WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29, 2011
History marches on/Love Canal edition: We're hard at work on chapter 6 for our companion site, How He Got There. Did you know that the fateful episode in Campaign 2000 occurred in December 1999?
We think this history should be recorded for the use of possible future generations. (On Friday, we'll give you an opening dose from this chapter.) If you want to contribute to this ongoing effort, you know what to do: Just click here.
The hopeless old and new guards: Wow. Having said that:
There’s some good news—and there’s some bad news—about Jack Shafer’s piece at Slate.
The good news involves the comments by a wide range of Slate readers. Shafer’s piece is amazingly weak, although it makes one actual point. That said, we can’t recall a case where the comments to a hopeless piece so skillfully dissected its flaws.
Slate’s readers were sharp in the past two days. Slate itself, not so much!
In his hopeless post, Shafer critiques Al Gore’s piece about climate change in the new Rolling Stone. In his piece, Shafer offers seven “pointers” to Gore; his first pointer actually makes good sense, once you’ve averted your gaze from its overwrought language. “Vilify your enemies by name,” Shafer advises in pointerly fashion, noting that Gore fails to name specific news orgs or specific journalists who have done the type of work he decries in his piece.
This is a perfectly valid “pointer”—but things go straight downhill from there. Shorter Shafer: Gore thinks civilization may come to an end. In response, Shafer complains that Gore wrote a sentence that is a bit too long.
To lose all faith in human capacity, we suggest that you read Shafer’s piece. To regain a bit of that faith, read the many spot-on comments appended to his work. How good were the various comments? At least two commenters thank the other commenters for offering such cogent critiques. One example: “It's always nice when you read a poorly thought out article to see that Slate readers have already thoroughly pointed it out. So bravo, Slate commenters. I have no idea why this shoddy article was written, but at least I don't feel the compulsion to list out, point by point, exactly why it's shoddy, and that's time in my life that you've given me.”
We had a similar reaction as we read Shafer’s piece—and as we read the comments.
What can it mean when an org like Slate is posting such hopeless work? We’re not sure, but yesterday Salon was bringing the apocalypse on from a different direction.
Shafer is from the press corps’ old school. At Salon, a new kid on the block—Alex “Kid” Pareene—was offering this critique of Michele Bachmann’s kick-off error. Truly, the highlighted passage is hopeless:
PAREENE (6/28/11): We had fun with her Waterloo, Iowa, "gaffe" yesterday, but by Michele Bachmann's standards it actually wasn't that bad. (The illuminating part of her statement was that she wants to live in "John Wayne's America." That's not far from being a white supremacist dog whistle.) But a whole day of nonstop coverage of how dumb and silly Michele Bachmann is is actually pretty much great news for Michele Bachmann. She feeds on this!
She can say the media seized on a simple mistake, distorted her words, messed up the story they were "correcting" her on (John Wayne Gacy was born in Chicago, not Waterloo, Iowa, as various outlets initially reported), and she'd be pretty much right about all of it. And right or wrong, a conservative base that already hates the lamestream media will grow fonder of her the more the press highlights her loopy extremism.
As Pareene notes, Bachmann’s error wasn’t all that bad—and we’re judging by normal standards. As things seem to have shaken out, John Wayne’s parents lived in Waterloo, Iowa at one time. We would suggest that people believe all sorts of mistaken things about their families and their home towns and regions; it’s better if candidates don’t make mistaken statements, but it’s also better if the “press corps” doesn’t rush to make its own mistakes in the course of correcting such errors (“as various outlets” did). Beyond that, as Pareene rightly notes: “Rightly or wrongly, a conservative base that already hates the lamestream media will grow fonder of her the more the press highlights her loopy extremism.” We’ll even help him out with his judgment: The conservative base is judging rightly when it reacts that way to such trivial press corps conduct. And by the way, many centrist voters will react that way too.
Starting in 1999, the focus on trivia has come to dominate the way the “press corps” pretends to cover elections. We hate to be the ones to tell you, but this isn’t good for your country. That said, we were much more struck by the statement we’ve highlighted in Pareene’s piece. Was Bachmann’s statement about John Wayne “not far from being a white supremacist dog whistle?” Pareene’s assessment is just astoundingly dumb. It’s also amazingly bad politics from a progressive perspective.
Question: Can someone invent a time machine so the kids can go back to the 50s and live through the civil rights years? You’re right: Most would hide beneath their beds a million miles from the action, but at least they’d get the need for high racial drama out of their systems. In the wider political context, statements like Pareene’s tell the public that they should disregard everything any progressive ever says, especially on matters of race. It’s also disrespectful to the various people who dealt with the real white supremacist whistles.
Some of those people actually died, so Pareene can enjoy his high drama.
If this is the way we reason and think, how did our country get this far? Watching the old and new guards reason, we constantly ask ourselves that.
More on Shafer: Two specific points about the old guard:
We assume it isn’t Shafer’s fault, but Slate’s headline refers to Gore as a “washed-up politician.” (“Al Gore, Press Critic/A washed-up politician finds a new venue for his ideas.”) Given the fact that Gore won the freaking Nobel Peace Prize after having washed ashore, that’s an amazingly stupid description. It echoes Chris Matthews’ recent thumbnail, in which he only remembered the fact that Gore once grew a beard. These people are amazingly churlish. If you couldn’t see them work, you’d assume they didn’t exist.
This second point is Shafer’s fault. Like old guard icon David Broder, Shafer found himself very bored by Gore’s very boring discussion:
SHAFER: Although the primary target of Gore's piece is the press corps, his pen wanders, giving his article the flow of several op-eds about separate topics stitched front-to-end like the victims of The Human Centipede. Gore begins complaining about press coverage of global warming but then marbles his essay with a couple of history lessons and sections complaining about campaign-finance regulation, the economic crisis, the number of hours people watch television, and the "powerful special interests" who have "rigged" the political game. I needed two cups of strong coffee and a tap from a cattle prod to finish it: Your dosage may vary.
The boredom is general within the old guard. This was Broder’s reaction to Gore’s convention speech, which was a giant hit among actual voters: “I have to confess, my attention wandered as he went on through page after page of other swell ideas, and somewhere between hate crimes legislation and a crime victim's constitutional amendment, I almost nodded off.”
Voters loved Gore’s convention address. Like Shafer, The Dean almost nodded off.
These people are constantly nodding off. Question: How did your country get this far with an old guard like this at the top?
No comments:
Post a Comment