Links!

Not only did I enjoy this week's Frank Rich column but it occurred to me to point out that he deserves special praise for always making sure that the web version of his column include real hyperlinks to outside content, just the way a dedicated web column would:

What Mr. Obama has going for him during this tailspin is that his opponent seems mortifyingly out-to-lunch. Mr. McCain is a man who aspires to lead the largest economy in the world and yet recently admitted that he doesn’t know how to use a computer, the one modern tool shared by everyone from the post-industrial American work force to Middle Eastern terrorists to Pixar animators. Getting shot down over Vietnam may not be a qualification for president in 2008, but surely a rudimentary facility with a laptop is. What Mr. McCain has going for him is a press corps that often ignores or covers up such embarrassments.

I would say that beyond that, he also has a press corps that's so in love with the open atmosphere McCain maintains with his traveling press that they don't take advantage of the open atmosphere to ask him any probing questions. What's his plan for Iraq? Does he plan to purge the government of Bush's political appointees? If he's "not one who believes that we need to subsidize things" when asked about renewable energy, then why does he want subsidies for nuclear power? Etc.

Comments

Plus, you can always count on CBS' Bob Schieffer to stop playing grown-up and scream "How Dare You!" if you ever seriously question McCain.

http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=10777

Posted by El Cid | July 6, 2008 2:31 PM

MY:
That is the whole point of McCain's openness. He is so open that they are afraid of asking him hard questions. Do you really think they want to be shut out from the next BBQ? Of course not!!!

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | July 6, 2008 2:45 PM

Rich does have a good column. Then there's this piece of John McCain fluffery in today's Washington Post Style section.

Here's what writer Stephen Hunter says about McCain:
Nobody will write this anywhere except me here, but we guys, you know what: We admire another guy for making a great catch. He compares McCain to John Wayne, with very little negative, and then compares Obama to Will Smith, but all the time with those concern-troll cavets, the "but..." added. e.g.:
And when we look at Obama, what we see is a kind of pre-muscled-up Will Smith, the Will Smith of easy charm and suave conviction, a canoodler, a persuader. But a star needs to be able to clean up Dodge, no?

Very frustrating. I guess the mostly male journalists really do get a certain kind of man-crush on McCain.

Posted by Beth in VA | July 6, 2008 2:48 PM

The oxymoron for the day is "respected journalist". To explode the myth of the liberal media, all you have to do is look at how McCain's cavalcade of gaffs have been soft pedaled.

It's not shock. The media is controlled by big business, and big business is, for the most part, Republican backing because they'll let them do anything they want.

Just flash back to 2000 when Bush babbled his way through the first debate, literally unable to form sentences for a number of his answers. What was the "analysis"? They thought Bush "held his own". I thought he held his own too ... but I meant that in a very different way than they did.

Posted by LFC | July 6, 2008 2:59 PM

the mostly male journalists really do get a certain kind of man-crush on McCain.

True. But they need to have a man-crush on the 63 year old McCain of 2000 who was coming fresh off spearing campaign finance reform and running against the "forces of evil," not the post-skin-operation, tired 71 year old McCain that they're actually covering.

While the press is still living in the past, the voters are going to see "young tall alpha male" vs. "cranky, doddering older guy."

Posted by Tyro | July 6, 2008 3:02 PM

Groupies don't critique the band.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | July 6, 2008 3:04 PM

a computer, the one modern tool shared by everyone from the post-industrial American work force to Middle Eastern terrorists to Pixar animators.

In his defense, however, it should be noted that John McCain breathes air, the mixture of gases respired by everyone from Eskimo whale hunters to paraplegic Nobel Prize laureates. It is also worth pointing out that McCain is composed of 80% water, the compound which sustains forms of life ranging from single-celled paramecia to psychotic killer Charles Manson.

Posted by James Gary | July 6, 2008 3:13 PM

See the first comment on this thread; MattY and the other Atlantic "voices" have it within their powers to encourage their readers to go ask real questions.

As for the link in the article, it's stupid for reasons I won't go into.

Posted by TLB | July 6, 2008 3:24 PM

I agree: the media has been absolutely guilty of malpractice when it comes to covering McCain.

They have focused on absurdly trivial things about Obama while overlooking far more major gaffes from McCain.

The same goes for surrogates: When Wes Clark spoke the truth, the media pounced. Yet when Charlie Black made his shameless remark about a terrorist attack being good for McCain, the media went into full protective mode, mainly couching the story in the narrative of "it may sound bad, but it's true."

I also agree with what someone else wrote about the first Gore-Bush debate: Bush sounded like a moron, yet the media pounced on Gore.

We need either huge reforms in the media or a new media altogether. And in the meantime we need to raise hell with the media we have. That's how the far right has gotten their way: they have screamed the whined the loudest. It's time we balanced that out.

I urge everyone to contact media outlets that do not give fair coverage to this election...that give far more favorable treatment to McCain...that try to gloss over the huge problems in Iraq...etc.

Posted by cm | July 6, 2008 3:48 PM

That open atmosphere may be starting to shrink some.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/30/mccain-aide-reporters-have-to-earn-special-interview-area-seat-on-new-straight-talk-airplane/

Though I doubt it will have much influence on the level of reporting coming out of the traveling press corps. At least, not from the 'important' journalists who are likely to be favored.

Posted by Scott | July 6, 2008 3:55 PM

Getting journalists to self-censor themselves by threatening to deny access to the star is how Tom Cruise's former publicist Pat Kingsley operated -- you get Tom's picture on your magazine cover, you get to spend time with Tom, you get little tidbits of news about Tom, as long as you don't ask him tough questions.

Then, Tom went and fired Pat and put his sister in charge, and his press coverage has been terrible ever since.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 6, 2008 4:48 PM

Speaking of computer usage, it's a generational change. Important American men born before about 1950 generally don't type. That's what you have secretaries for.

By the way, although Obama certainly types, I doubt if his technical computer skills extend much beyond MS Word. He has been careful in interviews to discourage the idea that he's a computer expert.

One interesting thing about Obama is that although his inner identity is a writer, the wordsmith who stays up late polishing his prose, his David Souter-like caution has left him without much of a paper trail before he assembled his current staff to vet his output before publication. His published paper trail from the 1980s and 1990s that I've been able to find so far consists of one giant autobiography, a chapter from the book "After Alinsky" on the future of radical organizing, and an NPR commentary on "The Bell Curve," (plus some interviews.) It shows real self-discipline for somebody that gifted at writing to play his cards so close to his vest in the interest of maintaining his political viability.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 6, 2008 5:27 PM

cm said... We need either huge reforms in the media or a new media altogether.

There is a reason that so many younger people get their news and views from the Daily Show and The Colbert Report. They're more believable than Faux News, ABC, the Washington Post, etc.

Posted by LFC | July 6, 2008 5:32 PM

"it should be noted that John McCain breathes air..."

Maybe. For how much longer is an issue, however, given his age.

Sailer's right about Pat Kingsley. She kept Jodie Foster's lesbianism under wraps for twenty five years until a short while ago when Foster finally acknowledged her partner of 14 years (then apparently dumped her for another woman.)

Sailer's comment on Obama is irrelevant, however. Nobody expects Obama to know more about computers than to be able to do email and write a document and maybe search Google. McCain on the other hand apparently can't even do that much. Obama presumably also knows how important the IT industry and the Internet are overall. It's not clear McCain does.

McCain reminds me of Andrea Corr, who said in a GMTV interview that she only learned to do email in 2004. Sister Caroline told her, "Don't tell people that!" McCain's admitting he knows nothing isn't exactly "Straight Talk", it's more an embarrassing gaffe.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 6, 2008 6:19 PM

None of the problems with the press corps are going to change until they start loosing their jobs for bad reporting.

And I'm not holding my breath for that.

Posted by Duncan Kinder | July 6, 2008 6:36 PM

The British press are drunken hacks, but, despite the libel laws over there, they are a lot more fearless drunken hacks than the sober, well-trained American press. For example, the British press was all over the story of Jodie Foster's intense eugenicist search for the perfect sperm donor for her two children -- finally finding, after months, a tall, handsome scientist with a 160 IQ.

The U.S. press was so terrified of Kingsley, however, that they never mentioned Foster's lesbianism, much less her pervasive interest in eugenics.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 6, 2008 9:10 PM

Mr Rich also says in the same article that the Obama campaign seems (for some inexplicable reason) to have stopped functionning except to respond to McCain or refine positions to possibly please more imagined voters. It would be nice if the Obama campaign continued to articulate a vision and a plan for changing the direction of America, instead of adopting the Mark Penn style, poll-driven microcalibrations.

Posted by della Rovere | July 6, 2008 10:04 PM

Mr. McCain is a man who aspires to lead the largest economy in the world and yet recently admitted that he doesn’t know how to use a computer, the one modern tool shared by everyone from the post-industrial American work force to Middle Eastern terrorists to Pixar animators.

This doesn't strike me as a fair test on economic knowledge. Ignoring the assumption that we might actually know how the economy works, doesn't a laptop test disqualify any economist, academic or otherwise, who has never used a computer? Did JK Galbraith know about the economy? Did Galbraith know how to use a computer?

I was going to point out another thing after only reading this post, but Rich actually captures it in his column:

The Republican’s digital ignorance is not a function of his age but of his intellectual inflexibility and his isolation from his country’s reality.

The problem is not that McCain doesn't know how the economy works, but that he's not even interested in finding out

Posted by TJ | July 6, 2008 11:25 PM

It's a strange kind of tailspin that sees your poll lead over your rival increase, including a five point lead in Montana.

Posted by Ginger Yellow | July 7, 2008 7:43 AM

If any of the reporters asked the "probing questions" that Matt alludes to, I'd imagine they'd find their access limited or cut off PDQ.

I have no doubt reporters covering McCain are well aware of this.

Posted by raff | July 7, 2008 8:27 AM

Frank Rich is part of the crew whose incessant Gore-mocking put Bush in the White House and the US into Iraq.

Search it at Dailyhowler.com. Or go to his incomparable archives for the year 2000.

Frank Rich is Maureen Dowd with a Y chromosome.

Posted by Chuck | July 7, 2008 10:10 AM

I think the press covers it up mostly to drag the race and the story out. How much advertising money would the paper get if the story ended in July? Headlines of 'McCain: Not a Chance in Hell' don't really allow them to stretch out (and manufacture) the drama necessary to sell papers. It was the same during the primaries and it is the same now. Instead of focusing on actual policy and positions on issues, we get flag pins and patriotism pissing contests. Phony controversy and soap-opera BS. And, I'm sorry to say it, the liberal blogs have been highly hypocritical lately about things. The arguments being made about McCain's money are the same ones used to wipe out Kerry and Edwards. I dislike McCain on many, many levels, but going on about his gambling habits or how many houses he has is just stupid. There is plenty of other rope out there to hang him with. Keep it smart.

Posted by JAB | July 7, 2008 10:45 AM

I agree with JAB re: the press but not re: McCain is too rich to understand real world issues. McCain may well have his George H. W. Bush fascinated with the checkout scanner moment. Maybe it will be McCain fascinated with YouTube on reporter's iPhone.

Chuck, the difference appears to be that Rich somewhat realizes his mistake. We'll see what Dowd writes about the general election.

Posted by js | July 7, 2008 2:59 PM

P.S. My question for McCain:

Do you agree with your advisor Charlie Black's comments about Barack Obama's patriotism?

(If McCain asks what comments, inform him that Black conceded that Obama is patriotic and has good character.

Posted by js | July 7, 2008 3:03 PM