Dear JakeSully's Quote For The Day: "'I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010. I wasn't around during the 1930's or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980's when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness," - Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, November 5, 1999.
You almost had me until "payment from A.I.G. amounting to $742,006.40, after taxes." Enjoy your vacation, and good luck finding a new job.
Love,
Atrios
QOTD, Swampland commenter ottoman88 Says:
Compare last night's press conference with the town hall meetings in Orange County.
.
One of these Q&A sessions featured a number of smart, insightful questions on serious issues that actually matter. The other one featured Chuck Todd and Ed Henry.
QOTD2, Fallows, A fourth point about the Obama press conference. Boy, if some of the questions from reporters were examined as mercilessly for their logic, factual basis, clarity, coherence, emotional tone, etc as Obama's answers were.... I know, they're not the most powerful people on earth with the might of the presidency behind them. But unlike him, the reporters are not reacting on the fly but instead have hours and hours to think of exactly the way they want to make their point. Just an observation.
QOTD3, Matthew Yglesias: Meanwhile, a smart observer observed to me earlier that we’re at risk of missing the forest for the trees in terms of the growth projection. CBO has these big deficits because they’re foreseeing relatively slow economic growth. But that relatively slow growth is bad for many reasons that have nothing to do with the deficit. That slow growth may come about or it may not. But either way, it would make more sense for congress to think about avoiding the slow-growth scenario and not just about mitigating the budgetary consequences of slow growth.
Really Long QOTD4, Glenn Greenwald:
UPDATE: As several commenters point out, Kurtz's self-glorifying view of his own profession -- shared by most of his colleagues -- is why so many of them were completely baffled (not angry, but baffled) by Stephen Colbert's speech at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Dinner, as it included lines like this:
But, listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works. The President makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration? You know, fiction!
It wasn't that media stars didn't think Colbert was funny (though, in large part, that was true). It's that they never understood what he was even talking about, that they were the prime objects of his mockery. How could they? How is it even possible for Kurtz-like media stars to understand what Colbert is talking about there given that -- as they see it, even after Iraq and the last eight years, to say nothing of Vietnam and everything in between -- "there's such a built-in adversarial relationship between the press and the pols"?
As Digby recently wrote when pondering the mystery that most media stars fail to understand that they are the primary targets of mockery for both Colbert and Jon Stewart:
[Cramer] thought he would get one of those friendly interviews that John McCain usually gets. After all, Stewart skewers politicians but treats them rather gently when he interviews them, right? But that's a common misreading of Stewart. He skewers a lot of different things, including politics and culture, but his primary object of derision and satire is the media and particularly the lying gasbags who populate the cable shows. It's the whole premise of his show.
For some reason the political media establishment just don't get this. Recall the bizarrely confused reaction from the villagers at that notorious Colbert White House correspondents dinner appearance. They honestly didn't understand that Stewart and Colbert have nothing but contempt for them. . .
I think this is one of the best illustrations of the media's insufferable insularity and self regard. It's not just nobody rubes like me, who watch these people with slack jawed incredulity that such amazing lack of self-awareness exists in ostensibly grown up humans. (We know they view us with a sort of anthropological curiosity like one of those lost tribes in the Amazon, even as they proclaim to be jess' folks.) But the people they admire and secretly think they are --- the cool, smart, sexy, funny guys --- also find them ridiculous and dangerous, just like the rest of us. And these scribblers and gasbags clearly don't see it.
So, you see Cramer on The Daily Show, clearly a fan, thinking he's going to be part of some sort of good natured ribbing and he finds himself on the receiving end of a scathing critique right in his face. It had never occurred to him that Stewart really meant any of the things he was saying. After all, they're both cool guys, right? Playing the game. Winners!
He just doesn't get the joke. None of them do.
Exactly the same thing happened when Jon Stewart went on Crossfire in 2004 to chide Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson for their vapid and destructive emptiness. Both of them clearly expected and were eager to be laughing with Stewart to validate their insider savviness and coolness, not to be mocked and criticized and held up as objects of Stewart's scorn. Carlson remains deeply bitter about it to this day. Media stars can't even begin to comprehend how anyone could look at them with anything other than deep respect and appreciation because -- in their minds, seriously -- "there's such a built-in adversarial relationship between the press and the pols." They're intrepidly holding the powerful accountable on behalf of all of us even as they get to be close to them. Who wouldn't admire that?
TPM discovers the Bachmann Effect. Very. Funny. Watch each segment to note the common responses to her insane questions in three different settings:
Drum: Cruel and Unusual
Atul Gawande has a piece in the New Yorker arguing that lengthy periods of solitary confinement are so debilitating that it basically amounts to torture. You can read the whole thing and decide for yourself, but I actually found this short passage to be the most convincing argument:The wide-scale use of isolation is, almost exclusively, a phenomenon of the past twenty years. In 1890, the United States Supreme Court came close to declaring the punishment to be unconstitutional. Writing for the majority in the case of a Colorado murderer who had been held in isolation for a month, Justice Samuel Miller noted that experience had revealed “serious objections” to solitary confinement:
“A considerable number of the prisoners fell, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane; others, still, committed suicide; while those who stood the ordeal better were not generally reformed, and in most cases did not recover suffcient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the community.”
If you go down the whole list of accepted norms in treating people — child labor, civil rights, treatment of the mentally ill, minimum housing standards, workplace safety, etc. — virtually everything that was even a close call in 1890 is universally reviled today. Nobody's in favor of kids working in mills, Jim Crow laws, packed lunatic asylums, rat-infested slums, or miners dying of black lung. Our penal system is apparently the exception. But if we knew, even in 1890, that long-term solitary confinement is essentially barbaric, can there really be any question about it in 2009?
Maddow on repuglicans Grassley and Cheney. Good segment.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Benen on FOURNIER'S PREOCCUPATION....
If you read far-right blogs, you've probably noticed conservatives' fascination with President Obama and teleprompters. The argument, in a nutshell, is the president can speak on substantive issues, but only if he's reading from a screen.As arguments go, it's pretty silly. Over the course of the last two years, Obama has spoken without notes in hundreds, if not thousands, of town-hall meetings, candidate debates, and media interviews. The notion that the president can't communicate with a teleprompter is absurd.
And yet, the meme has made its way from far-right blogs and talk radio to analysis pieces from Ron Fournier, the Washington bureau chief for the Associated Press. Here's Fournier take on last night's White House press conference.
What kind of politician brings a teleprompter to a news conference?
A careful one.
President Barack Obama took no chances in his second prime-time news conference, reading a prepared statement in which he took both sides of the AIG bonus brouhaha and asked an anxious nation for its patience. [...]
One of the few times he summoned raw emotion came after a reporter demanded to know why it took him so long to express outrage over the AIG executive bonuses.
"It took a couple of days because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak."
Even better, he likes to have it up on the teleprompter.
This is an "analysis" piece? From where, the Republican National Committee?
Look, it's not at all unusual for a president to read a prepared text at the start of a press conference. Modern presidents have done this many, many times. Last night, Obama had some specific things to say about a press international crisis, and instead of reading from note cards at the podium, he read from a screen. It's hardly exciting, and it's hardly worth obsessing over. And yet, here's the Washington bureau chief for the AP insisting that the president is overly reliant on a "crutch."
A.L. concluded, "The truth is, Fournier is a hack. The only reason to use the word 'teleprompter' five times in a 100 word write-up of a presidential press conference is in order to push a meme, a meme that just happens to be popular right now on right wing blogs. As usual, Fournier's agenda is transparent."
The five-in-100 ratio is a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the point.
Daily KOS' BarbinMD: The Buzz From The Press Conference?
So, what's the buzz coming out of President Obama's press conference last night?
- Fox News: No Questions: Obama Skips Major Papers at News Conference.
- The Washington Times: Still, the president mixed it up, skipping The Washington Post, The New York Times and USA Today ...
- Washington Post: Breaking with tradition and using a prepared list, Obama did not recognize journalists with The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal or USA Today --
- New York Times: He did not select a correspondent from The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times, but rather sought to mix it up a bit ...
- Politico: He also called on reporters from other niche outlets, such as the Hispanic network Univision, while stiffing reporters from the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal.
- RCP: But most notably, he did not call on the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, or Wall Street Journal - just to name a few major newspapers.
Somehow this is considered big news - well, by a self-involved media anyway. And apparently more shocking than President Obama taking a question from a (gasp) blogger at his last press conference. You remember? The one who asked the stupid question about Alex Rodriquez using steroids ... oh, wait - that was the reporter from the Washington Post.
DougJ: Memewatch: Obama is really a poor communicator
It’s not an accident that so many righties settled on the “Obama is boring” meme this morning. The idea of attacking what is perceived to be Obama’s greatest strength—his ability as a communicator—has been brewing for a while. It’s what all the yammering about the teleprompter is about. It’s what all the hand-wringing about Obama’s jokes is about. And they’ve already phrased it in the convenient Slate/TNR contrarian “myth-busting” form that media types love so much (Ben Smith gushed over this piece):
2. Obama is a great communicator. Cut away the soaring rhetoric in his speeches, and the resulting policy statements are often vague, lawyerly and confusing. He is not plain-spoken: He parses his language so much that a casual listener will miss important caveats. That’s in part why he uses teleprompters for routine policy statements: He chooses his words carefully, relying heavily on ill-defined terms like “deficit reduction” (which means tax increases, rather than actual “savings”) and “combat troops” (as opposed to “all troops in harm’s way”).
[.....]
4. Obama is smooth. Despite being deliberate, Obama is surprisingly gaffe-prone. Reporters on my e-mail lists last year know he consistently mispronounced, misnamed or altogether forgot where he was. (In one typical gaffe in Sioux Falls, S.D., he started his speech with an enthusiastic “Thank you, Sioux City!”) His geographic gaffes are not just at routine rallies but at major events, including the Democratic National Convention and his first address to Congress. Any politician occasionally misspeaks, but the frequency of Obama’s flubs is notable.
This is a classic Rovean technique—attacking your opponent where he is strongest. I happen to think it is a smart technique in many cases. I’m skeptical whether “Obama is teh boring” will work right now, because the public is more focused on the next paycheck than on whether or not they find Obama’s pressers entertaining.
But make no mistake: right-wing media types will be pushing this hard over the next few months. And when even a pretty good reporter like Ben Smith is eating it up, you can bet we’ll be hearing a lot about it in the media.
(By the way, while Michael Wolff probably doesn’t qualify as a right-wing hack (although he certainly does enjoy fellating Rupert Murdoch), this piece is pretty remarkable.)
Fallows: One last point about teleprompters, Obama, and speaking
Following this and this.
Obama's opening statement at this evening's press conference, delivered no doubt with the help of a teleprompter, sounded smoother and more polished than his real-time answers through the rest of the event.
The same is true for any public figure who has learned to use a teleprompter (harder than it seems) and whose teleprompter-ready material suits his or her natural speaking style. It sounds smoother than extemporized speech because it should be smoother. People don't naturally speak in parsed and polished sentences, even eloquent people. When we are listening to what we know is spontaneous rather than scripted speech, we listen in a different way -- we listen past grammatical glitches, repetitions, and other things that would be "flaws" on a printed page or in a formal oration. If you don't believe me, look back for any extemporized performance that was judged to be riveting by audiences in real time. (A campaign rally, a TV interview, a debate, the closing argument in a trial.) If you then read a word-by-word transcript, it will look like a mess.
The important point with Obama is that the content, command of fact and concept, and overall intelligence of his extemporized answers matched that of the scripted presentation. That could not have been so if he were teleprompter-dependent. For example: by the end of his term, George W. Bush had become quite effective in delivering a formal speech. His interview- and press conference performance if anything deteriorated through his time in office.
The whole "Obama can't talk on his own" concept is bizarre, given his performance through two years of stump speeches and debates during the campaign. But it seems to have gotten so much credence in the right-wing world that it is worth addressing head on.
Yglesias says the Media says: The Media is Awesome
George Stephanopoulos thinks the press should take a bow for itself:
The president hit his marks tonight. So did the White House press corps. […] Just about all of the questions were pointed and challenging, and just about every journalist worked in a follow-up. That’s new, and welcome.
Once again, whether in hardball mode or in softball mode, the world of mainstream political journalism reveals itself to have no idea of how to distinguish important issues from trivial ones. We got no questions last night about the administration’s bank plan, none about its financial regulatory proposals, none about the forthcoming Afghanistan policy review, and really nothing about the suffering of the American people in a time of distress. Instead, the press seemed mostly to have picked up on the fact that congressional Republicans are complaining about the deficit, so they asked some questions about the deficit. It didn’t really occur to anyone that the press conference might be a good time to raise the issues that aren’t being chewed on every ten minutes on cable.
In turn, confronted with predictable political challenges a president who’s backed by a skilled team was able to parry them effectively. It’s a well-played game by both sides, but did anyone learn anything? Was the session effective in educating the curious about major problems and the merits and shortcomings of the administration’s approach to them? I don’t really see it.
Benen: DEFICITS DON'T MATTER (RIGHT NOW)....
Following up on Hilzoy's overnight comments on President Obama's prime-time press conference, what jumped out at me had less to do with the president's responses and more to do with the questions themselves.For example, I had assumed that the Treasury Department's plan on the banking industry and toxic assets ("legacy" assets, whatever) would be a major topic of conversation. Its success or failure will have a significant impact on the economy, and one assumes, the president came prepared to discuss the plan in some detail. I was actually anxious to hear what he had to say.
But no one asked. We heard questions about stem-cell research and Fox News' concerns about a "global currency," but the bank rescue plan was ignored completely. Indeed, after a week of obsessing over Tim Geithner, there was only one passing reference to the Treasury Secretary from reporters last night. How odd.
So, what did the reporters want to talk about? Deficits and debt. From the transcript:
* "[U]nder your budget, the debt will increase $7 trillion over the next 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office says $9.3 trillion.... Isn't that kind of debt exactly what you were talking about when you said 'passing on our problems to the next generation'?"
* "[E]ven under your budget, as you said, over the next four or five years, you're going to cut the deficit in half, then, after that, six years in a row, it goes up, up, up."
* "You keep saying that you've inherited a big fiscal mess. Do you worry, though, that your daughters, not to mention the next president, will be inheriting an even bigger fiscal mess if the spending goes out of control?"
All of these questions came from different reporters, suggesting that the White House press corps has more or less internalized Republican talking points (again). In the midst of a dangerous global recession, journalists are desperate to know when this administration will start moving towards a more balanced budget -- which is exactly what congressional Republicans are focusing on (and, come to think of it, what congressional Republicans focused on in the 1930s, too).
Note to the White House press corps: under these circumstances, deficits aren't our most pressing problem. This preoccupation with the issue isn't helping anyone.
Yglesias: Sacrifice
Apparently Chuck Todd asked President Obama why he isn’t asking people to “sacrifice” more amidst the recession.
The standard progressive answer to this starts by observing that the hundreds of thousands of people who are losing their jobs each week are, presumably, sacrificing. I take it that their spouses and kids are also sacrificing. And though they don’t count in the job loss tallies, I also spare some thoughts for the young people leaving school and coming into the workforce at a time when nobody’s hiring anyone. This all seems like a lot of sacrifice.
But there’s also some more fundamental misconceptions going on here. A lot of people in the press seem obsessed with the idea that it would be noble for politicians to ask people to sacrifice. But in general, the whole idea in public policy is to make things better, not worse, so the logic here is a bit hard to understand. It’s true that Charles Murray seems to think that suffering promotes virtue but this doesn’t really make sense.
Alternatively, underlying this is the idea that if some of us sacrificed that would make things better for other people. This is true in a certain narrow sense. If Vikram Pandit sacrificed some of the money he has and mailed it to some unemployed former manufacturing workers in the rust belt, they’d be in somewhat better shape. But if Americans were to collectively sacrifice—everyone agree to eat only potatoes on Wednesdays or something—that wouldn’t help anyone except the potato farmers. Consumption in a market economically is almost always a positive-sum exchange; economic growth, and therefore prosperity, requires more economic activity, not more sacrifice. If the big national problem were a giant war, things might be different—we could all conserve gasoline and save it to fuel the tanks. But it’s hard to see how sacrifice could solve the problem of rapidly rising unemployment.
Benen: SACRIFICE....
The strangest question from President Obama's press conference last night came by way of NBC News' Chuck Todd. Twelve hours later, I'm still not sure what he was thinking.
"Some have compared this financial crisis to a war, and in times of war, past presidents have called for some form of sacrifice. [...]
"Why, given this new era of responsibility that you're asking for, why haven't you asked for something specific that the public should be sacrificing to participate in this economic recovery?"
When the president responded by pointing all of the many ways in which Americans are already sacrificing in the midst of an economic crisis, Todd wasn't satisfied. In a follow up, the NBC White House correspondent asked why Obama has called on "specific" sacrifices from Americans. And again, the president explained, "[T]he American people are making a host of sacrifices in their individual lives."
We seem to get this from the media establishment quite a bit lately. The Washington Post's Jackson Diehl argued earlier this month that Obama isn't calling on Americans to "sacrifice" enough. Newsweek's Howard Fineman recently said journalists at traditional news outlets would be more impressed with the president were it not for his "failure to call for genuine sacrifice on the part of all Americans."
I suppose I know where these media figures are coming from. After 9/11, then-President Bush had an opportunity to call Americans to make genuine sacrifices. He could have urged more Americans to sign up for military service. He could have launched a drive to national volunteer initiative. He could have asked wealthy people who didn't need a tax cut to give up tax breaks the nation couldn't afford to help pay for two wars and renewed investment in domestic security. Instead, Bush urged the nation to shop.
But the problem with Chuck Todd's question and the media's general assumptions is the equating of the two crises. The questions are based on a faulty assumption -- Bush faced a crisis and failed to call for sacrifices, so Obama, facing a crisis, should show more leadership.
Here's the thing they're missing: these are different kinds of crises. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, homes, savings, and health care. President Obama is trying to make things better for a nation that's already sacrificed quite a bit. If he asks Americans to sacrifice more, it's likely to make the economy even worse.
But the media seems to believe the president is going about this all wrong. Obama should ask us to sacrifice more during the crisis. The administration, out of some misguided notion of nobility, should make conditions even more difficult for Americans.
These assumptions are completely backwards -- and more than a little bizarre.
- John Amato: Typical Villager question. No normal person would ask for the American people to suffer and make additional sacrifices through a period where their wages have declined, job losses are skyrocketing and health-care costs are astronomical. These inside-the-Beltway pundits seem to talk to each other rather than for us. It's like we don't exist to them. They all seem to live in Broder's universe, and we're mice in a cage waiting for some scraps. I'd like to know what the press corps would sacrifice if the president asked them for one.
No comments:
Post a Comment