound condescension it often shows toward the knowledge of the Average Man.

Take, for instance, the Arugula Libel.

Last year, Obama was addressing some Iowans and he said: "Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?" he asked. "I mean, they're charging a lot of money for this stuff."

This was taken as evidence of Obama's "elitism," that he is out of touch because he was talking about a supposedly exotic vegetable and a high-end supermarket in Jus' Folks Iowa. "Doesn't he know," went the response from the opinion factories of the East, "they only grow corn in Iowa and shop at the Hy-Vee, which certainly wouldn't stock something as highfalutin as arugula?"

The sentiment was repeated in today's Wall Street Journal by John Fund:

Democrats have been worrying about defending Mr. Obama's highly liberal voting record in a general election. Now they need to fret that he makes too many mistakes, from ignoring the Rev. Wright time bomb until the videotapes blew up in front of him, to his careless condescension towards salt-of-the-earth Democrats. Mr. Obama has a tendency to make such cultural miscues. Speaking to small-town voters in Iowa last year, he asked, "Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?"

Michelle Malkin, who long ago abandoned all debate tactics but the ad hominem smear, ran with the Arugula Libel, even producing a cute faux-poster depicting Obama with an arugula leaf.

This would all be real trouble for Obama if Americans actually were as stupid and parochial as writers like Fund and Malkin believe they are. But they are not. Arugula, far from exotic, is grown in Iowa and is widely available at supermarkets and farmers' markets in the state. You can even get it at the Hy-Vee. If you're in Ames, you can buy arugula at the farmers' market there. In Mingo? Head to Cleverly Farms, which has abundant arugula.

It is also telling that no article quoting Obama's arugula remark provides any context. Was he just bullshitting with the crowd about the price of foodstuffs? Or could it be that he knew farmers in Iowa grow arugula, and was trying, despite the constant clatter of nonsense he needs to speak over, to talk to them about their business, how generally they don't make a lot of money on their crops while companies like Whole Foods charge whatever they can get in a given market for their produce? I guess we'll never know, because long ago "reporters" decided the remark could only be used to characterize Obama as a salad snob.

Do these guys even know what they're doing? Do they even stop to think that maybe, just maybe, despite it's several syllables, most Americans know what arugula is? And that by pretending to be shocked that a candidate would be so out-of-touch as to mention the leafy green in Iowa, they are insulting the intelligence of the American Everymen they are usually trying so hard to impress?

The right-wing disinformation apparatus, and the pathetic individuals in the press and on television who continue to be intimidated by it—for example, everyone on CNN—have already settled on their tale of Obama, and, surprise, it sounds just like the tale of Kerry, which sounded just like the tales of Dukakis and Mondale. He's an "elitist." He likes fancy things plain folks don't get to have, like wine and salads not made of iceberg lettuce.

If only the Democrats were smart enough to put out there a true man of the people. A heroic brush-clearer like George W. Bush, or an honest-to-God cowboy like Ronald Reagan. The Democrats just don't understand regular folks.

It's starting to feel like a long, long way to November.

Addendum

Credit where it's due: Thomas Frank discusses at-length the Latte Libel in his amazing book, What's the Matter with Kansas? Obviously, the term was the inspiration for the Arugula Libel.

—Douglas Carlucci

I'm not bitter. I'm pissed off

Yesterday, I was really upset by the rotten hypocricy of the corporate media's discussion of Barack Obama's "bitter" remark. I still am. However, after planning a longer essay on the matter, I believe I said my piece yesterday. I don't need to elaborate just yet.

I've been thinking a lot about how to use this space, and criticizing every burst of nonsense to come out of the non-stop burlesque that the media calls "campaign coverage" is not the right way. In fact, it's the wrong way, because it would very likely drive me crazy and take my thoughts away from the larger, more important trends in American business, government, and media. That's what this space is about, and in the coming weeks it will have a tighter focus. The themes won't change, but I won't be reacting to campaign nonsense anymore, unless it is particularly egregious.

—Douglas Carlucci

Fake elite, real elite

O! The things you can find in the New York Times.

I was ready to make some new notes on my favorite columnist, Bill Kristol, knowing well he would take the "bitter" Barack meme and run with it up and down the Op-Ed page.

Kristol didn't disappoint me. He provides a classic example of Republican jujitsu: making the candidate who is objectively an economic liberal and fighter for the poor seem to be an "elitist" while insinuating his own Republican Party, which fights hard to preserve the prerogatives of the very rich, on the side of unpretentious working people.

This is the Obama comment from which Kristol is building his man of straw:

[T]he truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

And here's the man of straw:

What does this mean for Obama’s presidential prospects? He’s disdainful of small-town America — one might say, of bourgeois America. He’s usually good at disguising this. But in San Francisco the mask slipped. And it’s not so easy to get elected by a citizenry you patronize.

And what are the grounds for his supercilious disdain? If he were a war hero, if he had a career of remarkable civic achievement or public service — then he could perhaps be excused an unattractive but in a sense understandable hauteur. But what has Barack Obama accomplished that entitles him to look down on his fellow Americans?

Of course, Kristol's opinion only makes sense if you omit the entire first part of Obama's statement. Kristol, savvy in the ways of the illiterate media, knows it's a safe assumption the first part will be omitted by cable newsmen and reporters. And as long as it is, it will appear that Obama was saying something he was not saying at all: that smalltown Americans are naturally bitter.

He was not saying that.

Obama was saying many Americans have become bitter because years ago, without their being consulted, decisions were made in Washington, D.C., and London to form a "consensus" whereby Western capital would be free to pursue cheap manufacturing and service labor overseas. And while all the factories in Pennsylvania and Ohio were shutting down, politicians from both parties were eager to tell the displaced workers that this was all part of the shining new global economy that in time would make us all dividend-rich.

But it never happened. Now the American economy is split in two: you can have a precarious existence as a service-sector wage slave (they can't, after all, outsource such things as waitressing and Wal-Mart clerks) or a precarious existence as a corporate salary slave (you're still a "labor input"; just because they make you wear a tie doesn't mean they won't kick you out the door to protect profits). Either way, one move by one of the small number corporate overlords who actually did become dividend-rich could put you out of work, and out of home, and out of food and medicine.

As though this weren't enough, while all this was occurring, in many parts of the country like Northern New Jersey where I live, those people who did get rich drove up the prices of necessities like housing and healthcare.

All of this is an effective recipe for bitterness. The working class in this country has been nothing short of fucked over by both parties, and I hope, desperately hope, Obama won't be too shy to make this point. (I also hope he'll use a more eloquent phrase than "fucked over".)

What is most remarkable about all this is the way the establishment media reacts to such ideas. Most reporters have as much as any Republican invested in the idea of a stolid, honorable Heartland, USA. So when it is explained to them that much of the nation's interior is depressed, and what economic activity remains is usually controlled by multinational corporations like Wal-Mart, they react ferociously. Who could expect anything else? In a rational conversation about the American economy, it would be apparent that the New York media is a guardian of the economic elite and its "consensus." Crass sentiment about the Heartland is, to borrow Kristol's term, the mask with which they hide this dangerous fact.

Which brings me back to the New York Times. Faithful readers know I don't love the New York Times, but I think it's an important newspaper and publishes the work of many truly talented and honest reporters. And today it did my work for me. While I was gathering my response to Kristol in my head, I noticed two articles on the front page that made my case better than I ever could make it.

The first concerns the fact that for the "ultrarich," the current recession hasn't crashed the party:

Who said anything about a recession? Sometime between the government bailout of Bear Stearns and the Bureau of Labor Statistics report that America lost 80,000 jobs in March, Lee Tachman spent roughly $50,000 last month on a four-day jaunt to Miami for himself and three close friends.

The trip was an exercise in luxuriant male bonding. Mr. Tachman, who is 38, and his friends got around by private jet, helicopter, Hummer limousine, Ferraris and Lamborghinis; stayed in V.I.P. rooms at Casa Casuarina, the South Beach hotel that was formerly Gianni Versace’s mansion; and played “extreme adventure paintball” with former agents of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

Mr. Tachman, a manager for a company that executes trades for hedge funds and the owner of “a handful” of buildings in New York, said he has not felt the need to cut back.

“I always feel like there’s a sword of Damocles over my head, like it could all come crashing down at any time,” he said. “But there’s always going to be people who are trading, and there’s always going to be a demand for real estate in New York.”

He is hardly alone in his eagerness to keep spending. Some businesses that cater to the superrich report that clients — many of them traders and private equity investors whose work is tied to Wall Street — are still splurging on multimillion-dollar Manhattan apartments, custom-built yachts, contemporary art and lavish parties.

Buyers this year have already closed on 71 Manhattan apartments that each cost more than $10 million, compared with 17 apartments in that price range during all of 2007. Last week, a New York art dealer paid a record $1.6 million for an Edward Weston photograph at Sotheby’s. And the GoldBar, a downtown lounge, reports that bankers continue to order $3,000 bottles of Rémy Martin Louis XIII Cognac.

The second describes the ugly reality that in order to protect their profits, insurance companies are making the insured pay more and more for essential medications. Yes, you read that correctly: the people who have insurance are getting screwed. If they can't afford the co-payments for their cancer medications, well, the insurance companies are saying to their customers, you better go see the medicine man, because we ain't paying:

With the new pricing system, insurers abandoned the traditional arrangement that has patients pay a fixed amount, like $10, $20 or $30 for a prescription, no matter what the drug’s actual cost. Instead, they are charging patients a percentage of the cost of certain high-priced drugs, usually 20 to 33 percent, which can amount to thousands of dollars a month.

The system means that the burden of expensive health care can now affect insured people, too.

No one knows how many patients are affected, but hundreds of drugs are priced this new way. They are used to treat diseases that may be fairly common, including multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, hemophilia, hepatitis C and some cancers. There are no cheaper equivalents for these drugs, so patients are forced to pay the price or do without.

Insurers say the new system keeps everyone’s premiums down at a time when some of the most innovative and promising new treatments for conditions like cancer and rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis can cost $100,000 and more a year.

This, and nothing else, is the story of elitism in America.

—Douglas Carlucci

The Annotated Howard Kurtz

A week or two ago, I put myself through what turned out to be pretty good therapy for the rage and disgust I feel for the country’s political “pundits”—I added my own annotations to this obnoxious William Kristol column about Barack Obama.

Today I was reading Glenn Greenwald’s blog, in which he links to this ridiculous column by “media critic” Howard Kurtz. The column is worth the Kristol treatment.

First, here’s Greenwald on the media:

Every day, it becomes more difficult to blame George Bush, Dick Cheney and comrades for their seven years (and counting) of crimes, corruption and destruction of our political values. Think about it this way: if you were a high government official and watched as -- all in a couple of weeks time -- it is revealed, right out in the open, that you suspended the Fourth Amendment, authorized torture, proclaimed yourself empowered to break the law, and sent the nation's top law enforcement officer to lie blatantly about how and why the 9/11 attacks happened so that you could acquire still more unchecked spying power and get rid of lawsuits that would expose what you did, and the political press in this country basically ignored all of that and blathered on about Obama's bowling score and how he eats chocolate, wouldn't you also conclude that you could do anything you want, without limits, and know there will be no consequences? What would be the incentive to stop doing all of that?

And now, Howie Kurtz:

I've said many times that Barack Obama has gotten easy treatment from the news media, although that has changed a bit in recent weeks, particularly since the Rev. Jeremiah Wright became a household name, at least in households that watch plenty of cable.

In fact, there's a bit of a narrative about Obama as an elitist starting to take hold in the media, and that could prove troublesome for him. More on that in a moment. (1)

Now one prominent Republican and a key Democrat are pushing the media-love-Barack line, perhaps for their own purposes. That takes the question out of the realm of armchair media critics and directly into the political crossfire.

The architect of the GOP criticism is none other than Karl Rove, a John McCain booster and maxed-out donor, in his new role as Fox News pundit. This comes from a rather revealing GQ interview done by Lisa de Paulo:

"Do you think Obama's gotten a free ride from the press? Yes.

"How so? I don't think they hold him to the same standards. You know, look, his Web site is full of all kinds of proposals written by academics galore. But he's not required to defend them. He's not required to explain what it is he wants to do. Now I think that's changing. I think, when you have an editorial in USA Today that says, in essence, Where's the beef, what's the substance? When reporters start asking him tough questions about his relationship with Tony Rezko--you know, what was the value of the lot? What was the price that you paid? How many fund-raisers did he do for you? How much money did he raise at those fund-raisers? When they start asking him those questions, then it starts to change. I mean, the kind of questions that have been routinely asked of other candidates--about their background and associations and involvements--have only recently begun to be asked of him. (2)

"I get the sense you respect Hillary more than you respect Obama. Off the record?

"Please don't go off the record. Off the record . . . [Yeah, it's good. Sorry.]

"Damn! Now say that on the record. No. Nope. Nope. Nope.

"Let's try again, then: on the record. I get the sense you respect her more than him. Uh, I know her better than I know him. And I just, uh--she has been around public life a lot longer and has demonstrated, you know, more involvement than he has."

Off the record, I'd love to know what he said. (3)

But we get a hint of Rove's feelings when he says Obama, in his book, "wrote that 'people like Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay, Ralph Reed, and Karl Rove say we are a Christian nation.' And I did not say that. I confronted him about it. At the White House.

"And what did he say? Well, first he denied that I was in the book! And then he denied that it said that I said that it was a Christian nation. And then when I pulled out the thing [he had a copy of the offensive page with him] and showed it to him, he sort of blah-blah-blah-blah-blah- blah-blah. And I thought, That's who he is." (4)

The other blast comes from Ed Rendell, which is less than shocking since the Pennsylvania governor is a big-time Hillary Clinton backer. Time's Karen Tumulty picks up on the sharp elbows thrown by the guv:

"In a recent appearance on Fox News--not exactly considered friendly territory for the Democrats--he congratulated the network for having done 'the fairest job [and] remained the most objective of all the cable networks.' In an interview with me, the governor was again in media-critic mode. 'It took Saturday Night Live to bring some fairness to this election,' Rendell said, referring to the show's now famous skit lampooning the media's crush on Obama. 'It's stunning. Does Keith Olbermann get checks from the Obama campaign?' "

Could Rendell soon be named Worst Person in the World? (5)

Now to the question of the Obama image. Ever since his unfortunate bowling outing (shouldn't he have practiced beforehand, like debate prep?), there's been a tone that he just can't relate to working-class folks. Now this is potentially dangerous. The media once mocked George H.W. Bush for proclaiming his love for pork rinds and asking for "a splash more coffee" at a New Hampshire truck stop. Could Obama be similarly portrayed as not down with da people, despite his roots as a Chicago community organizer? (6)

Maureen Dowd floated this notion the other day: "Keeping his tie firmly in place, he genteelly sipped his pint of Yuengling beer at Sharky's sports cafe in Latrobe and bowled badly in Altoona . . . At the Wilbur chocolate shop in Lititz Monday, he spent most of his time skittering away from chocolate goodies, as though he were a starlet obsessing on a svelte waistline."

How dare he not chow down? (7)

Salon's Walter Shapiro, though, points out one of Obama's virtues:

"Obama . . . shares a good-government reformist zeal with Dukakis and may also be hobbled with an analogous problem in winning over lunch-bucket Democrats. But the similarities end there, since Obama may be the least likely candidate to fall for an out-of-character stunt like riding in a tank looking ridiculous. For Obama possesses something that most presidential Democrats (aside from Bill Clinton) have lacked for the last three decades -- a sense of ease and comfort with himself.

"It is not just the Republican attack machine that created the image of Democratic candidates camouflaging their inner being at the behest of their campaign consultants. From Walter Mondale playing down his liberal instincts in 1984 to Al Gore, who, in reality, did . . . go through a phony phase in the 2000 campaign of wearing earth tones, the Democrats often got caught by their lack of authenticity. (Out of a sense of mercy, we will not even mention the 2004 John Kerry campaign.) It is this trap that Hillary Clinton has fallen into with her exaggerated claims of dodging sniper fire in Bosnia.

"But Obama -- even when he gives way to ill-conceived gimmicks like his gutter-ball bowling misadventure -- has that rare ability to laugh it off with conviction."

Still, Obama seems to have learned from his food faux pas, if this Philadelphia Daily News piece is any indication:

"What, no whiz?

"Sen. Barack Obama sampled $100 ham, but didn't chow down on a cheesesteak during a visit to the Italian Market yesterday.

"During a half-hour tour of the market, Obama sampled wares at Claudio Specialty Food and DiBruno Brothers - where he noshed on a Spanish ham that retails for $99.99 a pound.

"Staff at DiBruno's told him the ham only recently became available because it was previously barred by the FDA. 'All I know is it tastes good,' Obama said. As good as whiz with onions?

"In fact, neither Obama nor Sen. Hillary Clinton, his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, has made the traditional stop at South Philly cheesesteak establishments Pat's or Geno's."

In a similar vein, some cable shows kept playing video of Obama dissing a man ("You're wearing me out, brother") who kept badgering him for a photo. Says Ann Althouse: "Was it that guy's goal to [tick] Obama off and get him looking bad on camera? I'd say Obama kept his cool and handled it well, but I'm sure there will be people who will say this is Obama losing his cool. To that, I'd say: If this is Obama losing his cool, Obama is very cool. Perhaps a better question is whether Obama is too cool -- too bland and unemotional to enthuse us." (8)

---

(1) For a word used so frequently as a criticism of Democratic candidates, I’ve never heard “elitism” defined. But I think I know what it means. Barack Obama, like John Kerry and Al Gore before him, is “elitist” because he doesn’t condescend to “working folk” by acting as though the only thing “regular people” can understand is brush-clearing and bowling. Although his administration encouraged the greatest consolidation of wealth in the nation’s history, George W. Bush can never be “elitist” because he clears brush at his ranch and eats hot dogs with world leaders. John Kerry is an “elitist,” however, because he goes windsurfing—even though he volunteered to fight in Vietnam when he probably could have got out of going. John Edwards is a despicable “elitist” because he once got an expensive haircut—even though he has ran for president twice on an economic platform that is objectively populist. “Elitism” is one of the media’s most important political code-words.
(2) Alas, we get to the basis of the article. Karl Rove thinks Barack Obama is an elitist and has gotten a “free ride.” By the logic of the Washington press, if someone like Rove says that, it’s not merely an opinion or a talking-point, it’s a “political issue.” So Rove gets the chance to have his litany of smears and half-truths about Obama reprinted in the Washington Post.
(3) Yeah, me too. Too bad protecting powerful sources is about the only ethical standard the Washington press bothers anymore to uphold.
(4) This is unbelievable. Howard Kurtz is willing to quote Karl Rove in his column complaining about a minor mistake in Barack Obama’s book without even so much as intimating that Karl Rove’s entire career, his entire contribution to American politics, was based on his ability to integrate fabrications, distortions, and half-truths into the mainstream political discourse. Isn’t part of being a critic maintaining skepticism? Unless Kurtz is being ironic in giving Karl Rove a forum to complain about accuracy, he ought not to call himself a critic. “Complaint aggregator” would be a better description of his job.
(5) So a Clinton partisan believes Obama isn’t getting rough enough treatment on TV. To Kurtz, this amounts not only to something worth thinking about, but something worth repeating in the Washington Post.
(6) Again, this is what the media means by “elitism.” Obama is an inadequate bowler, and, to the media, “working-class folks” can have no more complex understanding of government than that the people they elect ought to master their recreation activities. “Working-class folks” won’t be concerned about such things as economic programs or warfare; they simply want a bowling buddy in the White House. Of course, no one ever mentions that if this is true—and I don’t think it is—it would be true because the media fills the airwaves with such execrable ideas as that one’s ability to bowl is an indicator of one’s true sentiments toward the Average Man. Also, I should ask: who are “working-class folks?” The Washington press has this cartoonish image of some dumb factory-worker who is scared of anything he hasn’t seen before. To the Fourth Estate, that is the icon of “working-class folks.” Of course it is; it’s not as though they bother reporting on labor issues or the realities of the “global economy” they love to talk about. If they got off the press bus in Altoona for a couple hours and walked around, maybe they would meet some “working-class folks” and they wouldn’t have to rely on their assumption that Archie Bunker or some other pop-culture anachronism represents all Americans who work for a living, which is presumably what they mean when they say “working class.” And finally, "da people?" Really, Howie?
(7) This is more on Dowd than Kurtz, but how could Obama have sipped his Yuengling to your liking? Should he have gulped? Chugged? What separates a “genteel” sip from a regular sip? Probably the columnist describing the sip.
(8) So the point of this article is to repeat half-formed impressions of Barack Obama by other members of the press, and to pass them off as representative of the general perception of the candidate among the people. Again, Kurtz doesn’t seem to realize—or seems willing to ignore—that by repeating these impressions without even the most basic sort of skepticism, he is not criticizing anything, but making one further step toward making sure these cheap, easy impressions are the standard narrative of the candidate’s “personality.”

—Douglas Carlucci

Whom is Jeremiah Wright dividing?

I want to make one brief point about Barack Obama and his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. I had a moment of clarity on the subject this afternoon that I’d like to share.

The controversy reveals to us the last acceptable white privilege in the U.S: controlling the very discussion of race.

Allow me to explain. Ignore for a moment Wright’s most incredible statements: that the U.S. government was somehow complicit in developing AIDS and crack cocaine as a means of destroying African-Americans. These statements are demonstrably false, and Wright deserves to be criticized for making them. (I’m not including the nonsense about Wright and September 11 in this discussion, because, having listened to Wright’s sermon, it’s apparent that he wasn’t saying America’s “chickens had come home to roost” on that day, but was merely quoting such a statement made by someone else—on Fox News, by the way—for the rhetorical purpose of holding together his own thoughts on the subject.)

The statements on AIDS and cocaine are not the essence of Wright’s sermons. The essence is Wright’s anger at the long and indisputable history of racism and racial violence in the U.S, and the U.S.’s willingness to use violence to achieve its ends in foreign nations.

Wright is a black man. He understands this personally. You might not like him, but you can’t deny that when he speaks on racism, he speaks as a black man who grew up in the twentieth century U.S., and so he speaks on the subject with the authority of experience.

Yet most media criticism of Wright has been based on the premise that he is somehow irresponsible and demagogic in discussing race. The most basic implication of the criticism—what they mean when they say Wright is inflammatory and divisive—is that Wright should not be making the statements he made.

Distill the sentiment a little more, and it comes down to this: We don’t want to hear what this black man has to say about the way race is lived in the U.S. Simply by stating that racial relations are not “improving” or “progressing” in America—which the media is apparently required to say in any of its discussions of race—Wright is “divisive.”

But what does divisive mean? The media wants the term to be interpreted this way: Wright is emphasizing the differences between black and white in order to better control the black people in his parish, and this is wrong. I disagree. I think they are using the term this way: Wright is expressing ideas that are outside what is acceptable in mainstream media discussions of race; therefore, he is divisive because we disagree with him. This is the division they are citing: between Wright’s statements and the accepted media myth of race relations in the U.S.

And this is my point: the discussion of race is the one place in American life where whites are still allowed to maintain a privilege over black people. Discussions of race must conform to mainstream white sentiments, which basically come down to this: sorry about slavery and segregation, but things are better now and getting better, and we really don’t want to hear otherwise. Opinions to the contrary are “divisive” or the work of “demagogues.” Only a “demagogue” would point out that most young black men in American cities are either unemployed or in prison. Only a man who cared only for his own power would talk about how most black children still have to face the fact that more than any other group in this country, they are likely to die violently or be in prison by their eighteenth birthday.

Never mind that as a black man, Wright is not simply speculating on race relations: as a pastor in South Chicago, he has lived his race. He is challenging the white privilege to discuss race on white people’s terms, and so he is “divisive.”

To discuss race as it is lived by black Americans, in the view of mainstream opinion-makers, is to engage in “divisiveness.” Next time you hear this, don’t let the thought stop there: who is being divided? If someone said I was being divisive, and they meant I was dividing the public from the complacent and obnoxious opinions of professional talking heads, I would thank them for the compliment.

As I have said before, one doesn’t have to agree with Wright. I have heard him say many things with which I deeply disagree. But none of the mainstream criticism of Wright is willing to take his arguments on their own terms. The criticism does not even engage his arguments, it merely reminds the public that simply by making the arguments, Wright is “divisive.”

—Douglas Carlucci

Five Years: Iraqi thoughts

This clip of Charlie Rose interviewing two Iraqi expatriates is very interesting:

As Glenn Greenwald argues, you won't hear many opinions like this in the American media. The idea of actual malfeasance in Iraq is verboten.

—Douglas Carlucci

The Annotated Bill Kristol

In December, when I found out William Kristol, of the Weekly Standard, would be joining the New York Times Op-Ed page, I was indignant. I promised to make a regular practice of criticizing Kristol’s columns. Perhaps I reacted too hastily—worse things have happened than another blowhard getting another column, and I haven’t said much about Kristol.

But sometimes people surprise you. Kristol has recently deployed a number of noxious musings that are worth rebutting. I decided the best way to do this would be to provide my own notes to Kristol’s column.

March 22, 2008
Let’s Not, and Say We Did
by William Kristol

I shuddered only once while watching Barack Obama’s speech last Tuesday.

It wasn’t when he posed the rhetorical questions: “Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church?”

The real question, of course, is not why Obama joined Trinity, but why he stayed there for two decades, in the flock of a pastor who accused the U.S. government of “inventing the H.I.V. virus as a means of genocide against people of color,” and who suggested soon after 9/11 that “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.” (1)

But orators often ask themselves the convenient questions, not the difficult ones. And Barack Obama is an accomplished orator.

Nor was I shocked when Obama compared Reverend Wright, who was using his pulpit to propagate racial resentment, with his grandmother, who may have said privately a few things that made Obama cringe, or with Geraldine Ferraro, whom “some have dismissed ... as harboring some deep-seated bias.”

After all, politicians sometimes indulge in ridiculous and unfair comparisons to make a point. And Barack Obama is an able politician. (2)

And I didn’t shudder when Obama said he could no more disown Reverend Wright than he could disown the black community. I did think this statement was unfair to many in the black community, and especially to all those pastors who have resisted the temptation to appeal to their parishioners in the irresponsible and demagogic manner of Reverend Wright. (3)

But ambitious men sometimes do a disservice to the best in their own communities. And Barack Obama is an ambitious man. (4)

The only part of the speech that made me shudder was this sentence: “But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now.”

As soon as I heard that, I knew what we’d have to endure. I knew that there would be a stampede of editorial boards, columnists and academics rushing not to ignore race. A national conversation about race! At long last! (5)

Of course, memories are short. In 1997 President Bill Clinton announced, with great fanfare, that he intended “to lead the American people in a great and unprecedented [if he did say so himself] conversation about race.” That conversation quickly went nowhere. And just as well.

The last thing we need now is a heated national conversation about race.

What we need instead are sober, results-oriented debates about economics, social mobility, education, family policy and the like — focused especially on how to help those who are struggling. (6) Such policy debates can lead to real change — even “change we can believe in.” “National conversations” tend to be pointless and result-less.

Or worse. Especially when they’re about race. In 1969, Pat Moynihan, then serving on Richard Nixon’s White House staff, wrote Nixon a memo explaining that “the issue of race could benefit from a period of ‘benign neglect.’ The subject has been too much talked about. ... We may need a period in which Negro progress continues and racial rhetoric fades.” Moynihan, who was reacting against the wild escalation of racial rhetoric on all sides, was unfairly pilloried when the memo was leaked in 1970. But he was right then, and his argument is right now. (7)

Racial progress has in fact continued in America. A new national conversation about race isn’t necessary to end what Obama calls the “racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years” — because we’re not stuck in such a stalemate. In fact, as Obama himself suggests in the same speech, younger Americans aren’t stalemated. They come far closer than their grandparents and parents to routinely obeying Martin Luther King’s injunction to judge one another by the content of our character, not the color of our skin. (8)

Over the last several decades, we’ve done pretty well in overcoming racial barriers and prejudice. Problems remain. (9) But we won’t make progress if we now have to endure a din of race talk that will do more to divide us than to unite us, and more to confuse than to clarify. (10)

Luckily, Obama isn’t really interested in getting enmeshed in a national conversation on race. He had avoided race talk before the Reverend Wright controversy erupted. And despite the speech’s catnip of a promised conversation on race tossed to eager commentators, it’s clear he’s more than willing to avoid it from now on.

This is all for the best. With respect to having a national conversation on race, my recommendation is: Let’s not, and say we did. (11)

---

(1) Here’s a good way to tell something is at least a little off about the media’s hysterical reaction to Jeremiah Wright: for all the minutes of pundit chatter and column inches dedicated to Wright, none of the networks and publications that have decided he is so interesting have found him interesting enough to take ten minutes to show the entire sermon from which they are quoting. It's no mystery why folks like Kristol might not want to give Wright his due. Readers are encouraged to listen to more of Wright before they form a quick opinion of him—he can be seen here and here. You don't have to like him, but at least base your dislike on his arguments, not single sentences from those arguments.
(2) The huge, sucking abyss of Kristol’s intellect is revealed in the disparity between his reactions to President Bush’s and Obama’s rhetoric. If one has had the ambivalent privilege of reading the Weekly Standard since 2000, one will remember that the magazine’s staff, of which Kristol was head, found Bush’s cheesy and hollow cadences about freedom and democracy to be epochal musings about the possibilities of the very human race. But Obama, well, he’s just a glorified motivational speaker, nothing more than a rhetorical chess-master moving his rooks and pawns. Of course, it never mattered to Kristol that Bush is evidently too awkward to form the thoughts he has read from his podiums over the years.
(3) Kristol is too canny himself to associate with irresponsible demagogues.
(4) What he’s really saying: Democrats (especially ladies and blacks) are ambitious, assertive, and manipulative, or, politicians; Republicans, like Bush and John McCain, are merely called to service by their humility.
(5) Fairness doctrine: OK, I agree with Kristol here. It was pretty funny to hear writers and talking heads who could not have cared less a few weeks ago welcoming an honest discussion of race in America, as if literally on cue.
(6) Amen. I think we should start first with the sober, results-oriented discussion Kristol recommends we have on the few-trillion-dollars Iraq War—oh, that’s not in there, ok. We’ll start with families—families have been getting a bad rap lately.
(7) Kristol writes as though blacks and whites have always been on equal terms in this country, as though blacks and whites were equally to blame for the status of blacks in the 1960s. Also, it’s not relevant to Kristol how blacks might have viewed a middle-class white man with the President’s ear, such as Moynihan, recommending that we all ought to pipe down about racial injustice.
(8) For Kristol, the debate on race doesn’t even include economics. I love how conservatives, who ostensibly are most concerned with finances, happily drift into the abstractions of government when it suits then. Race is not about the flight of industry from America’s cities, it is not about the living legacies of redlining and industrial-style public housing, it is not about the fact that in a lot of ghettos, the legitimate job prospects come down to a choice between working at McDonald’s and working at KFC. No, for Kristol, the best government can do about racial disparities is to encourage each of us to follow the Golden Rule.
(9) I am recording here that Kristol decided to give two words—two words of consideration, “problems remain”—to America’s inner cities, where young black men kill young black men over drugs they intend to sell to young white men, to America’s prisons, where the government warehouses the living black victims of the drug trade, to America’s corporations and campuses, where lame abstractions such as “diversity” and “tolerance” have replaced concrete goals for recruiting the poor and minorities. Two words to all that, but never enough words to demonize a man who, even with his rhetoric, has given his life to helping poor blacks in Chicago.
(10) So if we have to endure the “din” of “race talk,” there will never be progress. So no one can talk about what we ought to do about race until we do it, or perhaps even not then.
(11) "Let's not, and say we did": In a coincidence, this is also the most sensible reaction one can have when considering any of Kristol’s recommendations on government.

—Douglas Carlucci

Five Years: Media propaganda

It will soon be five years since the U.S. invasion of Iraq. By any practical measure, things are worse in Iraq than they were in March 2003. Iraq has no democracy; Iraqis are "free" only in a Hobbesian sense. Their country continues to burn and divide itself into factions.

If you ever wonder how it got so bad, consider what the media was reporting on in May 2003:

When this broadcast was made, Iraq had already collapsed. The events of the last four years and ten months are only the consequences of decisions Bush administration officials made in the first two months of the war. No one paid attention; no one cared. The world will probably never know the true number of men and women, American and Iraqi, that have died since.

—Douglas Carlucci