THE FAKING OF THE PRESIDENT: Could that claim of bias be true?

THURSDAY, JUNE 7, 2012

Interlude—Can liberals prosper this way: Could it be true, what the pundit pair said?

Is it possible that some recent journalism reflects a “bias” against Candidate Romney? We take it as obvious that this could be the case. How could any sane person think different?

But our liberal “intellectual leaders” flew into a fury last week when Allen and VandeHei made this suggestion—when they said that some recent work by the Post and the Times made Republican cries of bias “ring true.”

Sadly, our intellectual leaders flew into a fury about this idea (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 6/6/12). They got busy challenging claims the pundit pair hadn’t actually made. They made a set of absurd remarks as they challenged Politico's thesis.

Behind this lay a pattern of thought we’d associate with Sean Hannity:

There can be no “bias” against the other team's tribe! Error, unfairness and injustice can only be aimed against ours!

No one with an ounce of sense could really subscribe to this pattern of thought. But as our liberal tribe has emerged from the woods after several decades of slumber, our leaders have increasingly patterned ourselves after the gruesome Hannity.

That said, is it possible that Allen and VandeHei were right? Is it possible that the Post and the Times have wandered off course in some recent reporting on Romney?

To build a framework around this question, let’s consider what John Heilemann told Charlie Rose last Thursday night.

Rose grilled Heilemann about the way the current campaign is unfolding. Eventually, he asked the New York magazine ace to discuss the press corps’ attitude toward Candidate Obama, then and now:
ROSE (5/31/12): Tell me if you think this is relevant. In 2008, the press loved Barack Obama.

HEILEMANN: They did.

ROSE: Where is the press of 2012?

HEILEMANN: Well, the bloom is off that rose, for sure. There is no love affair with Barack Obama anymore. And my view always was that the thing—I think the press was soft on Obama in 2008. I have said that a million times. And I think it was mostly about the story. You know, it wasn’t about liberal, conservative. It was “new.”

ROSE: Right.

HEILEMANN: It was history. It was, you know, it was all about—that story was irresistible to a lot of people.

ROSE: Young, smart, and color blind.

HEILEMANN: Yes. Yes.

ROSE: And it made America feel young again.

HEILEMANN: Right. What it said about the country—it made America feel virtuous and everything else. They now see him as like a conventional politician and so their traditional way of covering conventional politicians is, be more hostile.

ROSE: Which it always was.
Is Heilemann right? Was the press corps “soft on Obama” in 2008? Has its attitude grown "more hostile?"

Our opinion? It certain ways, the press corps was plainly soft on Obama four years ago, especially within the framework of the Democratic primary race.

But so what? As the liberal world’s “intellectual leaders” responded to the Politico piece, such ludicrous thoughts could not be brooked, not even for a Hannity minute. Several of our furious leaders cited the fact that the New York Times did a news report about Jeremiah Wright as early as April 2007—“with additional reporting from Kenya,” Dave Weigel said, pretending to be upset. (In fairness, Weigel is transforming himself from a conservative into a liberal, and so he must do such things.) They said this showed that Obama really was vetted in the Campaign 08, dramatically refuting a claim the Politico pair hadn’t made.

In fact, the New York Times report in question was a thoroughly standard bit of reporting. It concerned a key part of Obama’s adult life—a part of his life he had featured in both of his books. ("The audacity of hope" is a quote from Wright.) In our view, it’s hard to see why someone would complain about that news report in the Times. But however one might judge that report, it has nothing to do with Politico’s claim—the claim that the Post and the Times have gone off the rails in some recent reporting on Romney.

For ourselves, we thought the Politico pair had a bit of a point about the recent reporting. But putting that judgment to the side, we were stunned by the sheer stupidity of the (instant) “liberal” response.

Can we liberals prosper by being this dumb? We’d have to guess we cannot.

How dumb were our “leaders” in their response, to which they devoted ten seconds of thought? Let us count the ways:

In general terms, they refuted claims that hadn’t been made. Rather than argue the merits of the Politico piece, they tended to run directly to motive. And the name-calling was widespread, with Andrew Breitbart recalled from the dead to take the place of thought.

But then, good God, the specific assertions! Can progressives possibly hope to prosper by being so balls-out dumb?

Devin Gordon said a newspaper might choose to publish a gigantic story to see how the campaigns will respond!

Weigel said it makes no difference what page a report appears on. After all, journalists will hear about a report even if it’s not on page one!

Joan Walsh repeated a murky factual claim by Gordon, then seemed to say it would be OK if his claim was as much as ten percent right! Walsh even stooped to the point of citing the worthless Project in Excellence surveys about positive/negative coverage.

Meanwhile, look how Walsh refuted one of the GOP's complaints about the report on Ann Romney’s dressage—the claim that this front-page news report carried a “sneering” tone:
WALSH (5/31/12): Politico’s faux-outrage that both the Post and Times “ignored” David Maraniss’s story about Obama epic high school weed-smoking is silly, too: The future president inoculated himself against almost all drug revelations by revealing them himself in “Dreams from My Father.” The memoir leaves little doubt that Barry Obama was a lost stoner in high school. Who cares?

Meanwhile, Matt Drudge’s favorite journalists are angry that the Post published revelations about Romney’s high school bullying. They seem to think high school behavior matters in the case of Obama but not Romney, just another example of the pervasive partisan double standard in media. But I don’t want to say I learned nothing from the [Politico] piece: It features populist Haley Barbour defending Ann Romney from the mean Times this way: “The New York Times does a huge exposé that Ann Romney rides horses. Well, so does my wife, and a few million other people. Watch out for equine performers!” You are so fricking losing the dressage vote, Team Obama! Take that!

The ultimate moral vacuum at the heart of the story is its failure to care that just two days after its “exposé” of Ann Romney’s fondness for seven-figure horses and the silly costumes that go with them, the Times ran a chilling investigative piece about Obama’s “kill list” process, with damning details about how the president decides on drone strikes and other methods of killing suspected terrorists.
In Politico, Ari Fleischer was quoted saying that the Times report on dressage had a “sneering” tone. To show how wrong these complaints really are, Walsh immediately started sneering about Ann Romney’s “silly costumes.” (To their credit, several liberal readers criticized Walsh on this point.)

Can liberals hope to prosper by being this dumb? More generally, consider these points about Walsh’s remarkably low-IQ rant:

Whatever one thinks of the “kill list” report, it concerned a plainly serious topic. It can’t tell us if the reports on bullying and dressage were pointless or overblown.

Did Politico claim that the Post and the Times “ignored” the high school drug use story? We don’t know why Walsh put “ignored” inside quotes. The word doesn’t appear in the Politico report. (Are we all Sean Hannity now?)

Does Politico “seem to think high school behavior matters in the case of Obama but not Romney?” Please. The writers noted the disproportionate coverage given to the two stories. They didn’t say that Obama’s youthful behavior should be covered while Romney’s should get a pass. (How dumb do you have to be to make such a bogus claim?)

Did Obama’s memoir “leave little doubt that Barry Obama was a lost stoner in high school?” Please. As has been widely noted, the facts in Maraniss’ report go well beyond what Obama revealed about his high school drug use. As such, the report provides new information—and it suggests that Obama was less than candid in the past about this (generally pointless) topic.

As a general matter, we oppose the coverage of youthful drug use. Beyond that, we assume that most politicians have dissembled about this general topic. But we also oppose hacks like Walsh treating liberal readers like fools:

For decades, we’ve seen Hannity acting that way. We don’t think liberal “intellectual leaders” should pattern themselves on this man.

Have the Post and the Times gone off the tracks in those reports on bullying and dressage? In our view, the Politico pair had a bit of a point—and a later report in the Post made us think similar thoughts (more tomorrow). But good God! Even as our “intellectual leaders” defended the Times for exploring dressage, they were, to a person, too empty and clueless to complain about the way the Post and the Times have failed to explore Mitt Romney’s more serious conduct, his rather unpleasant conduct as the head of Bain Capital.

In his current piece at The National Memo, Gene Lyons explores this largely unexplored conduct (for more detail, see our next post). But even as they defended the Times for its front-page report on dressage, our “intellectual leaders” were too dumb, too courteous and too ideologically soft to note this refusal to report.

Can progressives prosper with “leaders” like this? The answer seems obvious: No!

In closing, let’s reflect on the way our recent White House campaigns have been covered, given the hapless and/or corrupt behavior of our “liberal leaders.” As he continued his chat with Rose, Heilmann’s ruminations took him all the way back to Campaign 2000:
HEILEMANN (continuing directly): The Romney—the Romney campaign has treated reporters with, at an arm’s-length way bordering on hostile. They are suspicious. I think they think the press is liberal. They have a lot of different reasons for doing what they do, but they have not inculcated, you know, anything like the kind of warm and collegial relations and this is not just—I mean conservatives will say, “Well, that was easy for Obama because you are all liberal.”

George W. Bush's team had great relations with the press. I mean he was— The press infinitely preferred, the supposedly liberal press infinitely preferred George W. Bush to Al Gore in 2000.

ROSE: Because?

HEILEMANN: Because he was human, open, accessible, funny and the people who worked for him liked the press and cultivated the press and didn’t give them the back of the hand. So it is not an ideological thing. Conservatives can win that game. The Romney people have not. They have not done it very well.
Does Heilemann believe that that’s the real story of the press coverage of Campaign 2000? We find it hard to believe that he does. But the liberal world is handicapped by the way our hackish “intellectual leaders” have refused to tell the truth about the coverage of that history-changing campaign—more generally, about the journalism of whole Clinton-Gore era.

Given the things the public is constantly told, it’s stunning to hear that “the supposedly liberal press infinitely preferred George W. Bush to Al Gore in 2000.” That claim is plainly true, of course—but the public has never been told.

Joan Walsh refuses to tell them such things. That would force her to name the names of her princes, her large benefactors.

Gag! People like Walsh have buried this deep, protecting their generous mentors as they stuff bags of dough in their pants. Today, Walsh defends that front-page report on dressage—and drives our IQ to the ground.

Can progressives prosper with “leaders” like this? If we had an ounce of self-respect, we’d drive the Walshes into the sea.

But our leaders are much like Sean Hannity now, and we are a gang of sad ditto-heads. We’re handed pure pap—and we swallow it down.

Tomorrow: What came next.

Tomorrow, Part 4: Is Jonathan Solomon “biased?”

13 comments:

  1. On what planet is the extremely conservative, business-proxy, ex-lobbyist Haley Barbour a "populist"? I already have serious doubts about Joan Walsh's judgment on many topics, but this statement by her only underscored them.

    In terms of the failure to discuss Bain, it might be that all these folks are on or hoping to be on Bain's payroll. Or have spouses or relatives who are. Or hope to get on the gravy train of a similar firm or within the larger financial and private equity industries. In addition to not giving a rat's ass about these industries' destructive effects on the middle and working-classes and the poor.

    ReplyDelete
  2. To the extent that our media "liberals" take marching orders (get talking points) from the Obama campaign, they may not want to focus on Bain Capital -- it would give a black eye to the financial industry that is funding Obama's campaign. Even Bill Clinton is saying "Don't go there." Why?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Who says that opinion writers are progressive "leaders"?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cogent!

      Bob's critique is wrong because flip doesn't consider these folks "leaders."

      You couldn't make it up!!

      Delete
  4. "But as our liberal tribe has emerged from the woods after several decades of slumber, our leaders have increasingly patterned ourselves after the gruesome Hannity." - b. somerby

    "Can liberals hope to prosper by being this dumb? More generally, consider these points about Walsh’s remarkably low-IQ rant:" - b. somerby

    "We don’t know why Walsh put “ignored” inside quotes. The word doesn’t appear in the Politico report. (Are we all Sean Hannity now?)" -b. somerby

    "But we also oppose hacks like Walsh treating liberal readers like fools: For decades, we’ve seen Hannity acting that way. We don’t think liberal “intellectual leaders” should pattern themselves on this man." b. somerby
    ---------------------


    >>> the above quotes highlight this ethnic attack on walsh -- disguised as a personal one. by associating her with hannity he is hoping his target audience will take the message that she is bad because she has an irish-catholic heritage.
    -------------


    “If we had an ounce of self-respect, we’d drive the Walshes into the sea.“ b. somerby

    >>> this could be emblematic of the whole column as I think he dually meant walsh and “americans with an irish-catholic heritage” for “walshes”...perhaps in the manner of st. patrick with the snakes?



    “Joan Walsh refuses to tell them such things. That would force her to name the names of her princes, her large benefactors. Gag! People like Walsh have buried this deep, protecting their generous mentors as they stuff bags of dough in their pants. Today, Walsh defends that front-page report on dressage—and drives our IQ to the ground. “ - b. somerby

    >>> this is more projection at projection central. walsh is not self employed like somerby. he is the one i wonder about getting paid secretly.
    ------------------

    btw, I think the reasons he makes his columns so unnecessarily long and meandering is to confuse the reader hoping they will get the vibe, the near subliminal emotional based points, without asking too many questions. he must assume he has an audience who will read it no matter what. perhaps his target audience is quite small. he rarely says anything bad about the people who hire the front people (aside from welch) so maybe its just the management people of abc, cbs, nbc, newsweek, time, ny times, wash post etc. which he cares about...and he assumes they will read it through.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ansd i should say the long retired jack welch.

      Delete
    2. and i should have said that his point is not just anti-walsh. he also is using walsh and hannity in his ongoing morality play to make the larger point that americans with an irish catholic heritage *are* bad and so dont hire them and dont listen to them. and in this column, if you have an ounce of self respect, drive them into the sea.

      Delete
    3. I had the impression that Somerby himself has an Irish/Catholic heritage.

      Delete
    4. he has said he has "irish aunts" and that his mother was "irish catholic". but even if his heritage was entirely irish-catholic, could he not be anti-irish-catholic? . . . in fact isnt that the one thing that a pr man would look for in somebody to spread a bigoted message, that the messenger be immune or somewhat immune to charges of bigotry?

      Delete
  5. I'm 50 years old and was raised in South Florida. So perhaps it's due to "generational" or regional factors that I'm able to say that I've never seen or heard much of bias being held in the contemporary U.S. culture against Irish-Catholics, in the way that bias clearly remains in effect against many other ethnic groups, and am only aware of such through reading of it in historical accounts. So I would never have made the connection that many of TDH's "targets" happen to be Irish-Catholic, except where this point is belabored by those who for some reason don't want to acknowledge the validity of TDH's criticism.

    Since I've become aware that many - but by no means all! - of Bob's targets share this ethnic heritage, it seems to me that TDH is engaging in a form of self-criticism with the goal of stripping away that which weakens the progressive cause. As it happens, a sizable number of the "liberal" leaders presently given voice in the media are apparently Irish-Catholic (as I've become aware of as a results of this comments page), so any criticism of what passes for current liberalism will of necessity entail a critique of many who share this background.

    I wish that respondents would address the substance of TDH's criticism against liberals who happen to share Irish-Catholic heritage, rather than continue to nail up a straw man to distract from the genuine points that TDH raises.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. there are factors which do affect the various biases in common. you mention regionalism. density of the group in a particular area is a big variable, and of course this differs from part of the country to another.

      but there is a particular historical reason for the bigotry against americans with an irish-catholic heritage which doesnt apply to the others and which keeps it going for reasons which dont apply to the others. . . . its a patriotic bigotry i.e. its a good thing to engage in, unlike the others. (obviously its not a good thing if your in that group.)

      it just so happened that the fathers and mothers of the country were of english heritage primarily. and it just so happens that their ethnic identity depended on them not being of irish heritage because it just so happened that the ancient inhabitants of southern and eastern britton decided to differentiate themselves (falsely per latest gene based research*) from the rest of the people to the west and north of them within the brittish isles. and it just so happened that they chose for their own supposed ethnicity the ethnicity of their latest occupiers, after the romans left, the germanics tribes, angles, saxons etc.

      so the irish were needed for many centuries for the “english” to be able to convince themselves they were special. that bigotry sailed to america with the founding fathers and their forebearers here.

      this country also needed a unifying ethnicity to provide good order and it was natural for it to be the english. and since the english thought and still think of themselves as ethnically germanic, it was a natural thing for the huge influx of germanic immigrants and their descendants to form with the english and their descendants a huge germanic (and pseudo-germanic) hegomonic block in this country, assisted by protestantism as another unifying (and identifying) factor. . . . but obviously for this to work, the non-germancics, non protestants had to be effectively second-class citizens, very particularly the irish-catholics who so obviously (historically, not physically) screamed ”not english” (and therefore also not germanic).


      and there was still an english-occupied ireland into the twentieth century to remind everybody of the history, and whats what over here in america as a result.

      and i cant see this state of affairs changing. new people to the country adopt the patriotic bigotry with little or no contact with americans who have an irish-catholic heritage. and they become good americans by doing so.
      ------------------------------

      but what im saying is *not to stop* doing your patriotic duty –- just dont let somerby use this fact-of-life to hurt you in the manner of an overly aggressive immune response. dont let him persuade you of abc or xyz because he is so sympathetic to your wholesome bigotry. dont let him confuse you.

      i care because if the ship of state sinks with the right-wing in control, i go down too into the likely hellish result.

      * “Saxons, Vikings and Celts: the Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland” by Bryan Sykes or “Origins of the British” by Stephen Oppenheimer.

      Delete
    2. “As it happens, a sizable number of the "liberal" leaders presently given voice in the media are apparently Irish-Catholic...”   - volt61

      >>> no. somerby is shifting the blame onto americans with irish catholic heritage all out of proportion to “our” presence in the media as front people or as mangement. “we” are the patises and that should concern you regardless of what you think of “us” because he is letting the true media malefactors off the hook by creating this green potemkin media landscape. they can feel free to screw up in the future if not held accountable if this shift in blame is effective. that is a problem for everybody, not just “us”.



      “...it seems to me that TDH is engaging in a form of self-criticism...” - vol61t

      >>> that assumes he is of irish-catholic heritage. he says his mother is. does he identify with her side of the family? also he may not believe what he writes. a lot of money is flowing from the right wing these days. . . . and regardless, there are and always have been self hating people who will go after their own group harder than any outsider.

      Delete
  6. lowercaseguys casemanagerJune 8, 2012 at 9:58 AM

    Shorter lowercaseguy:

    My hobbyhorse, though unproven ["unproven" -- see how kind I'm being to the little nitwit?], remains a pleasure for me to ride. Whee, look at me go!!

    ReplyDelete