29% Favor National Health Insurance Overseen by Federal Government
Uh-oh. This is a signature issue for both Obama and Clinton. Is it really possible that so few Americans care about it? Fully 39% of respondents said they were against a “government led initiative.” Wow.
Rasmussen runs down some of the other puzzling results:
An earlier survey found that just 31% rate the U.S. health care system as good or excellent.
At the same time, people give much higher reviews to their own health care coverage.
Another survey found that half of all Americans say they support providing free health care for all citizens. However, support for free coverage drops dramatically if it would require changing to a new insurance program.
Like all polls, this just shows that Americans have all kinds of opinions, many of which contradict one another. This last survey finding, however, points to a tendency among human beings—and that is the tendency to support (in theory) ideas that sound good (like providing free health care)—until we are actually required to do something to effect that change. Then we’re reluctant.
There’s a difference between being pro-war, anti-war, anti-this particular war, and anti-this kind of preventive war. Opposing our continued presence in a hellish quagmire, in other words, is different than actually articulating your philosophy on the use of force and the point of foreign policy. Which is why Matthew Yglesias’ new book Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats is actually that rarest of election-year tomes: A useful intervention into the debate. (Full disclosure: Yglesias is a contributor to this site and a friend of mine.) Rather than simply re-litigating the argument over the Iraq War, Yglesias situates the war, and the debate that led to the invasion, in the context of longer-running arguments about the proper direction of U.S. foreign policy. In particular, he laments the relative abandonment of the vision liberals have held dear since World War II — that of a rules-based international order in which America sacrifices a certain amount of autonomy in order to gain a greater measure of legitimacy, and works mightily to create, preserve, and strengthen international institutions that let other countries do the same. Those who would promote liberal values, in other words, need also submit to them.
The lamentably pompous Klein then goes on to elaborate Yglesias’s thesis [e.a.]:
The rhetoric of international affairs has long had a militaristic and even self-consciously heroic character. The “Greatest Generation,” after all, is remembered for bravely saving the world from the menace of Hitler, not for the U.N. and Bretton Woods and the Marshall Plan, initiatives that ushered in an era of international cooperation and created structures that largely headed off further violent conflict between great powers. The moment was popularly defined by its heroism, even if its lasting legacy would be the work that went into preventing the necessity of such dramatic interventions in the future.
It’s a neat trick to simply skip over the inconvenient parts of history—like the fact that it was necessary to utterly destroy the enemy on several continents in order to lay the foundation for the rosy post-war “consensus“— in order to make your “argument.”
Klein then goes on to explain history by tracing the arc of comic book heroes:
This came out in the cultural products of the moment. Superman, created in 1938, appeared on the cover of his comic book shaking Hitler and Tojo by the scruff of their necks. Similarly, his patriotic contemporary, Captain America, was originally portrayed clocking Hitler in the jaw. Neither one received cover art that depicted diplomacy. [really? how odd that a diplomat wouldn't get the cover treatment! ---ed.]
Yet the internationalist vision was more deeply interwoven into our cultural fabric than we often realize. Superman and Captain America were superheroes of an odd sort: tremendously powerful beings whose primary struggle was often to follow the self-imposed rules and strictures that lent their power a moral legitimacy. Neither allowed themselves to kill, and both sought to work within the law. Given their strength, either could have sought world domination, and even if they didn’t, they could have been viewed with deep suspicion and even hatred by those who were convinced that they one day would seek world domination. It was only by following ostentatiously strict moral codes that they could legitimize their power and thus exist cooperatively with a world that had every right to fear them.
I don’t read comics, but I suspect that this last bit was a post-1980 ethos for the superheroes—it sounds kinda politically correct to me. But never mind. What’s really funny is that Klein levels the playing field between fictional protagonists in pop culture and people in real life with actual power:
This, fundamentally, is the foreign-policy debate in our country. Liberals see America possessing tremendous power that must be tempered and legitimized by the rules we choose to follow and the restraint we choose to apply. Conservatives see great vulnerabilities that can only be assuaged through sufficient application of violence and will. And that’s the choice: Do we want the foreign policy of Jack Bauer and John Yoo, or of Clark Kent and George Marshall? It’s a question that Gen. Petraeus, sadly, has no answer for.
And what’s even funnier is that Klein, perhaps the silliest member of the new circle-jerk brigade, regularly appears on “cablenews” as some kind of “expert”!
“The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.”
(via Glenn Reynolds, who refers to this as “Obamanomics.”)
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m wondering when TV “journalists” will face the truth about their profession—namely, that what you see below is not just the future of “the news” but also the present.
Fishbowl quotes some of the “juicy bits” from the upcoming NYT Mag article:
“By the way, have you figured me out yet?” Matthews said at the end of another phone conversation the following day. “You gotta under-stand, it’s all complicated. It’s not like Tim.” Tim — as in Russert, the inquisitive jackhammer host of “Meet the Press” — is a particular obsession of Matthews’s. Matthews craves Russert’s approval like that of an older brother. He is often solicitous.
In an interview with Playboy a few years ago, he volunteered that he had made the list of the Top 50 journalists in D.C. in The Washingtonian magazine. “I’m like 36th, and Tim Russert is No. 1,” Matthews told Playboy. “I would argue for a higher position for myself.”
Friends say Matthews is wary of another up-and-comer, David Gregory, who last month was given a show at 6 o’clock, between airings of “Hardball.” It is a common view around NBC that Gregory is trying out as a possible replacement for Matthews.
According to people at NBC, Matthews has not been shy in voicing his resentment of Olbermann. Nor, according to network sources, has Olbermann bothered to hide his low regard for Matthews, although when I spoke to him, Olbermann denied any personal animosity toward Matthews and told me that he appreciates his “John Madden-like enthusiasm for politics.”
Hmmm. Recognize anyone?
Laurence Olivier as Archie Rice, in The Entertainer
London, 1957, photo by Snowden
p.s. The last time I used that image was here, in May 2007.
I’m not particularly interested in political bias in the media—it’s impossible to prove, and, as we see in the endless arguments over Obama vs. Clinton, it is an absurdity to claim that the media has a “liberal” bias, since both candidates are (nominally) liberal.
What I am interested in, though, is the editorial judgment that resulted in the following: a story about General Petraeus, John McCain, and Hillary Clinton that is illustrated by a photograph of Barack Obama basking in the glow of the photographers’ flashes.
The war in Iraq collided with White House ambitions in a politically ripe hearing room on Capitol Hill Tuesday as two would-be commanders-in-chief — Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain – swooped in from the campaign trail to question the top American commander in Baghdad, Gen. David H. Petraeus, and to make veiled attacks on each other.
A third potential commander-in-chief, Senator Barack Obama, was set to duel with General Petraeus later today
Was the editor afraid that we’d be so swept away by McCain’s and Clinton’s words that we’d forget all about Obama for the one minute that it took us to read the article?
As Politico notes, Obama asked for it, and he got it—evidence for all to see that, like every other politician known to man (and woman), he is a liar:
[youtube][/youtube]
I mention this, and not Hillary Clinton’s repeated lies, because we all expect Clinton to lie. She’s a Clinton, after all, and is advised by the former Liar-in-Chief. Her lying isn’t newsworthy.
When Obama lies, however—and when he challenges his interlocutor to prove him wrong and the cyber elves do prove him wrong and the rest of us then spread it around for everyone to see—well, then Obama loses.
If his genius campaign manager David Axelrod hadn’t created a totally false image of Obama the Messiah, none of this would matter now. But because he launched a celebrity with a halo instead of a warts-and-all politician, his client will continue to have problems.
Just in time for the Episode Two of The Petraeus Show, which pre-game “reviewers” analyzed and critiqued well in advance of opening night (see the headlines on Memeorandum (at 9:30 a.m., just before showtime), Gallup releases poll results on Americans’ attitudes toward the war in Iraq.
Upshot [e.a.]:
The 2008 presidential election will present voters with a clear choice on Iraq, with Republicans putting forth one of the Senate’s fiercest supporters of the war and Democrats choosing one of two leading Senate opponents, including Obama, who has made his opposition to the war from the beginning a major focus of his campaign. If McCain is elected, U.S. policy on Iraq will likely continue as it has under the Bush administration, with slower troop drawdowns tied to progress in establishing security in Iraq. If Obama or Clinton is elected, finding a quick end to the war will likely be the new president’s top priority.
In general, the public tends to side with the Democrats from the standpoint of favoring a timetable, but relatively few advocate a quick withdrawal. And most seem sympathetic to the Republican argument about the United States needing to establish a certain level of security before leaving Iraq.
Call me crazy, but it looks to me as if, all things considered, Americans would rather stick around and do the right thing by Iraqis than just get out.
It’s my opinion, based on an anthropological reading of the culture, that Americans would like to win in Iraq—as we like to win everywhere, because we Americans are a profoundly competitive people—but the conventional wisdom these days says otherwise.
Yesterday, Cokie Roberts — while expressing scorn for the “Responsible Plan for Withdrawal” advocated by 42 Democratic Congressional candidates and numerous military experts, and described by fellow panelist Katerina Vanden Heuvel of The Nation — said this:
VANDEN HEUVEL: It is not, but you know what, the responsible thing to do is withdraw. [you hear Cokie odiously chuckling at this point]
VANDEN HEUVEL: If we withdraw responsibly, the region would be more stable in the long term, America will be restored as a responsible global leader, and there are 42 challengers, you are absolutely right Cokie, who have a responsible plan to withdraw.
ROBERTS: Convincing the electorate of that I think would be very difficult, and I also agree that the notion that Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham you heard this morning putting forward, that Americans would prefer to win, is–
VANDEN HEUVEL: But what is winning? This war is unwinnable, there are no military solutions.
The video is also here. Roberts’ claim — that Americans agree with McCain, Graham and her that withdrawal is a bad idea and that they want to stay until we win — is just a lie. There’s no other way to put that.
Really? I don’t see any evidence to back up your claim, Mr. Greenwald. We may quibble about whether Americans want to “win” (since they’re repeatedly told by the MSM that we cannot win) or whether they just want to do the right thing, but the polling (for what it’s worth) suggests that relatively fewer people want to just get the hell out of there and call it “responsible.”
All things considered, people seem much more interested in the political theater surrounding The Petraeus Show. Here’s a gem from the NYT:
Testimony by General Will Test Candidates for President
All three senators running for president — John McCain of Arizona, Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois — will have a chance to question General Petraeus and Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador to Baghdad. Each of the three is determined to use the spectacle to advantage, but all face political risks as well as opportunities in the back-to-back hearings before the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees. …
Mr. McCain, a Republican, has the logistical advantage in appearing before his two Democratic competitors. General Petraeus is set to testify first to the Armed Services Committee, beginning at 9:30 a.m., and Mr. McCain, the ranking Republican member, will be the second to speak, after the committee chairman, Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan.
Mrs. Clinton, a more junior member of the panel, will speak later. Mr. Obama, a junior member of the Foreign Relations Committee, which is holding its hearing in the afternoon, will be the 13th on that panel to speak, perhaps after the evening news.
The headline of this piece (referring to a “test”) is yet more evidence of Andrew Tyndall’s thesis about the nexus between the campaigns and the media and the gameshow-type coverage that has evolved during this election cycle.
As for the substance of the NYT’s Elizabeth Bumiller’s piece: she suggests that Obama’s testimony occuring “after the evening news” would be a bad thing.
Cable “news” is the thing, dontcha know? Who cares if Obama’s “test” occurs last on the floor of the Senate? It will happen just in time for Campbell Brown of CNN and Keith Olbermann to lead with it!
Randi Rhodes agrees with Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro on everything - abortion, health care, climate change, you name it. Yet the first is “a f***ing whore” and the second is “David Duke in drag” merely because they disagree on which Democratic senator would make the best president. …
There’s something rather heartening about this for those of us on the right who’ve been on the receiving end of the left’s vehemence: Apparently there really is nothing personal about it. You can be a chickenhawk warmonger racist homophobe mysogynist Bush shill or a pro-feminist pro-gay pro-black icon of progressive politics for a generation, but, if you cross the likes of Randi Rhodes, you’re all the same and you merit the same four-letter words and KKK slurs.
I can see why Steyn would be comforted to know that his critics are irrational by definition and not just mad at him. But that doesn’t help us, as a country and as a society, deal with the dime-store demagoguery that now characterizes our public “discourse.”
Demagogues of all stripes should be discouraged, marginalized, de-fanged, deligitimized, and brought down. They’re dangerous in any society, because they stir up mob sentiment.
Television is virtually a news-free zone—quick! how many TV programs can you name that tell you, with facts and figures and no spin or attitude, who, what, why, where, and when? huh? how many?—and yet supposedly sophisticated TV critics, like the NYT’s Alessandra Stanley, still refer to something called “cable news.”
The funniest thing about it, though, is that Stanley calls it “news”while describing it, essentially, as an unprecedented media and campaign clusterfuck [e.a.]:
The distinction of all three new hourlong programs is that the hosts are not the stars, the campaign is. Speeches, interviews, surrogate gaffes, opinion polls, delegate math and even party deliberations are showcased with the same swooshing sound effects and flashy graphics that tip viewers to an appearance by George Clooney on “Live With Regis and Kelly.”
It’s a marked change for cable news, which over the last few years has followed the lead of Fox News and promoted vividly opinionated hosts who shape the news flow to suit their own personas and pet peeves. It’s also refreshing …
I wouldn’t call it refreshing. I would call it over-the-top infotainment. But Stanley has got one thing right—it’s the campaigns that are the stars of these shows, and the folks running the campaigns understand the circus atmosphere that is today’s media world (much more so than does Alessandra Stanley. That’s why they’ve got their candidates doing the Ellen show, etc.
This kind of coverage is also, as Stanley points out, a ratings boon for the cable shows:
The public has not been this passionately absorbed in an election in decades, and the candidates are passionately intent on making their case on television. When they do, viewership goes up: it’s a boon for the 24-hour news channels, but even they are hard-pressed to keep up with the constant flow of debates, photo ops, tarmac tirades, so many words spoken and misspoken and so many talk-show appearances.
The candidates show up not just on “Meet the Press” or “60 Minutes,” but also on “Saturday Night Live” (Senator John McCain’s star turn dates back to 2002). More recently, Senator Barack Obama kissed and cuddled the ladies of “The View,” Mr. McCain traded insults with David Letterman on his “Late Show,” and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton joked about dodging sniper fire to arrive at “The Tonight Show” on time for Jay Leno. Mrs. Clinton is also scheduled to appear on “Ellen” on Monday, her first appearance on Ellen DeGeneres’s talk show since Mr. Obama’s last one. (In that appearance, Mr. Obama upped the ante by dancing for her — his second effort to, as he put it, “bust a move.”)
And the cycle is endless and self-sustaining: satirical shows like “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and “Saturday Night Live” take clips from the news and make fun of them; news programs take skits from “Saturday Night Live” and replay them.
Stop thinking of this election as a race to the wire to be won by the candidate with the finest pedigree, truest form and best connections. Start thinking of it as a cast of larger-than-life characters, scheming against each other while simultaneously trying to appear attractive to the electorate audience. Week by week the group undergoes media trials such as candidate debates and Sunday morning interviews. Each primary election constitutes another potential elimination round.
The winner gets to be a constant television presence in our homes for four years.
With open contests in both parties, this Presidential cycle offered the perfect opportunity to unveil this new method of coverage. The casting of the contestants could not have been better. In one tribe, as they say on Survivor, there was a handsome Mormon businessman, a colorful big city mayor, a slimmed-down Baptist minister and a crusty war hero. The other tribe had a self-made trial lawyer, a globetrotting Hispanic diplomat, a diligent feminist with that interesting celebrity marriage and an inspirational young African-American.
As you will have noticed, I’m neither running for public office nor interested in a position in the punditocracy or the commentariat. If I were, I’m sure I’d have to think about the appropriate time and place to exercise vigorous public self-criticism and self-flagellation and renounce and reject and denounce my agreement in 2003 with the decision of our Asshole in Chief to topple Saddam Hussein.
In fact, though, I do not renounce my decision. Considering what we knew and feared at the time—and considering the way that Saddam reacted to the pressure placed on him (evasively)—it seemed like the right decision. I have no reason now to second-guess what was my best judgment at the time (which is one reason I support Hillary Clinton; she thinks the same was I do about t his—and she has a lot more to lose and still she has stuck to her guns ***).
Kroft begins by asking, “Why did the United States invade Iraq?” Feith responds, “The President decided that the threats from the Saddam Hussein regime were so great that if we had left him in power, we would be fighting him down the road, at a time and place of his choosing.”
If Feith doesn’t look or sound much like a warrior that’s because he isn’t; he’s an intellectual, a hawkish, neo-conservative defense policy wonk, who occupied one of the top rungs on the Pentagon ladder, playing a key role in shaping the military’s response to 9/11 and the decision to go to war with Saddam Hussein.
Asked why was the decision made to go after Saddam Hussein after 9/11, when even then, the United States government realized Saddam didn’t have anything to do with the attacks, Feith answers, “What we did after 9/11 was look broadly at the international terrorist network from which the next attack on the United States might come. And we did not focus narrowly only on the people who were specifically responsible for 9/11. Our main goal was preventing the next attack.”
Kroft follows up, asking, “So you’re saying you didn’t think it was that important to go after the people who were responsible for it — more important to go after people who weren’t responsible for it?”
“No,” Feith explains, “I think it was important to go after the people who were responsible for 9/11. But it was also important to disrupt the international terrorist networks and prevent whatever plans there were for follow-on attacks.”
Kroft observes that using those standards, the U.S. could have invaded North Korea or Syria or Iran. Feith concedes the point, but counters that Iraq was a special case, in large part, because of Saddam’s record.
Saddam had already attacked Kuwait, Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia; that he had defied the United Nations, evaded economic sanctions, used weapons of mass destruction on his own people and had the know-how, if not the wherewithal, to build a nuclear weapon. Feith believes the U.S. invasion was justifiable as an act of self-defense. In his book, he uses the term “anticipatory self-defense.”
“In an era where WMDs can put countries in a position to do an enormous amount of harm,” he tells Kroft, “the old of idea of having to wait until you actually see the country mobilizing for war doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
Whatever you think of Feith’s rationale (and of my support for it!), there’s no question that the next president will encounter the same geopolitical problems and the same terrible uncertainties. That person will get calls at 3 a.m. and at 5 a.m. and at 10 p.m. and at midnight.
The long-predicted national debate about national security policy has yet to occur. Essentially tactical issues have overwhelmed the most important challenge a new administration will confront: how to distill a new international order from three simultaneous revolutions occurring around the globe: (a) the transformation of the traditional state system of Europe; (b) the radical Islamist challenge to historic notions of sovereignty; and (c) the drift of the center of gravity of international affairs from the Atlantic to the Pacific and Indian Oceans. …
No previous generation has had to deal with different revolutions occurring simultaneously in separate parts of the world. The quest for a single, all-inclusive remedy is chimerical. In a world in which the sole superpower is a proponent of the prerogatives of the traditional nation-state, where Europe is stuck in halfway status, where the Middle East does not fit the nation-state model and faces a religiously motivated revolution, and where the nations of South and East Asia still practice the balance of power, what is the nature of the international order that can accommodate these different perspectives? What should be the role of Russia, which is affirming a notion of sovereignty comparable to America’s and a strategic concept of the balance of power similar to Asia’s? Are existing international organizations adequate for this purpose? What goals can America realistically set for itself and the world community? Is the internal transformation of major countries an attainable goal? What objectives must be sought in concert, and what are the extreme circumstances that would justify unilateral action?
This is the kind of debate we need, not focus-group-driven slogans designed to grab headlines.
———–
*** Michael Tomasky, writing today in the Guardian, says that if and when Hillary finally loses, it will be because of her “refusal to renounce her support of the war,” for which he lays blame at the feet of Mark Penn.
Whatever. The only people who give a shit about which side you were on in the run-up to Iraq are partisan Democrats vying for jobs in Washington and/or the media elite, and of course the whippersnappers, for whom this is the Great Moral Question of the Day.
The New York Times refers to the phenomenon as a “new survivalism“:
[I]n Mr. Biggs’s new book, “Wealth, War and Wisdom,” he says people should “assume the possibility of a breakdown of the civilized infrastructure.”
“Your safe haven must be self-sufficient and capable of growing some kind of food,” Mr. Biggs writes. “It should be well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc. Think Swiss Family Robinson. Even in America and Europe there could be moments of riot and rebellion when law and order temporarily completely breaks down.”
Survivalism, it seems, is not just for survivalists anymore.
Faced with a confluence of diverse threats — a tanking economy, a housing crisis, looming environmental disasters, and a sharp spike in oil prices — people who do not consider themselves extremists are starting to discuss doomsday measures once associated with the social fringes.
They stockpile or grow food in case of a supply breakdown, or buy precious metals in case of economic collapse. Some try to take their houses off the electricity grid, or plan safe houses far away. The point is not to drop out of society, but to be prepared in case the future turns out like something out of “An Inconvenient Truth,” if not “Mad Max.”
Experiencing 9/11 (and its scary immediate aftermath) in New York City and then enduring the blackout in the summer of 2004—and, most horrifyingly, watching the disaster in the wake of Hurricane Katrina—made me realize that it is downright foolish not to be prepared for emergencies.
THE first time I saw it happen, in 2004, I was walking down 14th Street along Union Square on my way home, wondering what we were going to have for dinner that night. A dozen police cars came squealing around the corner, pulled up to the sidewalk, and parked with their back wheels on the curb.
My heartbeat went from zero to 60 (or whatever the actual cardiac equivalent is) in less than 60 seconds. The attacks of 9/11 hadn’t been all that long ago, and I wondered: Had something else happened? Was there a “problem” in the Union Square subway station? I thought of my husband, my sons. I ran through a mental list of friends and loved ones. Where were they? Were they in danger? Was everyone O.K.?
By now, I know better. What I witnessed was what the police called a critical response vehicle surge.
What Prose found frightening I find reassuring … but never mind. The point is that as reassuring as these shows of emergency preparedness are, they are in fact shows. We must all rely on ourselves, to the extent possible. The government and other authorities aren’t prepared to cope with massive catastrophes. If the catastrophe is in fact possible to ameliorate, it’s likely to take authorities up to 3 to 4 days to reach those who need help. Plan accordingly.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect something bad to happen. I take the Bush administration’s warning’s seriously. I take the words of Attorney General Mukasey seriously[e.a.].
At the time of the attacks, Mr. Mukasey was the chief judge at the federal courthouse a few blocks away from the World Trade Center. He was selected as attorney general in part because of his experience overseeing terrorism cases, but he said that did little to prepare him to deal with the daily briefing he receives about the threat to America.
“It is way beyond — way beyond anything that I knew or believed. So, if I was picked for the level of my knowledge of what I actually see, that was a massive piece of false advertising,” he said. “There’s a lot going on out there.”
So I think this tendency toward “survivalism” is understandable: there’s a lot of scary shit out there geopolitically, and on top of that, our media landscape and economy are in turmoil. Nothing is the same as it was, and no one knows where we’re headed or when things will settle into a new, more predictable pattern—if ever.
The net effect of this (apart from a growing awareness of the need to be self reliant) is that it’s starting to show up in our pop culture. When you go to the movies, all the trailers are for horror movies or doomsday scenarios or creepy terrors. On TV, the zero-sum reality game shows reflect a kind of struggle for the survival of the fittest. The cable talk shows likewise thrive on conflict. The political arena is a gladiatorial ring. Media culture thrives on the ruthless “gotcha” and takedowns.
We may hate war, but on some level we are not only preparing for it but waging it.
Once upon a time, Americans were urged to stay in shape to do that—to be self-reliant (by Ralph Waldo Emerson):
Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things.
Executives at “Frontline” do not yet know how many people watched their recent four-and-a-half hour documentary, “Bush’s War,” because of PBS’s complicated Nielsen ratings.Online, however, “Bush’s War,” which was produced for the fifth anniversary of the United States’ invasion of Iraq, has set a record, with more than 1.5 million views of all or part of the program, which was streamed in 26 segments.“Frontline” has streamed most of its documentaries free since 2002 (www.pbs.org/frontline), part of an effort to reach younger audiences than typically tune in to PBS. The online viewing to date of “Bush’s War,” which was broadcast in two parts on March 24 and 25, is an estimated “10 times the traffic of a normal show for us,” said Sam Bailey, the program’s director of new media and technology. Viewers are also sticking around much longer than they usually do on the site, typically for 7 to 10 minutes.
Who says that quality doesn’t sell?Think again.————–*** I have long been a devotee of Frontline. I’m on record as saying that I wish all hard-news on TV were done with the depth of Frontline documentaries. But of course I know it can’t and won’t happen.Still: kudos! serious television lives!
Possible Nazi Theme of Grand Prix Boss’s Orgy Draws Calls to Quit
Few scandals in recent years have provoked as much anger and dismay across Europe as the saga of Max Mosley, the overseer of grand prix motor racing who made tabloid news last weekend in a front-page exposé and accompanying Web video showing him in a sadomasochistic orgy with five supposed prostitutes in a London sex “dungeon.”
But beyond the licentiousness of the episode, it was the suggestion of Nazi undertones in the role-playing during the session in a basement in London’s fashionable Chelsea district that led to demands for Mr. Mosley’s resignation as president of the Paris-based Federation Internationale de l’Automobile.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, they say, and they would be right [e.a.]:
Family history has added to the notoriety: Mr. Mosley, 67, is the younger son of Britain’s 1930s fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, and the society beauty Diana Mitford, whose secret wedding in Berlin in October 1936 was held at the home of the Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels and included Hitler as a guest of honor.
Naturally, automakers are distancing themselves from this nasty episode and this nasty man. But he isn’t having any of it [e.a.]:
Mr. Mosley, undaunted, tried to turn the tables on BMW and Daimler Benz, which manufactures Mercedes-Benz cars, with a statement that raised the specter of the two companies’ own role during the Nazi era. … His statement held to his insistence that fault lay with the way in which his actions had been reported by The News of The World, and not with the actions themselves.
And the NYT’s John F. Burns ends with the kicker:
If he recognized the irony in the son of the man who led Britain’s “blackshirts” in reproving German companies for their wartime past, Mr. Mosley did not show it.
Or perhaps 9/11 will prove to be the beginning of an era when people will once again understand irony, and satire, the weapon of resistance par excellence. One can always hope.
Somehow I missed this a couple of months ago, but it’s still worth noting (in light of Roger L. Simon’s comment the other day).
You know things are really bad in MediaLand when Newsweek editor Jon Meacham has to try to convince j-school students that his magazine is better than The Economist, which they seem to prefer [e.a.]:
“And how to communicate that we have things to say that are both factually new and analytically new and to get you under the tent is a fact that scares me—not The Economist per se. It’s an incredible frustration that I’ve got some of the most decent, hard-working, honest, passionate, straight-shooting, non-ideological people who just want to tell the damn truth, and how to get this past this image that we’re just middlebrow, you know, a magazine that your grandparents get, or something, that’s the challenge. And I just don’t know how to do it, so if you’ve got any ideas, tell me.”
I haven’t picked up Newsweek in at least twenty years. I pick up The Economist occasionally, but I never have time to read it. If I did have (or take) the time to read a newsweekly, though, I would definitely choose The Economist, which covers everything in-depth, at leisure, in a thoughtful way, with background, and free of cant; and whose editorial staff indicates that it has an interest in understanding the whole world—often from the perspective of those living abroad, not from a distinctly American point of view.
I think American journalism’s biggest weakness is its obsessive solipsism. For a media elite that prides itself on its sophistication, the columnists and commentators whose opinions seem to matter (in both the MSM and the blogosphere) are maddeningly—and even frighteningly, considering the bad intentions of some of the bad actors out there—provincial and America-centric.
That’s my cosmopolitanism showing, though, and I don’t consider myself a laboratory. I certainly don’t represent any typical bloc of voters. Still, some of the comments at the New York Observer site reflect my point of view. Like this one:
Dear Jon Meacham, you just don’t get it. I (a well-educated consumer of print journalism) do not exactly look down on Newsweek. I’m a big fan of yours, too. Nobody doubts that it has good journalism, even though it is is a somewhat dumbed-down, glossly format. But the Economist offers something beyond coverage of the same three, U.S.-focused issues. The Economist is far from perfect; it has a lot of problems. But, the fact is, there is a whole lot more going on in the world than the U.S. presidential election, Iraq, and Afghanistan, important as these issues may be. A lot more. The Economist regularly reports on issues in every region. The U.S. news media, a decade or so ago, got hooked on the “big story.” That’s a great scale economy, but is really does not do the trick. So, you know, if you want to become more global in your coverage and aim straight for the cosmopolitan set, without dumbing it down, then you will get new readers. But, I suspect you will lose a lot, too. You’d have to lay out more money for less subscribers. I doubt you will do that…
Yep. I think the narrow focus and simplistic storylines don’t appeal to those (the educated) who are willing to take out the time to read a newsweekly. It’s also likely that the concept of a newsweekly is hopelessly outdated. News comes in rivers! It’s everywhere! Who cares what happened last week, fer crissakes? If we’re interested in the “news,” we wanna know what’s happening now.
But another reader at the Observer offers a different kind of critique, specific to Newsweek’s reporting—its compact with its readers—, and backs it up with evidence [I have taken the liberty of adding a link to the AJR piece he quotes, which I've been meaning to write about for a very long time but never got around to; it is the clearest indication by far that newsrooms now consider themselves to be primarily in the storytelling (rather than fact-reporting) business [e.a.]:
Baby Boomer Professor (not verified) says:
Dear Mr. Meacham,
You can’t figure out why we have deserted Newsweek because the political correctness you stand for made it unwise for us to tell you the truth. I subscribed to Newsweek for years. I remember George Will’s column pooh-poohing the China Syndrome the week Three Mile Island happened. I waited gleefully for Will’s next column, which came out headlined, “As I was Saying…” Once leaving Newsweek was as unthinkable as leaving the Democratic Party. But then came your beloved Clintons, and you changed.
Here’s your public face, the obnoxious Evan Thomas, trying to put the best spin on heading the Duke lynch mob:
[On Newsweek's coverage of the Duke rape case]: “The narrative was properly about race, sex and class…. We went a beat too fast in assuming that a rape took place…. We just got the facts wrong. The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong.”
– American Journalism Review, August/September 2007 issue.[1]
Consider the mind-blowing implications of that “defense” of Newsweek’s abominable reporting—they got the story right; it was only the facts (which is to say: everything) they got wrong. Huh? You can see why some former devotees of American journalism are shaking their heads and wondering what’s happened to the news business (beyond the obvious disappearance of news reporting from TV).
There’s a call for a nationwide “sacred conversation about race.” Naturally, it comes from the disgraced church under whose aegis the not-sacred Rev. Jeremiah Wright preached for 35 years:
Rev. H. John Thomas, General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ, speaks at a press conference at Trinity United Church of Christ Thursday, April 4, 2008 in Chicago announcing that the UCC , joined by the National Council or the Churches of Christ in the USA are calling for a nationwide “sacred conversation” abut race in the United States.
Naturally, this call would come from the disgraced outfit under whose aegis the not-sacred Rev. Jeremiah Wright nurtured grievances and spread poisonous lies to his parishioners for more than two decades.
As you can see by following this Google News link, there’s more about the shoplifting than about her movie.*** That’s because the critics weren’t kind, if the NYT’s Manohla Dargis’s review gives any indication:
Oh, yes, Winona Ryder, who memorably starred in “Heathers,” shows up periodically as Death Nell, a mysterious vamp with a Black Widow complex and some nasty black heels. I’m not exactly sure what she’s doing in this film, and I don’t believe that Mr. Waters or Ms. Ryder know either.
It seems like it was so long ago that Winona Ryder mattered to anybody, doesn’t it? Does anyone care about Hollywood anymore?
I sat with three of the most popular actors of the past few decades — Robert Redford, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise — who were promoting their new film, Lions for Lambs. I posed to them an indelicate question: Are movie stars obsolete? Consternation erupted as the three quickly and forcefully dismissed the idea.
Well, they would, since they have not only their livelihoods but their entire egos invested in the notion that the system that has been in place since they can remember will always be there. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Old media is imploding. Not even the movies have a hold over us anymore.
————-
*** Once upon a time (back in 1994, in Rolling Stone magazine), Ryder was lecturing other young stars about how grateful they should be for their success:
“For a long time, I was almost ashamed of being an actress,” Ryder says. “I felt like it was a shallow occupation. I’d go to see a band with friends from school, and people would be watching every move I made. They’ be judging me: ‘Look at her shoes! I bet those cost $400!’ That affected me. I grew up with no money.” …
Ryder often beats me to the next question.
“Why am I so defensive? I’m defensive because it offends me so much when… OK, I don’t want to fuck this up… I knew a lot of young actors who live in these dumps. They have their books scattered, and their mattress is on the floor - and they’re millionaires. That’s fine. That’s their way of living. But the reason they’re doing it is that they’re ashamed. And I’ve talked to them about it. You just want to say, ‘Don’t live this way to show people that you’re real and you’re deep.’ It offends me, because I know what it’s like to be in poverty, and it’s not fun, and it’s not romantic, and it’s not cool.”
Last year, Ryder wrote in a diary: “I feel like it’s OK to be who I am. It’s OK to be a fucking movie star. It’s OK to live in a nice house.”
I can’t help but note that the young actor she was dissing, Ethan Hawke, has gone on to enjoy career success in many different branches of the arts, while Winona Ryder, who had so much promise, has faded from view.
“It’s a news aggregation site for the busy and beleaguered, put out by a smart group of editors,” Brown told Media Ink.
Brown, who rose to prominence as the queen of buzz at Tatler in London, and ran Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, wouldn’t pull back the curtain on her latest venture any further, and says the site is not yet ready to launch.
“It’s very early on,” said Brown. “When we’re ready to roll, we’ll start to experiment by putting it into its trial stage.”
with a media pitch from Carnie Wilson begging some media outlet to track her as she tries to lose weigh (again) [e.a.]:
Sources say she is actively peddling a package that will include before-and-after pictures, plus an extensive sit- down interview or interviews. …Wilson, who’s been in an ongoing battle with her weight, actually dished to OK! magazine several weeks ago, saying she was very disturbed by a recent TMZ photo that showed her having put on weight, and that she was determined to get back into shape.
Now, it’s preposterous that Carnie Wilson had to see a picture of herself on TMZbefore realizing that she’d put on weight [!], but it sure does grab your interest if you’re a sucker for a good story. Doesn’t it?
This person, who you don’t know and don’t care to know, lays herself open to you (and millions of others) in a bid to heal herself of her wounds, a process that, watched with ardent interest by you, also may also allow you to cleanse your spirit.
Now, that’s (disposable) entertainment! (Tina, eat your heart out!—but I’ll be on the lookout for your venture.)
By rising to prominence without the financial backing of a mega-publisher, Sigler has defied the industry’s modus operandi. He’s discovered how to assemble, retain and sell to a growing audience, all on a shoestring budget.
“We are always looking for authors who have a platform and a core fan base, and our goal is to grow their audience and find new readers,” said Tina Constable, Crown’s publisher. “Scott is no exception and his fan base is already formidable. The wave of the future is how we harness the Internet to find these new readers, and we are devoting an enormous amount of energy and resources into this effort. The traditional model for publishing our books is quickly becoming obsolete and we recognize that creative Internet strategies are necessary if we want to remain competitive.”
There is vast, wide open country for enterprising types looking to exploit the very Long Tail of book publishing.
Dave Marash beats around the bush a lot, but eventually he explains, more or less, why he left Al Jazeera English[e.a.]:
Just as Al Jazeera Arabic can rightfully claim to be a first-class news organization with high professional standards, but one that authentically represents the point of view and interests of the region defined by the Arabic language, less defined by but certainly involved in the Islamic faith, and most particularly the gulf region, I think that Al Jazeera English is a very competent, very professional news organization that does a particularly great job south of the equator, but tends to report almost everything from the point of view of either the Arabic-speaking world or at the very least what you might call the post-colonial world. And since I’m not authentically those things, I don’t belong there.
Huh?
Marash notes a shift in perspective, dating to the flexing of the Saudi Arabian muscle during the time of the Mecca Agreement (last year), when, Marash suggests, there was a shift in the balance of power in the region [e.a.]:
BC: What changed?
DM: I think that the world changed about nine, ten months ago. And I think the single event in that change was the visit to the gulf by Vice President Cheney, where he went to line up the allied ducks in a row behind the possibility of action against Iran. And instead of getting acquiescence, the United States got defiance, and instead ducks in a row the ducks basically went off on their own and the first sort of major breakthrough on that was the Mecca agreement, which defied the American foreign policy by letting Hamas into the tent of the governance of the Palestinian territories. This enraged the State Department and was one crystal clear sign that the Mideast region was now off campus, was off on its own. And it is around this time, and I think not coincidentally, that you see the state of Qatar and the royal family of Qatar starting to make up their feud with the Saudis, and you start to see on both Al Jazeera Arabic and English a very sort of first-personish, “my Haj” stories that were boosterish of the Haj and of Saudi Arabia. And you start to see stories of analysis in The New York Times where regional people are noting that Al Jazeera seems to be changing its editorial stance toward Saudi Arabia. I’m suggesting that around that time, a decision was made at the highest levels of [Al Jazeera] that simply following the American political leadership and the American political ideal of global, universalist values carried out in an absolutely pure, multipolar, First Amendment global conversation, was no longer the safest or smartest course, and that it was time, in fact, to get right with the region. And I think part of getting right with the region was slightly changing the editorial ambition of Al Jazeera English, and I think it has subsequently become a more narrowly focused, more univocal channel than was originally conceived.
Marash also explains what drew him to the concept in the first place:
[T]he thing that I loved best about the original concept was the sort of fugue of points of view and opinions, because I think that’s what desperately needed in the world. We need to know, for example, in America, how angry the rest of the world is at Americans. Our own news media tend to shelter us from this very unpleasant news. So if you watched and every piece seemed tendentious and pissed you off, and I don’t think that would be the case, but even if worst case the channel turned shrill and shallow, you would still want to watch them on the principle that millions—tens of millions—of people watch them every day and you need to know what’s going on in their brains.
Every day brings grim news to every sector of the old media businesses. Rupert Murdoch, whose reputation for swimming with the pond scum tends to overshadow his extraordinary business acumen and long-term success (compare and contrast with, say, Ted Turner, who was long hailed as a genius), is always interesting to listen to on this topic.
In his speech, he said technology’s effects have permeated every aspect of News Corp., from the social networking on MySpace to the type of articles printed in local newspapers.
Consumers, especially the younger generation, have a chance to shape the inevitable changes by demanding content based on personal preferences, he added.
“Unlike traditional media, choices in the future will be generated from the bottom up, not top-down,” Murdoch explained. “A 13-year-old girl in Delhi is not going to want the same news and entertainment as a 50-year-old executive in Chicago … Our challenge is to personalize the experience for these people so we can reach them both.”
Murdoch foresees the end of traditional mass media with consumers receiving news and entertainment from limited sources. Media companies need to diversify to survive, which is one reason his company purchased MySpace in 2005, he said.
Perhaps that was the thinking (if indeed there was thinking involved—or maybe it’s a new “try anything!” ethos) behind a new venture at NewsCorp’s HarperCollins book division, announced thus in the New York Times (and thus certain to have caused much agita in executive offices across New York City):
New HarperCollins Unit to Try to Cut Writer Advances
HarperCollins Publishers is forming a new publishing group that will substitute profit-sharing with authors for cash advances and will try to eliminate the costly practice of allowing booksellers to return unsold copies.
[W]hat interests me here is the second part of ths strategy - that the publisher will pay little or no advance and go into partnership with the author on potential profits with sales focussed, evidently on the Internet.
My question then is - what’s the point of the publisher?
Well, there’s editing (which one can get elsewhere) and the fancy publishing house imprimatur, maybe a little help with production and publicity (again available elsewhere - many authors pay for their own publicists anyway). It this really enough? The author can do much better on percentages, I am sure, by self-publishing. And that same author may know his or her way around the Internet better than the publisher, when it comes to publicity. So I am skeptical of this model.
I don’t blame Simon for being skeptical. Nevertheless, the point of the publisher—for now, at least—is the brand. Until other brands develop to rival what the traditional publishing houses bring to the equation (professional experience, connections, and judgment), authors still have something to gain from trying to collaborate with publishers in this brave new media world.
But Simon is right on the money about one thing [e.a.]:
But I’m not surprised that it is happening - it is another symptom of the huge shakeout in the arts and letters instigated largely by the online world.
A lot of people are still clueless about the changes rocking their world. They’re still “comfortably numb.”
His answer (”none”—I’m paraphrasing) shouldn’t shock you if you’ve been reading this blog, where I recently introduced the concept of television as a news-free zone:
Well, it’s a struggle. It was a struggle when I left 3.5 years ago. I think the Nightly News has found the right balance. People still want to know what happened that day. What we do is not so much wire service accounting but two or three of the biggest stories of the day. Maybe do them for a little longer and maybe with a little longer analysis.
And then give them what I call added value: medical news; you can’t do enough about the economy these days; the environment is on a lot of people’s minds. So it’s that mixing and matching that is the trick to holding people and giving them reason to want to come watch it.
Obviously, Brokaw couldn’t say this, but I can. There’s obviously no news on these programs. their purpose is to serve the advertisers of adult diapers, erectile-dysfunction medication, and sleep aids … until even the old folks who watch the network news abandon the ship, like all the rest of the rats.
And then television will be entirely free of the pretense that it is serving the needs of its audience for hard news. And perhaps we’ll all be better off.
But there was still something missing. I noticed it during Obama’s response to a young man who remembered how the country had come together after Sept. 11 and lamented “the dangerously low levels of patriotism and pride in our country, the loss of faith in our elected officials.” Obama used this, understandably, to go after George W. Bush. “Cynicism has become the hot stock,” he said, “the growth industry during the Bush Administration.” He talked about the Administration’s mendacity, its incompetence during Hurricane Katrina, its lack of transparency. But he never returned to the question of patriotism. He never said, “But hey, look, we’re Americans. This is the greatest country on earth. We’ll rise to the occasion.”
This is a chronic disease among Democrats, who tend to talk more about what’s wrong with America than what’s right.
Sorry, Joe. In fact, between the two Democratic candidates it is only Barack Obama who is infected with this disease. And he’s got it bad, as he made plain on The View [e.a.]:
“Had the reverend not retired and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws, then I wouldn’t have felt comfortable staying there at the church,” Obama said.
See, he’s got to be even-handed about America. He’s got to indicate that he knows it’s deeply flawed.
He wouldn’t want anyone to think that he thinks this a great country or anything. And yet he wants to be its president.
How does this guy stack up in the general election against someone who reveres his country? That’s hard to say. But let’s not put the cart before the horse.
A New York Times/CBS poll finds that:
Obama’s Support Softens
This is his support among Democrats. He is bleeding:
Mr. Obama’s big lead among men over Mrs. Clinton has disappeared during that period; in February 67 percent of men wanted the party to nominate him compared with 28 percent for Mrs. Clinton, while now 47 percent of men back him compared with 42 percent for Mrs. Clinton, a difference that is within the poll’s margin of error. Similarly, his lead among whites, voters making more than $50,000 annually and voters under age 45 has shrunk.
And still the NYT spins like a top:
The poll, taken March 28 through April 2, includes some encouraging news for Mr. Obama as he and Mrs. Clinton slog through what has become an extended fight for the nomination. Over half of those sampled continue to view him as having a better chance of defeating Mr. McCain. Most expect him to win the nomination. And Mr. Obama’s supporters are more enthusiastic about his candidacy than are Democrats backing Mrs. Clinton.
In other words, his devoted fans really love him. Everybody else has questions.
Let it fly in the breeze
And get caught in the trees
Give a home to the fleas in my hair
A home for fleas
A hive for bees
A nest for birds
There ain’t no words
For the beauty, the splendor, the wonder
Of my…
Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow it
My hair
And I can’t believe that Bill and Hillary Clinton once looked like that.
The NYT’s Kit Seelye notes that Hillary Clinton has a remarkable glow for a woman who is under attack from every conceivable direction [e.a.]:
For someone supposedly in a heap of trouble, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is looking pretty relaxed these days. … [A]t moments she seems almost carefree, which is a jarring image for someone who has been called upon by members of her party to give up her quest for the Democratic presidential nomination. Her rival, Senator Barack Obama, has more delegates and more total popular votes. The longer Mrs. Clinton persists, her critics say, the more damage to the Democrats in the fall.
Of course Clinton’s relaxed air is jarring only to those who consider her evil incarnate, a She-devil focused like a laser on the presidency at all costs, just to satisfy her unquenchable personal thirst for power.
I’m bored silly by those accusations, and increasingly it looks like Hillary is, too. It’s pretty obvious that Clinton herself is feeling self-confident and impervious to the attacks on her, her family, her intentions, her character, her sex, her looks, her personal life, and her record, to mention just a few things.
More and more, she looks like a woman who is secure in the knowledge that she’s got nothing to lose in this contest—the anti-Tracy Flick, if you will. And it has loosened her up, to the great benefit of her image.
An interesting turn of events in this most pseudo-event-full political campaign in modern history.
At the Corner,Liberal Fascism author Jonah Goldberg, whose book has been on the New York Times bestseller list for more than ten weeks, gives a lively account of the ups and downs [e.a.]:
The most plausible explanation [for the books slide from the top 10] is the same one that explained why I leaped onto the Times list my first week out of the box. After all I opened at #10 even though I had a small first printing and it was hard to find the book in many stores. No one — except the Times itself — really understands how their formula works. But it definitely measures demand, perhaps not as much as sales, but enough to launch a book to the list if the demand is intense. In other words, the rate of sales — and presales — at all levels of the market (stores, clubs, wholesale etc.) are part of the formula. This week a whole slew of new books with big promotion budgets came online and the cross platform demand apparently shoved LF downward.
Goldberg also talks about how it feels to have written this book:
Obviously, I’d like to stay on the list as long as possible. …And it annoys all the right people the longer I’m on it, of course. … Three months on the NYT list — and hitting #1 — plus a dozen printings is far better than I dared hope. And yet I still hope the book does even better and has a wider following.
