I’m still a bit gobsmacked by what I watched on TV last night – not Bush’s speech, which was serviceable and ultimately kind of forgettable – but by watching the media commentators talk about the war and the politics surrounding it.
I’ve been kind of “a boy in a bubble” as far as media is concerned. The last time we had television in our house, the winter Olympics were in Nagano and I wound up going on Jeopardy.
I stopped reading Time and Newsweek and U.S. News maybe fifteen years ago, except on visits to the doctor’s office, and I don’t listen to talk radio. Somehow in my late 30’s, time came to be precious to me and all of those things began (along with reading trash fiction and watching bad movies) to seem like a waste of time.So I’ve really gotten my news from newspapers, the occasional magazine (Atlantic and Harper’s for years, until Harpers fell into insanity, the Economist when I can afford it, Foreign Affairs, Scientific American, Nature, and a passel of car and motorcycle magazines. I’ll insert a plug for “Cook’s Illustrated,” hands-down the best cooking magazine I know of.) and now the Net. And I read books. Lots of books.
So I’m still reeling from watching the commentators on TV last night. I stayed up till 11:30 watching CNN and MSNBC and Fox and C-SPAN, and the world set out by the talking heads on the channels is so freaking different from the world that I see based on what I’ve looked at that I’m honestly not sure how to react.
I want to just dismiss them as delusional, but I think I need to do some thinking and looking before I do.
I will say this – if this represents the tone of mainstream media political commentary, I can’t believe Bush has any support at all. That’s another mystery that needs digging into.
And once again the MSM is a day late and a dollar short. Bush’s approval ratings are on the rise and have broken 50% for the first time in over a year. That was pre-SOTU bounce.
So, A.L., you don’t have an opinion on the Great Gum Scandal?
I was watching the post speech commentary on CBS as its the only network news org that I can stand to watch on a daily basis. (I am most grateful for the segment American Heroes which often profiles heroic soldiers who have made it home alive instead of just focusing on the trajedy of casualties.) But I was bitterly disappointed by their team commentary after the speech. Tom Freidman and Lara Logan took each part of the speech and flatly said that it didnt match the facts or it wasnt enough. The one positive comment came from Freidman who liked the talk about reducing our dependence on oil but said it didnt go far enough.
The capper came when Scheifer asked Logan if the war was winnable or if it was already lost. Something to that effect. Logan, all butch and brusque as usual, fearless expert on the conflict that she is having spent so much time there, flatly declared that Bush was wrong and we cant win in Iraq. She said that the only alternative was a pull-out. It was a statement dripping with gloom. I dont think Logan could have been more glum if her mother had just died. I got the feeling that her comments were almost funerary to try and counteract any positive feelings folks might have had about the speech in a head em off at the pass and dump cold water on any glimmer of hope kind of way. I’m suprised she didnt slump over in despair after having said it.
If this kind of thing is normal for British reporters its no wonder the British feel the way they do about the war. If I had to listen to one gloomy report after another like the ones Logan so often delivers, I might be tempted to go jump off a cliff.
Does anyone else worry at the recent trend at the networks of hiring former BBC journalists? ABC has Martin Brashear. CBS has Logan and I know there are more. Not one of them ever has any hopeful thing to say about much of anything. Is it co-incidence or deliberate? Are they trying to internationalize our news ie absorb us into the socialist left borg of international journalism to bring us around to right thinking about the issues. I have to wonder sometimes.
Mark–what poll has job approval at 50%? He did receive a bounce from 39% to between 42 and 47% (depending on the poll–believe the latest ABC had the high of 47-8% this month)–the average of major polls hasn’t rebounded to that extent yet–if there is an outlier I would like to know about it. The only outlier I am aware of is Rasmussen Reports, but even that one poll never has Bush over 50% for any day this month.
And yes, the speech was unremarkable–lots of recycled tropes–and this isolationist frame is utter rubish–did the speech writers actually research the history of the term and its associated policies? Who is he criticising, Pat Buchanan?!
A.L. — Like you I gave up on the television thing. Next year will be my 10 year anniversary without a television in my home. And I, too, suffer occassionally from the same syndrome you suffered through last night. It’s the “God, this is so…BAD!” mind-spasm. You get it from watching any mainstream news analysis. It’s all terrible.
The Internet — and blogs — have spoiled me.
He’s criticizing the Media and Democrats (indistinguishable these days). The standard Dem stump speech is isolationist, see Kerry’s appalled reaction to building firehouses in Baghdad.
Isolationism is real, it’s migrated to the Dem Party and media, for example Murtha wanting troops removed entirely from Iraq and Afghanistan and moved to Okinawa or Guam. See also Cindy Sheehan, Daily Kos, Howard Dean, Michael Moore, most of Hollywood, most of the Dem Party.
I was unimpressed with the speech that I read online, I mercifully spared myself the tedium of listening to Bush (he is without a doubt the world’s worst speaker) and the whole SOTU address is generally a charade. Tedious under Clinton, tedious under Bush.
However Bush’s “I won’t sit around and wait for America to be attacked” was politically a winner since it forced Dems to sit on their hands during the line, which if anyone watched it was telling. Probably end up in some campaign commercial.
Mark- that is laughable.
An odd note that nicely shows the flip side of the Cindy Sheehag brohaha:
The wife of Rep. C.W. Bill Young said she was ejected during President Bush’s State of the Union address for wearing a T-shirt that said, “Support the Troops Defending Our Freedom,” a newspaper reported Wednesday.
link:
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/13763761.htm
The problem I have with the media is not left of right, but flash over substance… instant headlines over in depth conversation.
I think this is one reason why people still like Bush despite bad headlines. Because alot of what Bush says i simple and straightforward. So the media criticizes Bush shallowly, but the administration soundbyte still gets through and in the end, he sounds more reasonable.
In order to critize Bush policy you really need to look at the nuts and bolts of his plans. Alot of them sound good, but they’re lemons in practice.
As far as the BBC goes, they’re the only network that at least appears to do research about flash-less subjects. I catch stories in the BBC about America that no one else bothers to follow.
Rasumussen daily polling “here”:http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Bush_Job_Approval.htm
January 30th 50% approval.
Today 48%, but was mainly taken before the SOTU.
Jim–there is nothing about Democratic policies that can be labeled on the whole as isolationist–again, it strips the term of any meaning to suggest that the Dems were running (or are still running) on a platform of international retreat. It ends up sounding like, “well, if you don’t like where we are you must be isolationist–can’t possibly be because you think we went to the wrong place or that our choice of tactics is horrible”…
…did the speech writers actually research the history of the term and its associated policies?
Did you? I think not. In the 1930’s isolationists in this country were of all political stripes. For instance, on the left Norman Thomas (socialist), Oswald Garrison Villard (one time editor of The Nation), and John Dewey were all isolationists. Until the Spanish Civil War so were the Communists and Trotskiites. Where did you ever get the impression that isolationism was a right wing phenomenon?
..if this represents the tone of mainstream media political commentary, I can’t believe Bush has any support at all.
Remember Evan Thomas’ prediction that support from the MSM would be worth fifteen points to Kerry? He was right. With a truly objective press, Bush would have won by a 65-35 landslide last year (just one example–Christmas in Cambodia).
I think evaluation of George W. Bush’s speeches should take into account that he is being immensely bold, as bold as Ronald Reagan was in envisaging victory in the Cold War despite everybody “knowing” it couldn’t be done. He is not reciting platitudes. He is insisting on simple things that are right or wrong, and that people do not believe or even respect.
If you live in a media bubble, as I do too, it’s easy to forget that the conventional wisdom is not what George W. Bush is saying, it’s what the critics who constantly damn him and preach defeat are saying.
(And yes, the occasional reminders of how hostile the media environment is, and how disconnected it is from reality as I see it, do shock.)
I don’t agree with everything George W. Bush says. For a start, I have come to see Islam as such as irreformable and a grand strategic adversary, and George W. Bush rejects that idea, seeing only lack of democracy as the problem.
I also don’t think sheer courage makes him a great speaker.
But, George W. Bush does have courage, and it is in his speeches. He swims tirelessly against a great media river that flows swiftly and always against him. The clearer that is to you, the brighter his courage should shine in your eyes.
>>Bush’s approval ratings are on the rise and have broken 50% for the first time in over a year.
It’s in the public’s interest to be rationally ignorant of important political matters. That’s why democracy is so useless. Expecting rational results from a democratic process is usually irrational.
Why do I have this picture of TJ having an argument with King Arthur over strange women lying in ponds distributing swords, and the virtues of living in an anarcho-syndicalist commune?
David Blue:
Yes, yes, yes, yes. And yes, absolutely.
Chuck–nice try, I meant Democrats today…nobody besides Buchanon is even close to proposing the kinds of policies that could be rightly labled isolationist…
“Why do I have this picture of TJ having an argument with King Arthur over strange women lying in ponds distributing swords, and the virtues of living in an anarcho-syndicalist commune?”
That about covers it, yeah, except the picture I get is of TJ arguing with George Washington over the uselessness of the will of the people, and the virtues of living under a system of government in which leadership is determined by strange women lying in ponds distributing swords.
TV refugees must congregate at WOC. Sarcasm on. Greetings comrades. I would like to add this observation. What I have noticed after years of not owning a TV is how EMOTIONALLY MANIPULATIVE it is. I discovered this visiting my son who has one of those modestly sized giant screens and I noticed that watching the news – didn’t matter who’s – made my guts churn. Come to think of it the other day my dentist said he doesn’t watch TV somewhere in the middle of a 3.5 hour $1500 marathon. Comfortingly he agreed with my observation that the news is emotionally manipulative. Have I said that before? Oh, sorry. The best one line commentary I have ever heard about ‘the news’ is a line from an Eagles song. “Its the same old murder movie, they just call it the news.” That’s right viewers its low drama – soap opera – using a selection of occurrences from the day framed in predictable ways so that they are instantly recognizable. Some of it actually happened; some of it didn’t. Go to Richard Landes Pallywood site: http://www.seconddraft.org/movies.php if you think seeing is believing. When something really new happens – you know, like blogs – they don’t even notice it. Suggestion: As you watch the news hiss and boo at offputting stories and cheer at nice stories. Soon you will be able to deconstruct the news just like a French post modernist. Think of THAT! Sarcasm off.
George W. Bush does have courage, and it is in his speeches. He swims tirelessly against a great media river that flows swiftly and always against him.
Bold? In which way? By speaking at press events where his audience is screened? By pretending to not hear questions directly asked of him? By avoiding debate with the “it’s hurting our country” line. By never vetoing a single G@%!@^# bill?
Look, I haven’t heard courage from a pollitician in years. I do not see Bush as an exception to the rule.