The Media and Authenticity - Chicken or Egg?

Paul Krugman has a typically solid column blasting the media’s coverage of any presidential candidate who is “inauthentic” due to this daring to be rich and promote the interest of the poor, all at once. Brian Beutler has a great take, pointing out the the reason Hollywood/Washington insider Fred Thompson isn’t called out on his phoniness is because he doesn’t have the temerity to promote policies explicitly in the interest of the working class.  But the problem moreover, methinks, is that us in the blogosphere/commentariat are just way more attentive to the actual issues than everyone else is.  Not everyone that could even votes, let alone devour the Times, Post, WSJ, New Republic, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, National Review and the position papers of all the major campaigns.  And seeing that elections are mostly decided either by base turnout, or more likely, swing voters in dozens of counties in a few states; it’s not surprising that authenticity, superficial character attacks, or “big” character issues (who can keep us safe from the terrorists/married gays?!) decide elections.

Besides the staff of Reason, there are very few people who, after having carefully considered the positions of Democrat and Republican candidate, is still genuinely conflicted over who to vote for.  Instead, they probably don’t care or know a ton about the minutia of their proposals, and instead know the tone of the candidates campaigns, and the “big issues” the media covers.  The question becomes, is the superficial focus of the media the cause of the public’s lack of interest in the policy proposals of the candidate or because of the public’s lack of interest and attention?

The answer really doesn’t matter, this should be a normative question rather than a positive one.  The media aught to report substance, the moneymaking side of newspapers and magazines that report on politics isn’t their political reporting anyway, they don’t have much to lose by stopping to suck so much ass.

Andrew Sullivan - It’s not the 90s anymore

Today, Sully has a nice post laying on layers and layers of snark talking about Bill Clinton’s shameful triangulation vis a vis gay rights.

A reader comments:

A wonderful speech, but hard to ignore the “hypocrite” label when contrasting those words with the advice Clinton gave to Kerry in 2004 to focus on the “one tenth of one percent” by demonizing gays and supporting a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Or the fact that he signed DOMA into law. Or Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Plenty can talk the talk (and Clinton is a master), but I’d like to see the walk.

Picky, picky. My reader needs to be sent to HRC re-education camp, in order to erase something called memory of the 1990s.

Now, I understand that Sullivan, unlike me, was largely conscious of political issues during the 90s, but he can’t seem to get his head around that the Democrats have moved to the left on gay issues. Sure,Human Rights Campaign might be too enthralled with the other HRC and it didn’t come around to marriage equality soon enough, but on one of the defining gay issues, DADT, the Democrats have come around:

In back-to-back debates in New Hampshire this week, every Democratic candidate raised his or her hand in support of repealing that policy, while not a single Republican embraced the idea. Democrats argued with striking unanimity that it was time to end the uneasy compromise that President Bill Clinton reached in 1993, after his attempt to lift the ban on gay men and lesbians in the military provoked one of the most wrenching fights of his young administration.

And what did the Republicans do when faced with the same question? I’ll let Sully take it himself:

And, of course, as the question showed, the policy is throwing out critical servicemembers in a time of war. McCain and Giuliani: they know better. The lack of any real argument in defense of the Republican candidates’ position combined with the blanket refusal to revisit it is a sign of only one thing: contempt for the many servicemembers who are gay. The truth is: Giuliani and McCain do not support the troops. They want to persecute and stigmatize a minority of them. These old men are out of date and out of touch. Like the party they represent

Combine with near-universal Democratic support for ending DADT, expanding ENDA to cover gays, Edwards supporting immigration equality (which Sullivan posts about regularly and passionatley) and civil unions (which aren’t perfect, but are almost surely as stepping stone, eventually, for gay marriage), and it becomes clear that any voter who values LGBT equality and protections should vote for Democrats. Sullivan knows this, he knows that a large part of the GOP is built around bigotry towards gays, but he enjoys his heterodoxy in the gay community so much, he’s still high off the 90s, where he was the brave “gay conservative” who called the Clintons out on their triangulating bullshit. Well, Andrew, it isn’t the 90s anymore, it’s 2007, and the Democrats are across the board better on LGBT issues, while the Republicans, if possible, have gotten worse. Even Hilary doesn’t support 90s LGBT triangulation anymore, so maybe you should stop listening to Gin Blossoms, sell your Pets.com stock, stop watching Frasier reruns and get on board with the party that doesn’t hate you for who you are.

But, a little 90s nostalgia didn’t kill anyone, so here’s my own personal contribution.

I Have Seen the Future, and His Name Is Ezra

Welcome Ezra Klein readers. I know he claims to be an atheist and all, but with a name like Ezra Klein, I feel perfectly comfortable calling him a mensch. Now, I know what you’re all thinking, if Ezra likes you, you must really love labor unions, nationalized health care and 18 year old girls in porno flicks. Well, I’m pretty agnostic about labor unions, and I’ve inherited some Kaus like feelings about teacher unions, I’m very much in favor of some sort of government supported health care for everyone and I actually am “finding the present raunch culture wanting, [and]posit a need for an even more sex-saturated media environment.” Well don’t get scared away, I’m still something of a liberal, and I created this blog to make Mickey’s hair fall out (oh wait…). Knowing the superwonk Ezra is, I guess I’ll have to talk about something of substance to keep at least a few of his readers hanging around

Ezra links to Howard Fineman calling McCain a “warrior. He knows the world, its dangers and wonders; he knows the military, its powers and its limitations.” Of course, Ezra being the great blogger he is, jumps all over Fineman, pointing that McCain has supported the Iraq war vociferously.

In fact, his proposed solution to the Iraq debacle is putting in even more troops. Knowing the readiness state and overstretch of our military, it’s unclear if he actually knows anything about the military. But he was a fighter pilot, and was tortured for five years by the Viet Cong, so we have to give him some respect, right? Yes he was, but that doesn’t make up for what can only be called preposterously bad judgment. I know the media and public likes to say that anyone whose served any time in the service is an “expert” on the military, despite their level of combat experience, rank, or time in the military. Unless you’re John Kerry, then you’re just a pussy because you didn’t get wounded enough. But McCain was a flyboy, and he was only that because his father and grandfather were admirals in the Navy and he wasn’t cut out for the commanding officer track. Sure, he was shot down and tortured, but how does this at all qualify him to talk about the best policy to pursue in Iraq? He’s never fought a counter insurgency, has shown no familiarity with the literature or an academic interest in how to extricate us from this disaster of a war, except for more force, more troops and more Green Lanterns. Not to mention the fact that flyboys tend to be the most hotheaded, impetuous and self centered people in the military. Their entire line of work is taking enormous risks with a possibility of death every time they step into the plane. And if you’re good at it, you’ll just get cockier. Hardly the type of leadership we need from our politicians at this time.

Let’s say it together now, McCain has shown awful judgment on the Iraq War and is a super hawk, it’s about damn time we stopped giving him a free ride because the Viet Cong wouldn’t.