Media Criticism archives
There's nothing better to grab a nation's attention than a good old-fashioned sex story. It seems every few months, politician we've never heard of - and some we have - has his personal indiscretions exposed across the national media.
When it comes to covering sex scandals, the press is so consumed about coming to the party too soon - under the guise of concerns about privacy or propriety - that they never time a story's release appropriately. And it's a tortured path that leads - regardless of the political orientation of protagonist - to criticism of political bias.
Since 2007, readers of the National Enquirer, Slate's Kausfiles and, well, the Internet, have been familiar with the name Rielle Hunter, a campaign videographer for former Senator John Edwards. Only this last week, however, did I realize that her name was not pronounced "Riley," because there was nary a peep about her - and the suspicions surrounding her involvement with the Edwards campaign - in the national press.
When Edwards was caught hiding from photographers in a Beverly Hills hotel restroom at 2:40 in the morning, did we hear about it? Did we see the pictures of Edwards coddling Hunter's child in a room of that very hotel? Not until John Edwards admitted to having an affair with Hunter did the story of Edwards' extramarital affair break into the mainstream media consciousness.
It is more curious when the story broke rather then how. That Edwards was cheating on his cancer-stricken wife had been known throughout the Democratic primaries. To ignore that, as the press did, only served to benefit their story line of a competitive primary season and, as some of her supporters allege, to hurt Hillary Clinton's chances of winning the Democratic nomination early.
While the effects on the Democratic Primary are debatable, the timing of the Edwards story raises an important question about political coverage: what does the media know about the two presumptive nominees, Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, and when will they tell us what they know?
Sex scandals involving Republicans always seem to get exposed right around election season. The media sat on the Mark Foley Instant Messaging scandal from May until after Labor Day in the 2006 election cycle. In the 2003 recall election, the Los Angeles Times dropped a stink-bomb of a story about Arnold Schwarzenegger's grabbiness the Thursday before voters went to the polls. And only after Senator John McCain secured enough delegates to become the presumptive Republican nominee that the New York Times ran its poorly-sourced sex scandal story on the Senator.
Meanwhile, the media sat on the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal until the story was forced into the open by the Drudge Report and we all learned of the infamously stained blue dress. The media apparently knew nothing about New York Governor Elliot Spitzer until the FBI went after him. In all fairness, they pounced on the David Vitter story when the Republican Senator admitted he had hired a call girl. And Sen. Larry Craig's frequenting mens' restrooms for sex was widely known across Internet chat rooms and political sites for two years before a courtroom confession broke his story. Had his Minneapolis encounter not occurred, questions about his tap-dancing skills surely would have arisen in his next re-election campaign. In these cases the press only reported the stories when their hands were forced.
Will Republicans only learn the truth about their nominee after the Minneapolis convention, when it is too late to change horses? And, pray tell, what does the media has on Obama, the media's own personal love child? If there were something scandalous, would American know about it before it is too late? Somehow, I have to wonder.
With one hundred days before the election, New York Times Columnist Frank Rich has declared Democratic nominee Barack Obama the "Acting President" of the United States, based, apparently on the candidate's ability to assemble large crowd and amass television ratings. But as he basks in the glory of his European adventure, is it possible that Barack Obama has peaked too soon?
In the world of college football, coaches have to remind their players and alumni boosters that championships aren't won in September, they're won in January. The same is true of electoral politics. An "acting president" in July must still win in November.
Unfortunately for Obama, the headiness of his European coronation may turn against him in the next fourteen weeks.
The greatest risk for any public figure is to offend the media, it's main pipeline - yes, even in these days for Facebook, IM and blogs - to voters. When Bill Clinton wagged his finger to the press corps in 1998, and was later proven to be a liar, the press turned - really turned - against him for the first time in his administration.
Heretofore, Barack Obama has enjoyed an amiable relationship with the media, and in some cases, journalists' conduct could be considered lewd, which has led both of his rivals, Clinton and McCain, to cry foul. But the campaign's treatment of the press during Obama's whirlwind tour of the middle East and Europe seems to have soured them on the candidate.
Even before his feet hit the ground in the Middle East, Barack Obama's relationship with his press entourage when Der Spiegel took a quote from the Iraqi president out of context and interpreted it as an endorsement of Obama and his policies. Having the American press root for you is one thing - that's just us, kids - but having the foreign press manipulate world leaders on your behalf is not likely to win many votes on this side of the Atlantic.
This unique turn of events continued. On the first stop of Obama's whirlwind tour, when in Afghanistan, he had no official press pool, no reporters and no press conference on the ground. NBC's Andrea Mitchell broke ranks with her network colleagues and actually criticized the candidate for conducting what she called, "fake interviews."
Later on the trip, reporters complained that at Obama press conferences, only the candidate was given a microphone, so only the candidate could be heard but not the reporters' potentially hostile questioning.
By the time Obama arrived in Berlin to give his Victory Column speech, the mood of the press had turned on the candidate. In the coverage I saw his remarks played second fiddle to the setting and its place in history which were steadily compared to Berlin speeches by presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. Substantively, Obama's speech did not measure up.
I must admit that I was busy celebrating my birthday, in grand style, over the weeklong Obama trip, but I do not once recall hearing Barack Obama's voice until his appearance on Meet the Press Sunday morning. His arrogance in not responding to legitimate questions from Tom Brokaw was off-putting, not only to me, but, I suspect, also to the media.
The press has gotten a taste of the "Acting President" Barack Obama administration, and I don't think they like it. With fourteen weeks to go, Obama's greatest risk is told in the Greek tragedy of Icarus, who soared on wings made of wax, and ignored the warnings not to fly to high. Drunk with the power of flight, he flew too close to the sun and the wings melted, there was no one there to catch him. If Obama continues to run his campaign like a presidential administration - with tightly-choreographed events and restricted access to the candidate - his alleged allies in the media may no longer be there should he start to fall.
Thirteen years ago, when I moved to Los Angeles, the city had just lost its two professional football teams. Then the Rams packed up for St. Louis and the Raiders went home to Oakland, leaving a gaping hole in the City of Angels' civic pride. Los Angeles was no longer a big-league pro-football City.
Last week, there was a bloodbath on First Street home of the Los Angeles Times, which announced that two hundred and fifty jobs, including 150 reporters would be cut. The newspaper that once aimed to be the West Coast's answer to the New York Times and its Manhattan elitism has become, overnight a shadow of itself and its ambitions.
The question I found myself asking was not whether the Times was dead - it has been dying for awhile - but whether Los Angeles will miss it in a decade, or, as with professional football, will we hardly know we miss it.
The day after the layoffs at the paper were announced, I found myself about fifteen minutes behind schedule for my morning gym routine. This can be dangerous, because the Precor cardio machines which perfectly cradle a newspaper and have no moving parts fill up quickly within the first hour that the gym is open.
To my dismay, that extra fifteen minutes of sleep meant that indeed, I was relegated to some other cardio machine, so I chose the one next to my friend Ron, who had forgotten his iPod that morning.
"Luckily," I told Ron, "there's no longer thirty minutes worth of reading in the paper any more! It's gotten so bad, I have to bring a pen to work on the Sudoku puzzle just so I can make it through a workout."
Ron agreed, and commented about how on a recent Sunday, his $1.50 paper barely kept this attention through brunch.
I suppose a paper it is good for tactile people like myself to entertain ourselves while slavishly fighting a jihad on the waistline. And newspapers are good to have if your pet makes a mistake on your carpet. But beyond that, print is becoming less and less relevant.
Is there a need any longer for a Los Angeles perspective on Iraq, or would people rather turn to national news outlets? Why bother checking my stocks in the morning paper, when the markets already are open in New York? Most information is old by the time it gets in the paper and people are turning online to get the latest, fastest information.
There is a watchdog role at the local level for a print publication. They have the resources and gravitas to cover City Hall, but only if they want to. But, in concentrating its efforts on competing with the East Coast papers like New York's Times and the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times abdicated this role to its regional competitors. And it got beaten, consistently, in the local markets.
Similarly, when it comes to what's going on in Los Angeles' scores of neighborhoods, a newspaper falls short. Instead, hundreds of weblogs have cropped up covering our communities from a wide angle of perspectives. Usually there is an agenda involved, but at least these bloggers admit to having bias, unlike the paper!
Some of the best content in the Los Angeles Times is the traffic coverage of Steve Hymon. Traffic is just about the one issue that unites everyone within the Los Angeles area, rich or poor, urban or suburban. Hymon covers the issue diligently on-line with his Bottleneck blog which is edited and reprinted for the paper on a regular basis.
Hymon's efforts offers a glimpse of things to come, I think. When Pro Football left Los Angeles more than a decade ago, it did not mean the death of weekend recreation in Los Angeles. Since the NFL left, the sport enjoys high ratings in the city as people watch NFL games from other parts of the country. College football at USC and UCLA is thriving like never before. And people have discovered hiking, biking or other sports. We don't miss the NFL.
And while Los Angeles currently mourns the changes at the venerable Los Angeles Times, in a decade I doubt we will miss it. If the paper wants to keep publishing, perhaps the best model would be to cut its staff of writers even more, and hire editors. Those editors can pick from among the city's best and brightest bloggers and (with a contributor agreement) select the best of Los Angeles' online content and republish it the next morning.
It may not be "journalism" - as we know it, now - but this melding of formats would control costs, and democratize the press like never before. Make a system like that work, and we'll be glad that the Times as we knew it lives no more!
The Olympic flame is back in California, bypassing its usual destination, Los Angeles, for San Francisco in what's clearly one of the most controversial Olympic Torch relays since the idea was first hatched by the Germans 73 years ago.
The Olympics and its global torch relay, have almost always been an opportunity to celebrate global unity and the hope that there can be peace on earth - if only for a couple weeks. Unfortunately for the International Olympic Committee and the organizer of Beijing's Summer Games of 2008, the relay has been anything but peaceful.
While the Olympics are, on their surface, about sports, their international nature means that the events cannot be decoupled from global politics. China has been looking towards Bejing 2008 as its debutante ball on the stage of global superpowers, expecting to be welcomed with open arms like the toys it produces are welcomed at America's ports.
But in London and Paris, protestors disrupted the pomp, reminding the world of China's horrible record on human rights and the environmental catastrophe that the fast-industrializing nation has inflicted on its citizens and the world. It took the running of the Olympic torch to remind us that Tibet has not been free for the past seven years, nor have the Chinese people for that matter.
Today, San Francisco, a city not known to stand on the sidelines of global protest, is bracing for the worst.
I, for one, am glad to see the protests. Finally, the world is realizing that evil exists and that President George W. Bush is not at its root!
The contrasts between Paris and Beijing, between San Francisco and Shanghai, and between London and Lhasa, could not be greater. Here in California, we consider what we can do to fight climate change, we are asking ourselves why China should get a free ride. As California debates whether to grant marriage equality to all of its citizens, China is oppressing millions of its own.
The International Olympic Committee is now debating whether to ditch the torch relay altogether in order to avoid the embarrassment of further protests. That is the wrong move. If the torch relay has become a symbol of totalitarianism and oppression in 2008, it is not the torch relay's fault, it is Beijing's.
If the torch makes it all the way to Beijing, be prepared for the comparisons to the 1936 Olympics held in Nazi Germany - the folks who came up with the idea of the torch relay. Back then, apologists argued that the games should be about the sports, but the games were really a way to mollify the world into thinking that Germany wasn't so bad after all. That's despite the existence of forced-labor camps.
Hillary Clinton and other politicians shouldn't be calling on the world to boycott the games' opening ceremonies in Beijing, they should be calling on the Olympics to boycott Beijing. Sure it is late in the day but if the last week has been any indication, the IOC should consider moving the games to a more freedom-loving place, somewhere that has the experience to host the Olympics and be ready on day one.
I know: Let the Games Begin on 08.08.08...in Los Angeles!
Conventional wisdom in Republican circles and among the mainstream media is that the longer and hotter the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination gets, the better for our nominee, John McCain. Republicans giggle with glee at the sight of two Democrats tearing each other apart, with the same gusto as the media looks with horror.
But I, for one, am not quite convinced that a protracted nomination battle will be a bad thing for the Democrats in the end. While there is plenty of schadenfreude for Republicans watching Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama wallop each other, the mudslinging between Democrats may work to their favor in the end.
My five year-old nephew would be able to see the allegory for the McCain campaign in an old children's tale, the Tortoise and the Hare. For those who do not remember the Aesop, the story goes like this: a rabbit and a turtle are in a race, the rabbit gets off to a quick start while the turtle plods along steadily. The rabbit decides to take a rest, but is overtaken and passed by the turtle and loses in the end.
The Republican nomination process felt a lot like that rascally rabbit this year. In 23 mere days between New Hampshire and Florida, John McCain went from also-ran to the nominee. It really wasn't much of a race. Since then, he has toured the nation, and the globe, but has he not really been in an all-out campaign mode - unlike both Democrats.
Before the 2008 Presidential Election began, neither Clinton nor Obama had ever faced much of an electoral challenge; let's face it, Rick Lazio and Allan Keyes are no John McCain. But just as a vaccination introduces a small but manageable dose of a virus into the system in order to build defenses against a disease, the Democratic mudslinging between Clinton and Obama could ultimately inoculate the eventual nominee from Republican attacks, whomever he or she may be. And they will have months of campaign trench-warfare under their belts by the time their party picks a nominee. That's more time on the road in campaign mode than John McCain has had in his nearly eight decades.
The names Tony Rezko or Reverend Jeremy Wright seem today to be road bumps to the nomination for Barack Obama. But by addressing these issues, and absorbing their impact in March, not October, the junior Senator from Illinois may be able to inoculate himself from these issues later on. Likewise, Travelgate, Whitewater, Monica, Bosnian snipers - and more - will be old news by the time that Hillary gets the nomination, should that come to pass.
In contrast, John McCain has by and large managed to get this far without enduring many attacks. Outside of a below-the-belt article from the New York Times, the worst that McCain has faced was an ad by Mitt Romney which only referred to the Senator metaphorically as a Republican proxy for Hillary Clinton.
Between now and September, John McCain will be an afterthought in the national media, as newspapers, television and the websites large and small all focus on the merits of having either Clinton or Obama in the White House. Come Labor Day, McCain will be the political hare. He may need to be awakened from his nap!
So to my Republican friends, I must say, "be careful what you wish for," and to my associates across the aisle, I say, "simmer down," it's always darkest before the sun rises.
Presidential polling in August of an odd-numbered year isn't likely to tell you much, but it reveals a little something about those who obsess over the numbers. And coverage of the latest round of numbers hints at the possibility that the national political media, sticking to the narrative of presidential primaries of the past, may miss the boat when America votes in 2008.
Hillary Clinton stole the headlines in the latest poll by increasing her national lead to a near-majority of Democratic Primary voters. Her recent confrontation with rival Barack Obama over his experience and fitness to serve, so the narrative goes, worked. In the same poll, among Republicans, fellow New Yorker, front-running centrist Rudy Giuliani, extended his lead over non-candidate candidate Fred Thompson, big-spending Mitt Romney and the moribund John McCain campaign although you'd hardly know it from the news accounts.
Why? Well the political press are following the old script that says the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire primary are still the most important states in picking a president. More likely, that talking point has been well-distributed by the campaigns of Mitt Romney and John Edwards who are undoubtedly saying: don't look behind the curtain of the national numbers - we're competitive in Iowa and New Hampshire!
Unfortunately for these two states and those two candidates, the traditional first-in-the-nation status held by New Hampshire and Iowa has quietly fallen. The first votes of the 2008 Presidential contest will be cast in Downey, Calif., not De Moines, Iowa and in Modesto, Calif., not Manchester, N.H..
The California primary is officially February 5th, but more residents of this state will have cast more ballots before the Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire Primary than will be counted in both the states combined when they are able to start voting on January 7 - a month before the polls open. And many of those folks - permanent absentees - will be reminded to vote when they get their ballots delivered to their doors by the U.S. Post Office sometime in early January.
That's one reason why the presidential nominees from either party won't be those who are focused on Iowa, which caucuses on Jan. 14, and New Hampshire, which votes on Jan. 22, but will likely be the candidates who realize that Californians will begin voting just after Christmas, before college football has crowned my beloved USC Trojans champions in New Orleans on January 8th. And they'll keep casting ballots through and until February 5th when the polls open.
In 2004, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom rode to victory on ballots that were mailed in well before election day. Two years later, Republicans in California focused heavily on securing absentee votes and there were early indications that the GOP could claim victory in some statewide offices. On election day and anti-Bush, anti-GOP fervor swept the nation, suppressing Republican turnout and encouraging some Republicans to even punch the chads of Democrats. But despite the Democratic tidal wave on election day, Republicans Arnold Schwarzenegger and Steve Poizner managed to win statewide office with two others coming within spitting distance of their opponents.
In 2008, California could see a similar phenomenon with its Presidential primary. So far, the State's polling numbers have tracked along with the national numbers. Clinton and Giuliani are not only leading but they're extending their leads in the Golden State.
Should a John Edwards or a Mitt Romney pull off an upset in Iowa or New Hampshire, it may be too late to affect the vote in California because, well, many ballots will already have been cast. The national media, if they continue sticking to their playbook of campaigns past and are either unaware or choosing to overlook this phenomenon may get left dockside as the Clinton and Giuliani campaign set sail on a tidal wave from the Golden State.
Editor's Note: California's permanent absentee balloting is a phenomenon Spot-on writers have been following for some time. Here's Chris Nolan's take on the Newsom election and the increasing popularity of the state's vote-by-mail system.
Living so close to Hollywood, Los Angelenos should know more than anyone that perception is often more important than reality. But that lesson was lost on our city as it presented its bid for the 2016 Olympics to the United States Olympic Committee in Washington, D.C., this weekend - and lost were the City of Angels’ hopes to host its third Olympic Games.
Whereas the city of Chicago's collective civic pride shone through the presence of many major media outlets - from the local dailies to several television stations - Los Angeles television and print media as a whole barely registered a blip at the proceedings, giving Committee members the impression that the City of Angels could frankly care less about the Olympics coming to town.
The first question posed to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa when he arrived in Washington to pitch to USOC set the tone for the whole weekend. The reporters asked our Mayor whether the lack of local media presence in Washington reflected a lack of enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. And as such, the tone was set for the entire weekend.
Even those who did not attend journalism schools probably know that one of the trade’s cardinal rules is that the reporter should not become part of the story. But when there are no local television cameras present and the local paper of record - the Los Angeles Times - is absent at a critical event like the selection of the United States’ bid city for the Olympic Games, it became a story.
In the months leading up to the USOC selection, Los Angeles’ “local” paper covered the process in passing as part of its Sports coverage - but placed little emphasis on what a winning bid might mean to the city in terms that might have, for instance, motivated elected officials to finish the Purple Line subway-to-the-sea project or ramping up the fight against gangs in areas near future Olympic venues.
Other media outlets were just as neglectful of the economic impacts that having the Olympics come to L.A. might have had on the city. Granted, it is difficult to get Los Angeles television stations to care about much more than the latest car chase or brush fire. In a town where many of our residents have moved here in the last nine years, it can be tough to get people thinking about something that may or may not happen in 2016. Heck, by then, many Los Angeles residents will be living in Chicago!
In fact, the Times ran an opinion editorial from it’s sister-paper, the Chicago Tribune, long before the Los Angeles paper editorialzed in favor of the city’s Olympic bid on the day of the selection - while at the same time endorsing Sanjaya to win on American Idol.
By their absence at the Washington Hilton Embassy Row, where the USOC deliberations took place, Los Angeles’ local media send Committee members a clear message: we don’t care. If Committee members got the feeling that media executives thought that the 2016 Olympics don’t get television ratings or sell newspapers in Los Angeles in mid-April 2007, they wouldn’t be to blame.
While Los Angeles’ media was absent at the USOC selection proceedings, each of Chicago’s major dailies were represented in Washington, along with five television stations. The message was clear - Chicago and Chicagoans want the Olympics. Angelenos did not.
Los Angeles gave the United States Olympic Committee the far-superior bid for the 2016 games. While Chicago’s bid was build on speculation and potential, Los Angeles presented facilities that could host a world-class international event like the Olympics tomorrow, if need be. Only one sporting venue needed to be built for Los Angeles to host the 2016 Games, meaning that the construction delays and cost over-runs which have plagues the Olympic movement in recent decades would be avoided entirely.
Olympic observers noted that the final presentations often tip the scales when it comes to the site selection process. In the Summer of 2005, Paris’ 2012 bid lost out to London on the final ballot - in part because of what happened during their final presentations.
Chicago won the United States’ 2016 Olympic bid not because it had a superior proposal for hosting the Olympic Games. Chicago won the nomination because it gave the perception that the city - not just its elected officials and sporting elites - wanted it. Because the local media cared enough just to show up, whereas Los Angeles’ did not, the United States Olympic Committee got the message that one city cared while the other didn’t. Because even the USOC likes to be paid attention to, Los Angeles’ media’s absence made their choice easy.
I'm all for a little inside baseball, after all I like politics. But my local paper, the Los Angeles Times, is reading more like an internal company newsletter these days than a big city daily. There's new management in town, you see, and the wolf-crying reporters and editors are covering their change of fate as if the future of the nation's second-largest metropolis is at stake.
Here's a memo to the editors: We, the people of Southern California, do not care who owns the LA Times.
It seems the newsmen in Los Angeles were shocked by the reaction of this week's sale of the Tribune Company, which owns the Times. With bated breath, they report, "as the sun warmed the city Monday and people here joined the morning rush-hour crush on Chicago's elevated train, the chatter revolved around one thing: Tribune's plans to sell the beloved - and legendarily cursed - Cubs after this baseball season."
Apparently, the good people of Chicago just don't care who owns their local paper, the Chicago Tribune. In Los Angeles, on the other hand, the sale of the media company to real estate magnate Sam Zell has merited 23 articles here in L.A. on the subject in just three days!
But, hey, guess what, here in Los Angeles…we are as nonplussed as the Chicagoans. And it's not just because we don't have the Cubbies and the First Church of Baseball (aka Wrigley Field) to worry about. To get clued to this reality, the folks in the Times newsroom ought to have a look at their own paper. This morning's edition has a story about the NBC sitcom 30 Rock. Although the show is critically acclaimed, nobody is watching it - and it's struggling to stay on the air. This is an allegory. As Mickey Kaus likes to point out, people don't buy the newspaper for it's journalistic standards. They buy it because there is something compelling to read.
The Times is no longer compelling in a host of other ways. And, as with other complaints about newspapers, this is a situation that's affected our political discourse here in Los Angeles. We'd rather hear about why our own United States Senator Diane Feinstein was forced to step down from a Committee appointment after it was revealed she was overseeing contracts awarded to companies owned by her husband. That's not quite the "starring role" the Times must have imagined in its last article mentioning the couple.
It's no better with the paper's columnists. If I want to know what George Skelton is going to say, I can subscribe to Steve Maviglio's press releases and get the anti-Schwarzenegger spin of the day directly to my email box. If I want to know what T.J. Simers has to say in the sport section, I just have to fill in the latest anti-Phil Jackson or Pete Carroll screeds. Even the sports section shares the same contempt for success as the newsroom.
On the opinion pages, the situation is improving but still critical. I say it's improving because they have a former Reason editor and a month ago, they published a submission of mine. However, flanking my 800 words were an article by the former president of Harvard University and another by a professor from…Harvard University. It's not as if there aren't any academic institutions between Spring Street and the Charles River.
When the Times does bring in local voices, it is the same tired crowd we've been reading since at least the 1990's. The paper can create a new political culture in the city by giving a voice to a new generation of chatterati - after all, that's what's happened on the web, no? - but it requires the effort to look beyond the stable of writers and activists on whom they have relied for decades.
The next step of course, would be to bring back the "Metro" section and assign their best reporters to covering what is happening in the city - beyond the corridors of City Hall and the County Building. There have been countless stories about homelessness downtown, but it seems Steve Lopez and others on the truly local news beat haven't taken the effort to walk too far beyond Skid Row, which conveniently abuts their office building, to see that the homeless are now making encampments along the Sunset Strip and across the region.
I could go on. And, like many out here working on the web I could go on and on about the failings of the news business. But the problem is one that, ironically, has been spelled out very clearly by the Times' new owner: To be appealing to readers, the paper - on- or off-line needs to be relevant to those readers.
The people of Los Angeles don't much care who owns their local paper - they care whether the paper is readable and relevant to their lives. The Times, if it to succeed under new ownership, needs to put the L.A. back in the L.A. Times.
Barely a week ago, political pundit Ann Coulter barely registered a blip on the internet. Over the past week, she has had the blogosphere all in a tizzy, simply for her use of one word last Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference. But the criticism of Coulter by Presidential Candidates on the right and the left rings hollow when you look at the facts.
If you have not seen the clip or read the news, here is what has gotten all of us hot and heavy for Ann this week. Here are her exact words: "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot,' so I'm - so, kind of at an impasse, can't really talk about Edwards, so I think I'll just conclude here and take your questions."
Coulter was making a reference to the case of Isaiah Washington, the Grey's Anatomy star who was sent to rehab after an angry tirade against a co-worker then used the term at the Golden Globes before checking himself into rehab.
Others have pointed out that Coulter did not call Edwards a "faggot" as implied in media accounts and that she does not realize how offensive the term can be when describing people, not cigarettes.
The general consensus, however, was that the term was inappropriate, and following Coulter's 2006 "raghead" remarks on the very same dais, it got conservatives wondering if Coulter was the best ambassador for the cause. From bloggers to Presidential candidates, there has been outrage and condemnation.
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who was seen on video chumming up with Ann before her speech responded saying through spokesman Kevin Madden, "[i]t was an offensive remark. Governor Romney believes all people should be treated with dignity and respect.”
John Edwards' campaign responded, saying, ""Ann Coulter's use of an anti-gay slur yesterday was un-American and indefensible. In America, we strive for equality and embrace diversity. The kind of hateful language she used has no place in political debate or our society at large. I believe it is our moral responsibility to speak out against that kind of bigotry and prejudice every time we encounter it." Then they launched a fundraising effort on their website based on the incident.
What's funny, however is how wildly inconsistent these statements are with the candidates actual policies. As Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney's idea of "dignity and respect," was to try to strip away legally-granted rights from gay and lesbian couples, thereby denying them equal protection under the law.
Senator Edwards idea of embracing "equality and diversity" when he ran for Vice President in 2004 was to take a position on gay rights that was to the right of the man many liberals compare to Attila the Hun—his Republican opponent, Dick Cheney.
If the "F-word" is going to now have equal status as the "N-word" in the American lexicon, shouldn't F's be granted all the same equal rights as N's? Candidates and others can give lip service to tolerance, but when their policy positions don't back them up, someone needs to point it out.
In a movie theater, as in a bar, religion and politics are best avoided. Finding a mass appeal and a broad, approving audience is almost impossible. Yet Hollywood persists, serving up it's latest attempt at political comedy with Robin Williams' Man of the Year - due in theaters this Friday nationwide.
Hollywood enters the danger zone of politics at its own peril because it does not know how to handle the perception that it is out of touch with broad segments of the American populace—which, ultimately has to buy tickets to its movies.
Man of the Year tries too hard to combine elements of films such as American President, Dave, Bullworth and The Firm - but each subplot pales in comparison to the feature it inspired.
Playing off the success of political comedian talk show hosts like Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, the premise of Man of the Year is simple enough - Williams' Tom Dobbs uses his talk show to launch a campaign for President of the United States.
The formula should be simple enough: Insert the incredibly funny Williams into a political comedy and you get a funny political comedy. But if only things were so simple.
Man of the Year fails as a political comedy for a simple reason: Hollywood is afraid of its own shadow. Too scared to fly its liberal credentials with pride, the writers cast Williams' character in the awkward position of stacking both Republicans and Democrats.
Dobbs character says that he's tired of a, "Republican Party that can't distinguish between a commandment and an amendment," and a "Democratic Party that's like a chameleon in front of a mirror that can't decide what it is."
And when it comes to actual issues, Dobbs only criticizes issues historically tied to the Republican party. In the movie's presidential debate, Dobbs rails against the GOP candidate, attacking him for saying that wanting cars to be, "fuel efficient when you're backed by oil companies," is like being a "kosher pig farmer." He also makes not-so-funny jokes at the expense of Enron and Flag-Burning Amendments.
Meanwhile, Dobb's platform of campaign finance reform, regulation and tax hikes - etc. etc. - reads like it was lifted from that of the Democratic Party. So much so that, having failed to suspend my disbelief (due to unnecessary silliness in the movie's key plot points) I found myself asking why the Dobbs character didn't just come out as a Democrat himself!
And this is where Hollywood's fear of its own political shadow does it a disservice. Too scared to embrace its liberal (Democratic) credentials, Man of the Year becomes a thinly-veiled farce. Unlike Hollywood political successes such as TV's West Wing or the feature American President - whose heroes openly and proudly screamed "liberal!" - Man of the Year is full of attempts to make Democratic talking points funny while presenting them from the point of view of an mythical third party.
The risk of political humor is that you are likely to upset up to half of the nation whatever you say. So why can't Hollywood be upfront about its biases - maybe even mock them - and, at worse, appeal to a "niche" audience of Blue Stater residents? If it worked for Michael Moore and Al Gore, you'd think the popular Robin Williams could have pulled it off.
As many of us suspected, the Los Angeles Times got its copy of private conversations between Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his staff from the Angelides for Governor Campaign.
Although the newspaper, long suspected particularly by Republicans, of having it out for the Governor after their failure to sink his electoral hopes in 2003, has remained silent about its sources - even in reporting a California Highway Patrol investigation into how they got their information - pressure from Internet bloggers has forced the Angelides camp to speak.
It turned out that the IP (Internet Protocol) address of the computer which accessed the files was attached to a computer at the Angelides for Governor campaign. The campaign then acknowledged that one of its people accessed the files and downloaded the tape of Schwarzenegger’s private conversation. This is the tape that showed up several days later on the front page of the Los Angeles Times.
How did this happen? The story traces back to a somewhat different version of the earlier version offered to me by a top Democrat, speaking on background so as not to get anyone in trouble. Here's what he said:
The audio file in question was somehow linked to a public archives file, not of Schwarzenegger speeches, but of a press release. In this scenario, the press release contained a link to Schwarzenegger's remarks on Hurricane Katrina. And that audio file on Hurricane Katrina, in turn, contained links to other audio files, including the private Schwarzenegger conversation. Which was taped not in August, but in March.
All this means that the Angelides campaign somehow found a way to gain access to a private conversation and then got that conversation to the Los Angeles Times, which placed it on its front page.
While that may not classify as illegal hacking, anyone who thinks the tape was accessed by purely legitimate means is naive. This counts as a "political hack" in my book: It is analogous to claiming that the Watergate break-in wouldn’t have been criminal if the doors had been left unlocked.
Schwarzenegger's legal counsel still maintains that the files were ill-gotten. Making things worse for Angelides? The tape hand-off hits the headlines just as Hewlett Packard Corp. is coping with allegations about spying on reporters and its own board members. That heightens the sleaze factor.
Angelides’ camp finally admitted late Tuesday - after published reports had tied their computers to the break-in - that they were the source for the Los Angeles Times. That's the story the L.A. Times should have written. And as long as they don't write that piece, the Angelides folks will be able to keep denying they're accountable for the hack or the hand-off.
Schwarzenegger’s campaign has responded, saying, “The treasurer should denounce the unethical actions taken on his behalf. Phil Angelides has a long history of gutter politics, and it is clear this most recent example was a calculated effort to smear the Governor's reputation…Once again, Phil Angelides and his campaign have demonstrated the treasurer is not ready to lead the state."
What's really is at stake is the would-be-Governor’s ability to manage his staff. If he is unable to control and unwilling to take responsibility for the actions of the people he has chosen for his team, how can we expect Phil Angelides to govern California?
Even though the Universities of Connecticut and Rhode Island square off in one of college football’s first games of the 2006 season this Thursday, the real battle between these neighboring states is between political extremists and the measure of success will be whom can inflict the greatest damage to their political party.
Some political observers are starting to draw comparisons between the Senatorial primaries of Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman and Rhode Island’s Lincoln Chafee.
Earlier this month, the Senator from Connecticut was defeated in the Democratic Party by anti-war liberal Ned Lamont.
On September 12, Rhode Island’s Republican Senator, Lincoln Chafee faces a stiff primary challenge by Stephen Laffey, a right-wing conservative upset over Chafee’s positions on tax cuts, environmental policies and gay marriage, among many things.
Unlike Lieberman - a Democrat incumbent running in a heavily Democratic state - Chaffee is being challenged in a State where Republican voters make up only 70,000 of the 430,000 voters.
Yet this is a closed primary* - only Republicans will be choosing between Chafee and Laffey. If the race were in Texas, Lincoln Chafee would be looking for a job right now - but there remains a good chance that Rhode Island Republicans will be as pragmatic as those in California who chose not to challenge the vehemently centrist Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006.
But while the media will draw comparisons between Chafee and Lieberman in the next two weeks, there is one “X-factor” that they will not mention…
The third estate is not rooting against Chafee like they did against Lieberman. You’ll see less national attention on this race - less of a boost for Laffey than Lamont. And that’s where the parallels between Lincoln Chafee and Joe Lieberman fall apart.
* Clarification: Reader Bill Brittingham writes in to correct me: "the Rhode Island Republican primary isn’t closed. Independents can vote too. That, apparently, is what Chafee is counting on – not the pragmatism of the Republican base." Agreed that both should be factored in--along with the media not rushing in to support Laffey like they did for Lamont.
Who would have thought that an election with a famous Hollywood action hero seeking the highest office in the nation's most populated State could be a snoozer? However, just days after the respected Rothenberg Report moved California's gubernatorial race to "safe," the Sacramento press corps is doing whatever it can to make the contest between Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Treasurer Phil Angelides interesting again.
By the end of the week, it became clear that journalistic standards were less important than subscription sales…and California's political press threw out any pretense of balance in favor of trying to make the phrase "Governor Phil Angelides" seem plausible to anyone but the most die-hard partisan Democrats.
On Wednesday, the Angelides Campaign released it's highly dubious revenue and economic plan.
The press release from Angelides' campaign touted the economic "plan" which claims to, "tax relief for more than 4 million middle class California families."
Practically without blinking an eye, the state's major newspapers regurgitated the press release back to their readers…
Angelides Proposes Tax Cuts, read the Los Angeles Times…
Angelides calls for middle class tax reduction, read the SacBee…
And it took the Mercury News two writers to come up with this one: Angelides Proposes Tax Cuts
Did George Bush get such treatment in 2000? I'd bet a look at the archives would show headlines claiming "Bush Tax Cuts Would Benkrupt Nation"!
Today, the press turned its focus to Governor Schwarzenegger. Apparently, the conservative right is unhappy and may be willing to cost him the election by staying home. Or so the press wishes.
How else would the same story appear in both the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times? It's borderline intellectually-dishonest for Michael Finnegan to suggest that Schwarzenegger's "stands on illegal immigration, the state's swelling debt, gay rights and other matters" - all issues where the Governor is reflecting the mainstream political beliefs of Californians - could cost him the election.
Maybe it's summer and the headline writers are on mental vacation, but it sure feels like Angelides has finally found a constituency in California politics which wants him to be competitive in this race: The Sacramento press corps.
Within a week, if it hasn't been written yet, the Mickey Kaus-termed "Kosola" scandal will invariably lead to proclamations of the death of the Netroots movement. But what Markos Zuniga of DailyKos and MyDD's Jerome Armstrong stand accused of is anything but "netroots"—it was a thinly veiled attempt at pay-to-play net-tops activism which has finally been exposed.
In case you missed it, the kingpins of the left-wing of the blogosphere are under scrutiny for taking money to consult for political candidates, starting with Howard Dean, then using their blogs as megaphones for those campaigns. While not illegal, it certainly underscores the wild-wild-West mentality of ethics in the blogosphere.
After breaking the story behind the firewall of "Times Select" the Gray Lady finally wrote the story up—in their opinion section yesterday. Of course, when WalMart was "exposed" by the same paper for hiring a P.R. agency to reach out to like-minded bloggers, it was front-page news… But that's another column.
More than ever, as my business partner noted in April, political candidates are taking notice of the blogosphere. Hillary Clinton, in fact, just hired blogger Peter Daou away from Salon to help her court the medium as she builds her aspirations for a 2008 Presidential bid.
Yet by-and-large political campaigns—and even Kos himself—are missing the boat on how political campaigns can leverage the blogosphere.
The failure of the Kosola-style net-tops approach is well-documented. After the June 6 elections, it even led me to ask if the medium was dead. But the missing links in most efforts for netroots activism are, in fact, the missing links.
Take a look, for example, at Governor Schwarzenegger's blog. Were they to ask, I would tell them the truth—it's AWFUL. The posts are too long, it's not updated often enough, it has no synergy with the press operations and they don't have pictures. But what's really missing are the links.
Both Howard Dean's Presidential campaign and Bob Hertzberg's campaign for Mayor of Los Angeles understood something that campaign bloggers seem to have overlooked—the relationship with the blogosphere is a two-way street.
Dean and Hertzberg would link to blogs, news articles, and their own press releases like it was going out of style. In the case of Hertzberg, for example, I can say firsthand that I was more likely to write about local Los Angeles politics (and admittedly look more favorably towards Hertzberg's point-of-view) because I believed they'd link to me. And in the blogosphere link = traffic = happy.
If the problem with "netroots" is that small self-selected groups of like-minded people are only "speaking" among themselves the solution for political campaigns (or businesses or even bloggers) would seem to be simple. Link.
Link to those you agree with—and show that there is a diverse array of people who share your point of view. Link with those with whom you disagree—and engage them in a civilized discussion. Link to those who link to others and leverage the power of the internet.
It's not a world-wide-web, after all, unless we're interconnected.
Editor's Note: For more on this topic see Chris Nolan's Love For Sale.
Josh Trevino and Chris Nolan, my colleagues here at Spot-On, are on top of the "Amsterdam 25" Blogging scandal, but I think they may be overreacting. The arrangement between Amsterdam tourism officials and a select group of bloggers is not so much out of line as was how the agreement was reached.
The question this mini-scandal raises is how do you create a separation between church and state--or advertizing and editorial, rather--in the world of blogs, where one person is the editor, publisher and writer?
Tourism boards fly travel journalists for site visits all the time. It's the basic economics, Gridskipper writes, noting that, "If anything, the Amsterdam blogger project is going overboard with the transparency thing. Given that the bloggers aren't asked to actually blog about Amsterdam as part of the deal, what the Dutch are doing is trading the trip for publicity — i.e. the adspace."
How you create such a separation between advertizing and content on blogs, however, is the important question to answer as blogging as a medium gets taken more seriously by businesses and politicians.
One firewall which seems to work in the Mainstream Media is introducing the public relations firm into the blogosphere. Rather than have the advertizer or ad agency contact bloggers directly, one role Public Relations can play is as the "middle man" which creates a separation between the advertizing and the editorial sides of a blog.
Several P.R. firms, from boutique firms like Witeck Combs to giants like Edelman, now have New Media practices... and just so you know, my former boss and I are starting a compnay next month which will do just that. While advertizers should not be able to "buy" content on blogs, that can reach blog editors through agencies that have existing relationships with bloggers in the same way they'd hire the MWW Group to get a story in the local Newspaper.
Had the folks at Holland.com hired a Public Relations Agency to do what Henry Copeland did--trade trips for advertizing--or to treat bloggers like they treat traditional travel journalists, we probably would not be talking about the "Amsterdam 25" now.
