January 18, 2012
Off the Clift
Watching Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift confront the question
“Are most political reporters simply insiders?” is a discomfiting
experience. Her struggle to defend the indefensible unavoidably inspires
compassion for her uneasy predicament. But the case she makes so proves
the point that any sympathy engendered morphs quickly into cynicism.
The political reporter appeared on a Dec. 29, 2011, panel discussion on Al Jazeera, subtitled the question du jour. Joining her were Democracy Now!
host Amy Goodman and Justice Party presidential candidate Rocky
Anderson, of whose candidacy Clift knew nothing. Al Jazeera devoted a
third of the half-hour program’s opinions to the former Salt Lake City
mayor. Clift apparently had never heard of him.
“I think Rocky Anderson is running probably to get his issues out
there, more than from an expectation that he might necessarily win,” she
awkwardly speculated aloud, unsure about the Justice Party’s name, no
less.
Clift, who also contributes to The Daily Beast, defended the
media’s treatment of third parties, which independent presidential
candidate Ralph Nader in 2008 called a “blackout” and “political
bigotry.” To the contrary, she asserted, the media love the drama third
parties bring.
“The last thing the press corps wants is a Romney-Obama race,” she said in an edition of Al Jazeera’s Inside Story: U.S. 2012. “Think of that, for all those many months.”
An unadulterated crock of shit. "The media" want a two person race and they want it to be "interesting," so unless one candidate is useless to reporters, they will do everything in their power to persuade people that their idiot ramblings and writings about the long slog are worth reading, rather than worth using in the bottom of the bird cage. With a two-person race, they can use horse-racing metaphors, and dwell on who is winning the fund-raising "race" (never once questioning the implication that the office of the President of the United States of America can be BOUGHT) but, who, what candidate can afford the price (which is assuredly now over ONE FRICKEN BILLION $$s!) ergo - just who CAN afford to but the office of POTUS - why ... large international corporations, that's whom! And unto whom will the President be beholden, upon winning office? Follow the money, honey!
Clift acknowledged the anger the American people feel toward their
government and their yearning for more choices and parties. And she said
the media has responded, sort of. They have covered speculative
third-party bids by Donald Trump and Ron Paul and will be doing more.
“There are two sort-of-third-party entities,” she added, “Americans
Elect, which is going to have an Internet convention and choose a
ticket, and No Labels, which is trying to get away from Republican and
Democrat. They’re not actually going to mount a ticket.”
Clift mentioned neither Jill Stein nor Kent Mesplay, declared 2012
Green Party candidates. Her defense for ignoring alternative parties:
“Hundreds of people file to run for president. You have to have some sort of screen.”
***
Rocky Anderson is no fringe figure. He is a two-term mayor of Salt Lake City, who, in addition to announcing for president in December,
earned a national reputation for his ultra-progressive positions on gay
rights, environmental sustainability and the Iraq War – while being
elected and re-elected in Utah. (This is a promise - he was doing something VERY right for his constituents in order to get re-elected - OR, the guy who was the former mayor REALLY sucked)
The candidate is widely known for his high-profile relationship with
Mitt Romney, with whom he worked to rescue Salt Lake’s 2002 Winter
Olympics. Despite their ideological and party differences – Anderson was
a Democrat at the time – the two endorsed each other’s subsequent bids
for Salt Lake mayor and Massachusetts governor.
Just 17 days before Clift met Anderson in the Al Jazeera studio, The Guardian columnist Gary Younge published a piece subtitled “US
history is littered with failed third parties, but the progressive
populism of Salt Lake City’s ex-mayor might just break the mould.”
Three months prior, her fellow Newsweek columnist and Beast contributor McKay Coppins penned a column about Anderson titled “Why Salt Lake’s Mayor Lost Faith in Mitt.”
A TalkingPointsMemo search for “Rocky Anderson” produced 21 stories, dating to 2007.
On Al Jazeera, Clift said she would like to know more about the Justice Party. But she warned history is not on Anderson’s side.
“I think if you look at our tradition in American politics, I don’t
think we’ve ever elected somebody who is a former mayor,” she said.
“Usually our presidents come from the Senate or governors.”
Hey, Clift, how's THAT been workin' for us?
Furthermore, Clift added, third parties make people nervous. Nader’s
2000 Green Party candidacy “hurt the candidate he was closest to,” she
alleged, referring to Democrat Al Gore. And in 1992, “Pat Buchanan
probably caused the defeat of the Republican who he was closest to.”
Make PEOPLE NERVOUS? She means, makes newspaper editors, owners, business men, bankers, real estate agents, hospital corporation chairmen, the top brass at the pharmaceutical companies nervous ... but, these folks really are not what one typically thinks of when one hears the word "people"
Buchanan ran against George H.W. Bush in the 1992 Republican
primaries, not as a third-party candidate. Texas oil man Ross Perot ran
in the general election on the Reform Party ticket against Bush and
Democrat Bill Clinton.
Anderson assured Clift that his is a serious campaign and is in fact a winner’s strategy.
“People across the political spectrum in this country want to see a
major change in our system, where the corrupting influence of money
carries the day against the public interest,” he said, citing a list of
public-policy failures as examples.
Failed leadership on climate change – “We know that’s due to the
corrupting influence of money from the fossil fuel industry.” Failure to
provide essential health care for all citizens – “It’s because of the
corrupting influence of money from the insurance industry.”
Clift’s argument that alternative party candidates hurt their natural
political allies was based on fundamentally false assumptions, Anderson
said. A poll taken 10 days after he entered the race gave him 4 percent
support, with Romney beating Obama in a one-on-one matchup.
“When you threw me in the mix, Obama won,” he said.
***
The Al Jazeera discussion took place just days before the Iowa
caucuses, as Republican Texas Congressman Ron Paul led the polls. Clift
shrugged off the suggestion that the media’s failure to take him
seriously until that point was a “massive failure.”
“I think there is a widespread assumption, which I share, that Ron
Paul, who is 70-something years old and is really a libertarian, is in
the end not going to be the Republican standard bearer,” she said.
Her fellow panelists rejected that line of defense for ignoring, for example, his radical, antiwar views.
Anderson said the media ignoring Paul’s candidacy and failing to
seriously examine his racist past and social-Darwinist approach toward
government aided and abetted his caucus success.
“How many people really knew that when we’re reading on the front page of the New York Times
about Mitt Romney’s hair?” he said. “The column inches that have been
devoted to Mitt Romney’s hair and the man who cuts his hair, it is
obscene when we’ve got so many issues that aren’t being covered.”
Five days after the program, Paul finished third in Iowa with 21
percent of the vote. A week later, he finished second in the New
Hampshire Primary, garnering 23 percent.
Al Jazeera graphics accompanying the program said a 2002 Harvard
Kennedy School poll showed 89 percent of Americans believe the media
focuses too much on “trivial issues.” It also showed 62 percent do not
trust media election coverage, and 82 percent believe media influence is
too great.
Goodman insisted Americans do not want the kind of simplistic,
horse-race, beauty-contest coverage that the broadcast media routinely
deliver.
“They’re force fed it,” she said.
Goodman said the Occupy Wall Street movement has shown what the media say the public cares about isn’t true.
“It’s resonating with most people in this country,” she said of the
Occupy message. “People are saying they are tired of the media catering
to the 1 percent, instead of exposing the 1 percent.”
That deference to the economic elite, Goodman added, extends to the
third-party candidates the media does cover, predominantly people with
enormous personal wealth, from Ross Perot to Donald Trump.
“These are the people they will focus on,” she said. “But Rocky Anderson, who instead of having money lays out a platform?”
While the press corps focuses on trifles like the kind of cereal Mitt
Romney eats – “sugary,” according to a CNN report – Anderson said it
ignores the fact that America has the highest incarceration rate in the
world. Sixty percent of those imprisoned are African-American or Latino,
even though they represent only 30 percent of the population.
“I want to ask any journalist, ‘When was the last time you talked
about the prison-industrial complex in this country?’” he said.
While Clift termed the CNN cereal report ultra trivia –
“There’s a lot of time to fill on the cable networks” – she agreed the
prison issue is “genuine” and said it “may come up in the periphery.”
She defended the soft stories.
“Just like we have People magazine along with Time and Newsweek, people do want to know about these personalities,” she said.
Anderson said that a time when the disparity between the rich and the
middle and working classes is at its greatest point in a century, the
media’s preoccupation with the aristocracy is evidence this truly is the
new gilded age.
“What a betrayal by the media of our democracy,” he said. “During the
races, it’s the time when people’s attention is centered on these
issues. It’s a great time educate people.”
***
A CNN correspondent reported the cereal detail about Romney while
“embedded” with the campaign, a journalistic development that Goodman
and Anderson repudiated.
Goodman agreed with the suggestion that the embed concept, which
began with reporters in the Iraq War, was created by the military as a
technique to limit media coverage, not enhance it.
“It has brought the media to an all-time low,” she said. “… The way
they stay on a campaign is they talk about sugary cereal. They start
raising hard questions of the campaign candidates, they’ll often be
thrown off the bus.”
In addition to the prison-industrial complex, cable news outlets
could fill all that airtime covering the increasing restrictions put on
Americans right to vote, Goodman said. States with the largest African
American and Latino populations have increasingly restricted voter
registration laws.
“These issues have to be addressed because at the same time they are
limiting the ability for people to understand what the issues are and
what these candidates represent, fewer and fewer people in this country
are being able to vote because of repressive legislation,” she said.
Anderson reiterated his contention that the media’s misplaced
priorities give short shrift to the public’s desire for fundamental
change in the system.
“This is what the American people want across the political
spectrum,” he said. “We want to get the corrupting influence of money
out of the system, even if it requires a constitutional amendment to get
rid of this Citizens United case.”
Clift laughed when asked if she feels complicit with a system that is
entirely corrupted and doesn’t serve the people, though she did agree
money has “flooded” the system.
“I don’t know how to turn that around,” she said. “I don’t know how
you get the support for a constitutional amendment to get rid of that Citizens United case, because you have to overcome all these hurdles.”
Goodman said it would help if the news media covered the issues instead of the personalities.
“We’re not perfect,” Clift said. “But we put a lot of stuff out there.”
Steven Higgs edits the Bloomington Alternative.
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