Privileging the Opposition

Howard Kurtz finally opened his trap about the Birther movement yesterday on CNN, actually appearing to understand the issue.

On his Reliable Sources show today, CNN’s Howard Kurtz criticized Dobbs and others in the media who have given airtime to the “fringe of the fringe” that is the “birther” crowd. “These are ludicrous claims, there is no factual basis for them,” said Kurtz. “Why give the birthers any airtime?” He then specifically criticized Dobbs for not acting “responsible”:

KURTZ: Callie Crossley, Lou Dobbs on his radio show said, “I believe the president is a citizen of the United States.” But he keeps raising these questions, complaining about criticism from “limp-minded, lily-livered lefties.” Is it responsible for Dobbs and others to go on the air, talk about these claims, demand proof, when we have seen a copy of the birth certificate? When Hawaii officials say that Barack Obama was born there in 1961?

CROSSLEY: It absolutely is not responsible.

"Giving airtime" is precisely the point. The news media, whether legitimizing the Birthers or disputing them, have paid far more attention to them than they ever did the 9-11 Truthers or any other crazy and actually irrelevant conspiracy theorists:

Ask yourself this: What would have happened if, in July of 2002, Lou Dobbs would have conducted respectful interviews with various Truthers, in the course of which Dobbs called on the Bush administration to prove by documentary evidence that the U.S. government hadn’t actually carried out the 9/11 attacks?

The answer is obvious: Dobbs would have been fired before the next morning—which is another way of saying that it’s inconceivable that he or any other mainstream media figure would ever do such a thing. Similarly, it’s equally inconceivable that any Democratic member of Congress would go on a program like Hardball and repeatedly refuse to say whether he rejected the idea that the Bush administration was behind the 9/11 attacks.

The short answer is that conservative media figures and politicians are essentially afraid of and courteous to the craziest part of their right-wing base, while liberal politicians hold them in contempt. This is true even in those cases where the "conspiracy" has a fair bit of evidence, say, in the stolen election in Florida in 2000.

I don't doubt that the Birther issue is a headache for the GOP, but they respond to it seriously, giving it some breathing space, rather than self-loathing Democrats like Collin Peterson, who are so contemptuous of their own citizens that they'd rather cancel all access to their constituents.

Out-party politicians have long had to deal with conspiracy theorists on their side — the people who think that the Clintons killed Vince Foster or that the Bush administration helped orchestrate the Sept. 11 attacks.

“Twenty-five percent of my people believe the Pentagon and Rumsfeld were responsible for taking the twin towers down,” said Rep. Collin Peterson, a Democrat who represents a conservative Republican district in Minnesota. “That’s why I don’t do town meetings.”

Now I don't want to get into an argument about which crazy conspiracy theorists get more respect from official discourse. But this doesn't stop there. It seeps into the mainstream in other ways, on other issues. The best recent example concerns Chris Matthews' harping on abortion funding in the health care bill based on 100% conservative framing, plucked out of The Weekly Standard (by his own admission):

MSNBC's Chris Matthews is illustrative of the approach to the topic some have taken. Matthews, who acknowledges his approach to this topic has been shaped by the conservative Weekly Standard, has made his opposition to coverage for abortion clear, claiming President Obama "says they're going to reduce the number of abortions, and that same week he pushes to subsidize abortion? You can't do that."

On a recent Hardball, Matthews questioned Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin and Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch about the topic, asking leading questions that encouraged them to state their opposition to insurance coverage of abortion. But Matthews didn't ask them -- and hasn't asked any other guest -- one simple question: Why shouldn't abortions be covered, given that the procedure is legal? Nor has he asked if there are any other legal procedures that shouldn't be covered.

Instead, Matthews has adopted the premise that taxpayer funds shouldn't be used to pay for abortions, no matter how indirectly, because some taxpayers believe abortion to be immoral. On Wednesday's Hardball, for example, Matthews asked Obama adviser David Axelrod: "[I]f the federal government spends money on abortions, that means people who believe abortion is evil would be forced to have their tax money go to pay for abortions. How do you justify that?"

That premise is only superficially compelling, and has no business underlying an impartial news report. After all, millions of Americans believe the death penalty and wars of choice are immoral. But the moral beliefs of pacifists and death penalty opponents are not granted the privilege the media grants opposition to legal abortion -- and so you rarely see a news report premised on the idea that taxpayer funding for war or capital punishment is inappropriate.

How the Birther issue has been handled in Washington is a teachable moment, one that shows how the Beltway remains wired for conservatives, no matter how crazy.

Please Give Me Daily Show Airtime

It's clear that Tucker Carlson, well past his prime at the tender age of 39, was trolling for a response from Jon Stewart on Howard Kurtz' show in a desperate attempt to return to relevancy. The comments are hardly worth mentioning (I guess Tucker, who represented "the right" on Crossfire for close to a decade, doesn't consider himself partisan). But isn't the real person who should get a response to this Howard Kurtz, and his booker? How could a media criticism show possibly have someone as biased against Jon Stewart as the guy who was subject to the same kind of takedown five years ago and expect anything approaching a dispassionate analysis? To Kurtz' credit, he did play the Stewart/Carlson Crossfire clip, and asked him if it "colored" his view of the situation, but I'm wondering what value there is putting him on that show at all. He's going to lie about the interview, lie about Stewart's role, and lie about his own background. The verdict from a media standpoint is pretty clear - perhaps Carlson offers some kind of contrarian counter-perspective, but considering that he's still licking 5 year-old wounds, how is that perspective newsworthy? It's like bringing on John McCain to talk about Barack Obama... what, they do that too? Never mind.

I guess you could extrapolate that out and wonder the value in Howard Kurtz himself. However, in his print piece he at least got a statement from CNBC: "CNBC produces more than 150 hours of live television a week that includes more than 850 interviews in the service of exposing all sides of every critical financial and economic issue. We are proud of our record." They denied interview requests and refused to offer anything further. But an actual media critic would critique the media instead of giving audience to a defeated polemicist.

Turnabout, Fair Play, Etc.

It's about time somebody slammed Howard Kurtz for his multiple conflicts of interest. His interview with CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier when his wife is the publicist for her book is one thing (he disclosed this at the tail end of the glowing profile). But here's the guy who is supposed to be the nation's foremost media critic, yet he's employed by the Washington Post and CNN/Time-Warner, two of the nation's largest media companies. Not to mention that practically everything he promotes as a major media ethics story has the uncanny knack of bubbling up through some right-wing blog site. He's been a hack for some time and the Dozier interview is the least of the transgressions.

My Kingdom For A Functioning Media

One thing that drives me mental is trying to understand why political pundits become political reporters, when they clearly just want to be sports reporters. In politics there are vital issues and ideologies and competing interests to sort through, but all establishment media reporters want to write about is how issues help or hurt a various candidate or party. And when that horse-race stuff becomes boring, due in some part to their incessant babbling about it, they feel inclined to move on, but not to policy considerations or drawing differences between candidates, but to relentlessly personal and meaningless pieces of information.

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz has weighed in with a long piece today on the fact that the press is lavishing a huge amount of attention on Hillary's laugh.

Kurtz explains this phenomenon thusly:

"The subtext here is that the media have collectively decided that the wife of the 42nd president is the inevitable nominee and a good bet to become the 44th Oval Office occupant. Lacking much of a horse race, since Clinton has maintained a 20-point national lead over Barack Obama all year, journalists are resorting to a classic general-election question: Are Americans ready to have this woman in their living rooms every night for four years? Are they comfortable with her personality? Do they like her voice?

Plus, examining her personality quirks is more fun than deconstructing her stance on Iraq."

It may be "more fun," but determining the leader of the free world isn't a fucking sandbox. "More fun" is less critical than "more important." Furthermore, the absolute smugness of a media collectively deciding that Hillary Clinton will be President (and therefore it's time to tear her down personally) is a bit too much to bear. There's a chicken-or-the-egg argument here: did the media decide this because of Hillary's ascendence in national polls, which are of dubious value anyway, or did the insistence of the media that Hillary's nomination is inevitable lead to that ascendence?

There's no question that Hillary Clinton is the frontrunner for the nomination. There's no question that the national polls have been static. But these facts don't give the media carte blanche to spin off into deconstructing her LAUGH because they're bored. What are they, 6? In this time of global turmoil, you're telling me there's nothing more compelling to write about?

Apparently, Jon Stewart slammed Chris Matthews last night about his book, which applies this stupid gamesmanship to actual life. I haven't seen it yet. But I do know that we can't afford another election cycle with a media that acts like a bored adolescent at the mall. Something tells me that Pravda would be better than this.