The Pennsylvanian Era of Primary Coverage

Just a quick word about last night's primary coverage on the cable nets: Hands-down, MSNBC had the worst. Their dependence on in-house resources gave everything a familiar, redundant feeling. And every time they did a split screen with Chris Matthews and Tim Russert, I felt like I was watching one of those movies where Eddie Murphy plays all the roles. I'm still not convinced Matthews and Russert are different people. Whats' the chance that a single network is going to have two anchors with identical, enormous heads? Close to zero, I'd guess.

MSNBC's coverage is the most formulaic on television. It's like watching a bad sitcom pilot, where you recognize all the roles even if the actors are new. There's the zany friend. There's the whacky next-door neighbor. Here comes the love interest. Oh look! Tom Brokaw is playing Walter Cronkite!

Fox and CNN were both better. They took the same basic approach to coverage, which was to assemble a panel of interesting points of view and let their anchors talk to those people rather than to each other. Fox, of course, stacked the deck heavily with righties, but that's their marketing strategy: The Crackpot Network. They do it well, though I still marvel at how consistently wrong Bill Kristol is. Why does he work? Does he fill some kind of grinning gnome quota?

There is no question but that Fox has the best designers in the business. I hadn't seen the Time Tunnel set-up before, and it was way cool. (That's the virtual set where words stream to a vanishing point far behind the anchor.) And somehow everything on Fox just seems more vivid, as if they've juiced the color saturation to the point where it damages monitors. If I had a couple of hundred thousand dollars sitting around with nothing to do, I'd commission a study to see if the habitual watching of Fox burns out TVs faster than watching normal television. My hypothesis is that it does.

I give the overall edge to CNN, though to be honest I changed the channel every time Wolf Blitzer came on screen, so I missed a lot of their coverage. I seriously don't understand why Blitzer is even on television. Shouldn't he be in a back room somewhere, talking on a HAM radio? I bet he was 30 before he got laid, and that was an un-fulfilling coupling with the fat girl over in ad sales. She's out there somewhere today, watching Wolf on TV and thinking she can't ever, ever tell anyone she slept with such a nerd.

In the non-Wolf portion of the program, CNN outdid Fox with two panels, one slightly behind the other on the set. I guess there must have been some logic as to who sat on which panel (network reporters to the front, guest pundits to the rear!) but I wasn't able to figure it out. The panel keeper, whose name escapes me at the moment because I really don't care, would drift from one to the other kind of at random.

CNN can dish out a fair amount of conventional wisdom itself, but seemed the winner for the night if for no other reason than their choice of panelists. The MVP (Most Valuable Pundit) was Bill Bennett, who has impressed me all through this primary season. He seems to have understood Obama from the beginning, and it scares me now that he thinks Obama is badly damaged, that the various scandalous episodes have successfully separated the candidate from the middle class voters he's going to need. It's the same thing lots of other people are saying, but Bennett's been sensible all along and he's either gone back to the right wing Kool Aid or it's going to be a long fall for Democrats.

The reality is, primary coverage is hard because there's not a lot to talk about. Last night huge newsteams had to stretch a single state's results into five hours of coverage. Once a couple of things were established -- Hillary wins by ambiguous margin -- everything else is just chatter, and chatter, and chatter about exactly the same thing. It was like watching someone rewrite a technical manual, saying the same thing over and over again, slightly differently. And, given the dynamics of the Democratic race, it's the same conversation they've been having for the last four months.

So, to be honest, by 9:00 I was drifting out of politics and on to more important things: Comedy and attractive women playing golf. Tuesday night is my favorite television night, with reruns of The Office stacked up on TBS and The Big Break over on the Golf Channel. That, in my world, passes as excitement, and there was no way Wolf Blitzer was going to lure me away for long. 

Comments

[On the Mark]

You've got Blitzer and Kristol down perfectly. The most annoying and the most error-prone men in television.

[Squidley]

If you think Bill Bennett's been sensible all along, and now he's saying (like so many others) that Obama's contempt for America and Americans has made him damaged goods, how does that make Bennett a drinker of right-wing Kool-Aid?

One unknown pundit (not to be confused with the Unknown Comic) predicts that Obama will "be denied the Democratic nomination at the convention".

That doesn't bother me. What bothers me is the possibility that the Democratic "leadership" will produce as their candidate the "AlGore ex machina" (shudders in horror), because then there would be two certifiably insane men running for president.

[Tom]

First of all, I don't believe there's a credible case to be made that Obama is anti-American, unpatriotic, a friend of terrorism, hateful toward Christianity or any of the other right-wing smears that are flying around these days. Those who do, I classify as drinkers of the right wing Kool Aid.

Most of the political commentary about Obama is that he might appear to be any or all of those things based on insinuations and very, very loose associations. Back someone talking about those things into a corner and ask if them if they really believe he is those things, and they back off. Present company possibly excluded, but I go back to my Kool Aid assessment.

Finally, I don't say Mr. Bill is a drinker of the right wing Kool Aid. I say he is either that or what he's saying is, to Obama supporters, scary. And you will note that I, an Obama supporter, am making the point that what he's saying is scary. Ergo, I'm not calling him a drinker of the right wing Kool Aid.

[Squidley]

I would have to agree with you that calling Obama a friend of terrorism to be an extreme and unfounded accusation. I haven't seen any charges of his being un- or anti-Christian, but given his regular church attendance and large donations to same, I'm ready to dismiss those charges too.

However, there is a good case to be made that he is hostile to mainstream America, particularly white America. Perhaps he is not anti-American, but definitely un-American. To wit:

* He does not wear an American flag lapel pin (a small point, but highly symbolic among national politicians).
* He does not put his hand over his heart for the Pledge of Allegiance (a very disrespectful act of omission).
* His disparaging comments about working class Americans being "bitter" and clinging "to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment" are not only disrespectful, they portray disagreement with his liberal opinions as irrational and therefore not worthy of taking seriously.
* His equation of his white grandmother's legitimate fear of a black panhandler (whom she described as "black") and Rev. Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright's blatantly anti-white racism, and his impugning of most of white America for its alleged "racism" as "demonstrated" by his grandmother.
* His more than 20-year membership in Wright's church, in which he heard weekly screeds against evil whitey and mainstream America, and his close association with Wright, who performed his marriage and baptized his children, show his identification with Wright's anti-white and anti-American ideology.
* His marriage to Michelle, a woman who only felt proud of America when her husband rose in political prominence, a woman who can barely contain her anger with America, a woman who does not feel herself to be a part of this country.
* His long association with the Communist Frank Marshall Davis, who mentored Obama.

How on earth can a man so divorced from our country and our values effectively serve as its leader, symbol, and representative?

[Tom]

Congratulations, Squid. You've assimilated every right wing talking point perfectly, true and untrue. So:

1. Most people don't wear flag pins. I, personally, think flag pins are a cheap and meaningless -- perhaps even cynical -- display. Patriotism is not something one purchases at a convenience store. John McCain was recently photographed not wearing a flag pin. Think of all the American leaders who never wore a flag pin. Most of them, in fact, until Richard Nixon came along with his strategy of exploiting middle class anxiety for political gain. Now you've made it Bullet Point Number 1 in disqualifying people from the Presidency. Could you be more ridiculous?

2. He does too put his hand over his heart when he recites the Pledge. The photo making the Internet rounds of him with his hands at his sides was taken during the National Anthem. In any case, if he were really trying to put one over on us, wouldn't the easiest and most effective thing be to wear a flag pin and put his hand over his heart and sing the National Anthem louder than anyone else? So your construct is that Obama is some kind of Manchurian Candidate so sly that he's pulled one over on half the country -- convincing poor unfortunates like me that he's not an enemy of state -- while simultaneously being so stupid that he forgot to wear his flag pin. This argument is insane. Literally.

3. He didn't disparage Americans as being bitter. He was speaking to a political audience about manipulative politics, which uses peoples resentments to get them to vote against their own economic interests. His point was that the challenge Democrats face is to break through that paradigm of politics and regain people's trust and confidence. There's nothing about that that's anything but admirable and honest. Having spent a significant portion of my life in communities exactly like those he's describing, here's something else: he's right.

4. He used his white grandmother as an example of how ingrained racism is in our society, even among people we know and love and who are, by almost every measure, good people. This is a highly Christian concept; we're all sinners. He didn't disparage his grandmother in the least. He spoke with empathy and understanding and love. My own grandmother, who was one of the loveliest people I have ever known, was a hideous bigot. She was a product of her times. I loved her then and I love her memory now. Taking Obama's moment of naked honesty and turning it into disparagement for political purposes is gross.

5. You're never going to understand Wright's anger, because you don't accept that racism is real. Wright grew up in a segregated America and bears the scar tissue of that experience. He's an imperfect Christian. But here's the thing that hypocritical righties forget: He brought Obama to Jesus. For all of Wright's flaws, that's critical. You accept the anger of white people who are denied jobs as a result of affirmative action (anger which Obama accepts as well) but don't accept the anger of black people who suffered through Jim Crow. You empathize with one and condemn the other.

You and a lot of other people talk about churches as if they were movie theaters you can get up and walk out of. Perhaps you don't have a relationship with a church that would allow you to understand this, but I'll give it a shot. My church is important to me not just because of what the pastor says, but because of what the community is. I could no more leave that church than I could leave my family. Sometimes the pastor says things that anger and repulse me. I'm still in the pew every Sunday. I'm still in the kitchen washing dishes for fund raisers. I'm still in Sunday school. That church is part of my home. Perhaps you have the type of faith that allows you to walk out and never come back when there's a family disagreement. I don't Obama doesn't. I find his faith more admirable than I find the type of shopping-around faith you advocate by implication.

6. Michelle Obama clearly misspoke. She was gushing with pride and people say stupid things when they gush. I know you've never done that and thus don't need to look in your heart for forgiveness. I suspect, from what you're written here before, that there's nothing she could ever do that would make you have any kind of human empathy for her.

7. Communists? You're raising the specter of Communism? Do you think Obama is a communist, seriously? Or is guilt by association all you need? And, if so, explain why all the people over there on the radical right where you live spend so much time hanging around with white supremacists and fascists.

There's nothing about Obama that you and yours would ever accept. The methodical way the Republican Party is going about turning a passionate and dedicated public servant into some kind of evil traitor is hideous.

People have asked me, recently, why I'm not a Republican. Want to know? Because this is what Republicans do. This is all the Republican Party stands for. They make shit up, and they repeat it over and over again, and they destroy people because it's safer for them to do that than it is to confront the real world. They do it because their ideology is failing before our very eyes, because their party has fucked up everything it's touched in the last 8 years and their only hope is to jin up hatred and resentment. Hey presto! That's what Obama was talking about! Getting people to cling to their religion and guns and the flag, and vote against their own interests.

That you're right there swinging with them surprises me not at all. You're exactly the Republican base: filled with anger and hatred, taking it out on immigrants and quivering in fear. The Republican Party that's taking down Obama with made-up bullshit has nothing positive to contribute.

[Jessica]

I'm just going to throw this out there:

My dad never and has never in my presence held his hand over his heart during the national anthem. He is a retired air force officer. To him due to his training and experience I surmise, it was more patriotic to stand respectfully with your arms at your sides during the national anthem.

As far as I'm aware the whole hand-over-heart is something of an overcorrection, like flag pins, it's assumed that people who do it are "more patriotic" than people who don't. This is the same logic that makes people think that it's "more grammatical" to use the construction "between you and I" when the grammatical construction uses me based on the objective case.

To my knowledge, based on my military brat upbringing the "correct" thing to do during the national anthem is to stand at attention, and if you wish, sing. The "overcorrect" thing involves putting your hand over your heart, but as we saw in grammar "overcorrect" is usually the result of overapplying some rule we've learned so is thus superfluous or outright wrong.

[Adam]

If a pastor is teaching a message antithetical to Jesus', Tom, I think it's one's duty to stand up, denounce that false prophet, and refuse your support. Jesus found one's family an unacceptable excuse for not following Him.

And I'm not dissuaded from .3, which pretty much assures me he's not Christian. A Christian understands that regardless of how great or awful things are, one's religion is all that should be clinged to. "Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaketh." That he would say anything like that shows where his heart is.

[Tom]

Rev. Wright is not condemned for teaching antithetical to Christ. He's condemned for teachings antithetical to the United States.

[Damian G.]

I do have to give Kristol credit in one regard: He nailed the prediction that Romney would drop out at CPAC back on Super Tuesday.

But the accuracy of his war predictions?

Not so much, not so much.

Oh, and I think instead of carping over Obama not wearing a flag pin, the real question is why he bragged about not wearing it. If he had never brought up the issue, the absence of said pin would never have been controversial.

But still... It's a tad of a BS issue, isn't it?

[Lee]

Tom, there is a new word floating on the internet right now. That word...

Arugulan. It sprung from this kind of funny incident.

As in

Arugulan, adj: describing a type of person likely to buy arugula at Whole Foods. See also: effete, snob, elitist.

I personally think that the flag pin and the hand on heart things are small potatoes, and the Muslim thing a gross slander.

But... you add those with "God Damn America," "Cling to guns and religion," and then the unknown about how well does he know these two Weathermen folk, and a total image emerges of someone more comfortable with the anti-American leftist chic crowd, than the type of voters who did not vote for him in Penn.

[Squidley]

Leaving the other points aside for the moment, you are absolutely 100% incorrect in your understanding of how Obama threw Grandma under the bus for political expediency.

The incident in question is documented in his memoir (by the way, just what has he done in his life to justify such a book?). When he brought the same incident up in his speech defending his association with Wright, he completely distorted what's in the book.

In the book, he said that his grandfather told him that his grandmother had been accosted by an aggressive panhandler that made her want to stop riding the bus. She used the word "black"; so did his grandfather. In his speech, he said:

"a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street"

But what actually happened is that it was not black men but a single specific black man, who did not "pass her by" but accosted her, would not leave her alone even after she had given him money, and led her to believe he would have mugged or assaulted her if the bus hadn't come.

Obama warped this isolated incident and his grandmother's reasonable fears into "racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."

He disparaged the woman who loved him, raised him, and paid for his (very expensive) education at an elite private school--all to justify his association with Jeremiah Wright. Reprehensible.

Incidentally, Wright is not just anti-American, he is a racist of the worst sort. Wright's "theology" is based on the exterminationist anti-white black liberationist theology of James H. Cone, who wrote:

"What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.... black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy."

If the words "black" and "white" were reversed, you would be offended and appalled, and would also be opposing Obama. How you can continue to support him after this revelation about his church's beliefs, especially in light of his intimate association with Wright, is beyond me.

[Squidley]

I was shocked by your revelation that your pastor sometimes says things that "anger and repulse" you. Not once in my life have I had that kind of reaction to the countless sermons I've heard, even when I've been a guest at friends' churches. Perhaps that's because at the services I've attended, the minister (or priest) has not touched on politics; they've always kept to delivering the word of God from the Bible. Isn't that what they're supposed to do?

Incidentally, I had the same reaction to your admission as I had to Obama's line about his take on Wright's politics: "Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely--just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed." I have no idea what my pastors' political views are, because they haven't talked about them in church.

While both you and Obama feel a strong connection to your churches, their pastors, and their congregations, they are still 100% voluntary associations. And yes, you should "shop around" for a congregation that makes you feel at home if the church you're attending isn't meeting your spiritual (and perhaps other) needs. Some people even "convert" from Baptism to Presbyterianism (etc.), or even from Protestantism to Catholicism. Good for them!

[Wally]

Congratulations Squidley! In terms of conducting reasonable discourse, you now have a string of 1 going. Keep it up. Continue to make your points in this way and you may even convince me (of some of them).

[Squidley]

Tom, you've expressed your dissatisfaction by my ignoring some of your counterarguments. I have explained that I like to keep my posts to one screen (when I can). I try to avoid sequential posts (but don't always succeed). Now that there's been another post...

Let's drop the flag pin and Pledge arguments. I want to talk about who he associates with.

You dismiss his association with the black Communist Frank Marshall Davis. You take the typical liberal position that the Communist threat was laughable. Perhaps you are unaware that during the middle of the 20th century, Communists did infiltrate American institutions, including the government; did receive funding from Joseph Stalin's USSR; and were actively trying to undermine and overthrow the US. They were a real threat, Tom.

As for Obama and Davis, if Obama had publically distanced himself from Davis, I would drop it. To my knowledge, he hasn't. I could even let it go as a "youthful indiscretion," except that he continues to maintain questionable associations.

For example, Obama also chooses to associate with Jeremiah Wright--a northerner who never experienced Jim Crow firsthand--who is a racist of the same stature as Louis Farrakhan and David Duke.

What's more, Obama chooses to associate with former Weathermen William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.

He married a woman who, in spite of having had the good life handed to her on a silver platter, issues nothing but spiteful, negative denouncements about America. Putting it into older parlance, Michelle Obama is a race woman.

Obama has chosen to associate with people harboring anti-American sentiment. He still stands by at least some of them. Is such a person suited to be our president?

I say no.

(BTW, he told a lot of lies in his biography; high school friends disagree with Obama's account of what happened in his teens.)

[Adam]

Tom, I wasn't talking about Wright's teachings. I was talking about the ones you're hearing at your own church.

[Squidley]

Adam, it looks like Tom's lost interest in this topic. Too bad; I really wanted to see him try to defend Wright's anti-Americanism and racism some more.

P.S.: I should have mentioned that not only is William Ayers a former Weatherman, he is a former terrorist--and an unrepentant one at that. He does not regret having set bombs, including one at the Pentagon. What's more, Obama held an early meeting for his Illinois Senate campaign in Ayers' home.

I said above that I believe that Obama is un-American, if not anti-American. I've changed my mind; now I believe Obama has established his anti-American bona fides.