As long as everyone's hating on Tim Russert today, I thought I should to my Washington Monthly article on how much damage Russert and Russertism are doing to the country.
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The Russert Factor
27 Feb 2008 01:44 pm
Comments (26)
My favorite Hillary moment last night was when she said, "Tim, you ask a lot of hypotheticals." Then Russert responded by saying, "This is reality." And Hillary correctly dismissed that by stating that his Iraq scenario was not, in fact, reality. Good for her.
Russertism is destroying substantive discourse in this country. Instead of discussing policy, we get treated to zingers on irrelevant quotes that his staff dug up and stupid stories about how Russert is just one of the blue-collar guys from Buffalo. It reduces policy discussions to games of gotcha instead of analyses of policy options.
I thought I should to my Washington Monthly article
Now, Matt's thought here is clearly somewhat incomplete, so let's help him out a little. Everyone fill in the blank:
"Matt should ________ to his Washington Monthly article."
Everyone's assistance will be appreciated, I am sure.
"Matt should ________ to his Washington Monthly article."
Everyone's assistance will be appreciated, I am sure.
ROFL. I read the post and clicked in with the intent of posting a similar response, but that's funnier than anything I could've come up with.
From the piece: "Since I've complained that Russert unfairly cut off Richardson while giving Mc-Cain a backhanded sort of pass, you might suspect I'm accusing Russert of partiality. Not at all."
That sentence alone makes the piece a complete, total and worthless joke.
The idea that Russert isn't biased againsts Dems/liberals/progressive candidates is absurd.
Compare transcripts (thoroughly), examine questions in the Dem v. GOP debates he moderates, or just spend five goddamn minutes reading the dailyhowler.com archives .
Traven: have you ever seen Meet The Press before Tim Russert? Believe, "the media" was better than it is now. And, when Russert is called out on his ridiculous question, like the question about a future scenario in Iraq which Clinton accurately described as a hypothetical...Russert overtalks and oddly asserts "it's reality." Then he tries to nationally air the vile thoughts and words of Louis Farrakahn for unneccessary consumption by the viewers. Obama's rejection of Farrakahn may be worth a minute or two, but the hate speech didn't need to be recited. Nor do we need to hear the ugliest, racist thoughts of David Duke. It wasn't the time or place to play gotcha with a marginalized, perripheral figure who was clearly quickly denounced.
Andruw:The idea that Russert isn't biased againsts Dems/liberals/progressive candidates is absurd.
That isn't really the point of the article. It isn't supposed to be proof that Russert is biased against one side, more that he's just a joke.
Traven is wrong to say that the media were always this bad. He's right that politicians and their surrogates should start challenging Russert's game more forcefully instead of trying to "play along" in supplication to him.
I don't think the top-tier candidates can take on Russert directly, just yet, but they can get their allies and surrogates to start challenging his premises and maybe doing a bit of mocking of him to soften him up a bit before the top-tier candidates get to him.
Ross: "That isn't really the point of the article. It isn't supposed to be proof that Russert is biased against one side"
I don't care what the point of the article is--seems to me a useful article about Tim Russert's journalism running Meet the Press would have to include his bias, if you believe it exists.
2) More importantly, the article explicitly states that he doesn't believe Russert is partial.
Unlike many others, I was actually glad Russert opened the Farrakhan can of worms last night. That's likely to be a key line of Republican attack, and it was good for Obama to get some practice with it. It's a legit question, because seeing how Obama handles the Farrakhan question and other winger obsessions is relevant to remaining electability worries some Democrats might have about Obama. Since Obama handled the question skillfully and with aplomb and humor, I think he did himself a lot of good, and reassured Democratic voters that he knows how to handle himself when the right-wing attacks start to fly. His response to today's McCain attack reinforced that perception.
Not only that, but the gravitational pull of his head is upsetting the tides around the world, causing famines and flood.
Obama handled it expertly, and it's good that he's getting praise for that. But Sen. Clinton's "not mean enough" should be called out for what it is -- an attempt to play the race card, yet again, this time by trying to resurrect the unfortunate divisions between African-Americans and Jews that Obama eloquently stated he's done actual work to overcome. That part of the debate showed the media at its most inane, Hillary at her most cynical and self-aggrandizing (like she took any kind of "risk" in 2000), and Obama at his most inspirational.
The nihilism goes deeper, of course, than the search for these gotcha moments. Take the analysis of the otherwise intelligent Andrew Sullivan. We merely need to look at his language: “Obama’s push-back on the war was strong.” Not, “Obama is right about the war.” The pundit must characterize, signifier, not referent, in order to looking so naive as to believe there are referents at all. (In Sullivan’s case, it is certainly an unconscious adherence to today’s style, and not a consistent approach, but I’ll continue to pick on him anyway). Pundits must frame the debate only in terms of the expected result when applied as a cattle prod to the ruminative masses: “I agree more with her than him. But he cleaned up. In Ohio, this is a big deal.” I’m not saying that speculating about how an argument will be received in Ohio is off limits. I’m saying this kind of analysis–the analysis of the marketing executive–as almost all there is today. Who won the debate? Whoever pandered the best. Whichever Sheltie did the best herding job. There is no talk about one candidates arguments actually inducing some sort of spontaneous rational reaction in the minds of their audience. About them creating new convictions. About them being leaders of any kind.
Anybody who watches these debates for information as to who to vote for is a complete moron anyways. It is akin to having two guys arm wrestle to decide which one will put the addition on your house.
I haven't heard a complete sentence from Russert in about five years. What would be the point?
Well, I guess I'm the only one old enough to remember MTP back when it was hosted by Lawrence Spivak, a flaming right-winger who, among other things, took Martin Luther King Jr. to task for being, well, basically a communist... I'll admit CBS News was a much better outfit in the 50s-70s with Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite in the mix, but other than that, I don't think the media are particularly worse now than before (other than being on 24/7). You ought to see the things the newspapers said about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln -- among others...
I have pleaded repeatedly for some backing for the concept that the media talking heads and so-called experts should be replaced with each election too. And don't give me that whole
"historical perspective" crap. Now that we have
the "tubes", and even Bush can "google"......we
don't need some Insider to tell the rest of us what to think about anything or anybody.
The days of the 15 minute newscast at 6 with cigarette smoking newspaper reporters giving us
the short version is long gone........yeah i know
i am really old.........
but the Russerts and Tweety's need to retire
and 2009 seems about right to me....
I want the candidates ask the moderators questions. They would not be allowed to moderate until they answered written questions anonymously posed from the candidates prior to any televised forum. The foolishness of these dim-witted, lazy, sycophantic, cowards would be laid bare for all to see.
From the Yglesias article: the balls Russert favors may be hard...
Is that a joke of some sort?
Matthew, you're probably right about Russert, but aren't there bigger idiots? Wolf Blitzer, Chris Wallace, and Anderson Cooper come to mind. Russert even had the balls to ask Richard Perle about his Israel first loyalties- I don't remember anyone else doing that. And, in the who gives a fuck? category...Joe Dimaggio loved Russert. It was his favorite show.
He wasn't like this until he got exposed as being Dick Cheney's girlfriend during the Libby trial. He used to be that happy go lucky guy with the dry erase board during election coverage but after it came out that Cheney used to go on Meet The Press because he could control his message Timmy changed. He's compensating for that now and he's isn't a good enough journalist to tell bull and spin from fact. So he asks inane gotcha questions instead. It's a poor substitute really.
Last night Russert jumped the shark, even by his standards.
Kinda shocking. He is usually more self controlled so he can cling to plausible deniability.
It was the equivalent of throwing a game, and his reputation, for his inside the beltway butt buddies.
Kinda like Woodward during Plame, doing his best using his and his employer’s reputation to throw the game and protect his beltway bandits for continued access and free scallops wrapped in bacon.
Time to investigate and expose the social and economic ties of these tired talking heads.
Not your best Matthew.
Sillyball? What the fuck is sillyball? That's lame.
And then, after paragraphs on McCain, Richardson, and Fred Thompson in which you make no reference to baseball at all, we get a weird paragraph that ends with this
But just because you're pissing off both sides doesn't mean you're doing anything right. Maybe you're just being an all-around clown. Whoosh—into the strike zone.
Whoosh-into the strike zone? Where did that come from? Left field? If this clown is throwing sillyballs into the strike zone from left field, they should a) be hit out of the park or b) be called strikes and used to count people out.
Finally, I don't like the title. Unbearable? Really?
I realize that you are overly defensive about your early support for the Iraq War, but your advocation of the 'I changed my mind' excuse is weak. Contradictions made by politicians should always be questioned and approached with skepticism by the media. Politicians should be made to confront them. These attacks on Russert seem like petty jealousy of his reputation more than substantial criticisms.
dan: "Last night Russert jumped the shark, even by his standards.
Kinda shocking. He is usually more self controlled so he can cling to plausible deniability........Time to investigate and expose the social aneconomic ties of these tired talking heads."
Dan, not to pick on you, because you make a great point, which most commenters here are silent on....but this point is about 9 years old. Some of us have been hitting our heads on a wall over this.
dan: "....Time to investigate and expose the social aneconomic ties of these tired talking heads"
Indeed.
Matt, and "Ross", like to pretend...well, I'm not sure really, but they dare not say Russert is incompetent AND corrupt.
It's funny, not ha-ha--but sad, how Matt has spent a month posting numerous times a day about HRC's mendacity, but can't bring himself, in a repeatedly linked article, to say the same thing about Tim Russert.
Good things.
Andruw,
It's very deliberate that he will not call Tim "the blue collar guy from Buffalo" Russert a partisan hack, for the very simple reason that Matthew Yglesias is in the media business and he does not want to offend the powers that be because he wants to write for them and appear on their shows (to become an analyst, promote his books or just maybe for the love of being on air) and perhaps (if he looks away at the right moments and forgets to mention names at the right times, or defends them at once in a while when needed), be granted his own show.
It is the same thing with Ezra Klein, he will go on Hard Ball and present the liberal view point, spar a little but he will take care not to never question tweety's hackery/good faith because he wants to be back on again and again and maybe host his own show someday.
Make no mistake, Yglesias here and Klein will be rich, millionaires even by presenting the Liberal view point on the other hand they will not become millionaires if they call out the powers that be by name. I do mean calling them out for their blatant PARTISANSHIP and other short comings BY NAME instead of criticizing some entity know as "The Media".
I can very easily imagine 15 years from now, Yglesias performing a pox on both your houses on the pages of the Times instead of Howard Kurtz.
M.O.:
Sorry for the delayed response, however, you are correct sir! But scarily accurate.
Comments closed March 12, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
There's something pathetic about how both the left and the right complain about the press, as if the media were ever better than they are now. This Russertphobia is silly. Really, the guy's a pussycat. If they don't like his questions, they should just call him on it.
Posted by Traven | February 27, 2008 2:09 PM