The Media Tips Its Own Hand About John Edwards

This revealing story by Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic flat-out tells you how the media puts its thumbs on the scale when it comes to Presidential candidates.

Why doesn't John Edwards's hair equal Mitt Romney's face paint?

The primary difference is definitional: The centerpiece of Edwards's campaign is his anti-poverty efforts; he presents himself as a dedicated messenger for the cause, and he likes expensive haircuts, bought a gimungous house, etc. etc. His credibility as a messenger comes into question when he spends money ostentatiously. (The haircut was inadvertently billed to the campaign, a spokesman later said).

There is a difference in the political reality: fairly or unfairly, a healthy chunk of the national political press corps doesn't like John Edwards.

Fairly or unfairly, there's also a difference in narrative timing: when the first quarter ended, the press was trying to bury Edwards. It's not so much interested in burying Romney right now -- many reporters think he's the Republican frontrunner.

Let's put aside the moronic idea that you can only express sympathy for the poor if you ARE poor. It's a thuddingly simple-minded argument that is almost unworthy of debate, if it wasn't coming from the media elite.

But the press has spent three months writing "Wow, I can't believe that Edwards haircut story has legs," while continuing to write about it. This is completely reminiscent of the way the press Heathers showed open contempt for Al Gore in 2000 or Howard Dean in 2004. They don't like people who aren't part of their club, and they're quite willing to go the extra mile in assuring that they will be knocked down a peg. And alternative media is simply not large enough to offer much of a counterweight. So this usually works. Edwards is now fourth in New Hampshire and slipping nationally as well. It sounds like a conspiracy theory to suggest that the media manipulates the narrative to favor candidates they like and punish candidates they hate. But this isn't just me saying it; this is a member of the press corps telling you "a healthy chunk of the national political press corps doesn't like John Edwards." And he uses the caveat of "fairly or unfairly." I've got news for you, it's unfair. Wholly and completely.

The blog reactions to this are excellent. LGM:

Granting that Ambinder isn't quite endorsing it, I'm amazed that anyone can see the question of whether or not reporters should use their reporting not to inform readers but to irresponsibly indulge their petty superficial prejudices about the individual candidates as a fairly debatable proposition. This open press corps contempt for Gore defined campaign 2000, and personally I think there are a lot of dead soldiers and Iraqis who think that what a president will actually do in office is more important that his or her suits and haircuts.

Digby:

Now, I am not especially surprised that the press corps doesn't like John Edwards. Many of these people probably didn't like guys like him in high school either and one thing we know about the political press corps is that they have never matured beyond the 11th grade. (See: chilean bass stupidity.) But I have to ask, once again, just who in the hell these people think they are and why they think they are allowed to pick our candidates for us based upon their own "feelings" about them? I don't recall electing them to anything. (But, hey, maybe we should just poll the kewl kidz and find out which candidate they "like, totally, like" and we can cancel the election and save a lot of time and money.)

This is exactly this kind of thing that makes people like me laugh when I get lectured by professional journalists about "objectivity" and "ethics." At least I put my political biases up front. These phonies hide behind a veil of journalistic conventions so they can exercise their psychologically stunted desire to stick it to the BMOC, or the dork or whoever these catty little gossips want to skewer for their own pleasure that day. Please, please, no more hand-wringing sanctimony from reporters about the undisciplined, unethical blogosphere. Their glass houses are lying in shards all around their feet.

There is a legitimate question to be asked about why John Edwards' approach to the issue of poverty isn't exciting the poor. In fact, other Presidential candidates are trying to exploit it on the basis of authenticity. Here's what I think is going on. The fact that our politics have been so cynically manipulated by a group of unelected tastemakers, I would say, offers the explanation as to why authenticity, an ephemeral and impossible-to-read emotion, is seen to matter so much. We've been told for so long that every word out of a politician's mouth is "political," that there is no such thing as conviction, that of course voters believe that candidates are "telling me what I want to hear." This can even fool some of the best among us. And who creates this impression? An unelected, unaccountable media elite, who operates from the biases of claass and privilege, who is immediately skeptical of anyone who doesn't hew to the corporate centrist Beltway line, and who will ACTIVELY SUBVERT them through their role as a filter between politicians and the people.

John Edwards announced his campaign for President in New Orleans, created a program in Eastern North Carolina to help struggling kids get through college, goes on a tour of poverty-stricken communities that no other national leaders will visit, talks about economic fairness and responsible school integration and equality of opportunity and all sorts of uniquely American ideas enshrined in our core values. This is in a time when practically nobody else appears to give a damn about growing inequality which is the greatest threat to our economic security. And the media Heathers look at this and sniff and turn up their noses because they might have to go to those depressed areas to cover him and it's all so unseemly. They stopped covering him during the 2004 Vice Presidential campaign because he spoke in too many small towns and rural areas. They don't like him and they don't want him to be President. There's no better reason to support him.

Did you know that Edwards has had 3 suspicious packages delivered to his campaign offices already this year? Of course you didn't, Edwards is mean and uncouth and nobody likes him. Did you know about his appearance in Roanoke yesterday? Why would I, it wasn't in the New York Times and anyway he paid too much for a haircut.

The media is laying down a guantlet that John Edwards is not "their" candidate. He'll come in and trash the place, and it's not his place. That's the small-mindedness of our press corps, and also it speaks to their belief in their own power, which they choose not to use to hold elected officials accountable, but to play a giant game of winners and losers based on who's most likely to sit next to them in the lunchroom. The media, the Beltway punditocracy in particular, has not learned one iota the lessons of 2000, and will continue to play this high-school crap FOREVER, until their stature dwindles to the point where it doesn't matter anymore. It would be good to let them know that you don't care for this kind of garbage, that as an American you wish to make your electoral choices on the merits and not through their filter. We've grown up since high school. The media hasn't.

UPDATE: Pardon me, but fuck the fucking media.

Elizabeth Edwards has just written in to Slate to slam the online mag's chief political reporter, John Dickerson, for insinuating that she and John Edwards are using her cancer in an ad for political gain.

She was responding to a Dickerson piece in Slate today bearing this intriguing subhed: "A new ad exploits the suffering of the Edwards family. But that's okay."

Apparently Elizabeth Edwards saying in an ad that John is a man who can "stare the worst in the face and not blink" means he's inauthentically exploiting his wife's cancer. What kind of twisted people are these? Why couldn't that be the events of 9-11, for example, which is exactly how they would attribute it to Rudy Giuliani no matter what personal tragedies have befallen him?

Check the link to see Elizabeth's repsonse. I'm beyond enraged to see good people being kneecapped for no good reason. We have to get their backs.