Over the last several weeks and months there has been a lot written about the degree to which John McCain can regularly screw up commonly known facts about a wide arrange of issues (especially as they relate to foreign policy), such as repeatedly referring to Checkoslovakia (it hasn't existed in around 2 decades), talking about Iranian support of Al Qaeda (they vehemently dislike one another), referring to Iraq as the first post 9/11 conflict (what about Afghanistan?), messing up the basics of the "surge" timeline, etc. etc. Steve Benin at the Carpetbagger Report has done some good reporting and discussion of these rhetorical slip ups.
Most of these misstatements have not been of much interest to MSM outlets, and the ones that have generally haven't had much staying power. It seems to be a near consensus in the liberal blogosphere that had Barack Obama issued similarly incorrect statements, nearly any of them would have been on 24 hour news rotation, and cumulatively they would have ended his presidential chances. I mostly agree with this assertion.
Unfortunately, many liberals have simply noted this apparent double standard and moved on. I'd like to discuss (1) if this assertion is true, and (2) why that might be.
I'll bypass '1' for the time being, as I've weighed in, and ultimately it's fairly subjective, but for '2', as much as I've thought about it, I can't seem to wrap my head around it. I've often read that MSM executives tend to be disproportionately conservative, and that producers and reporters are often disproportionately liberal, which made some intuitive sense to me. But, I have a pretty hard time believing in some conspiracy theory wherein the executives of the country's largest television stations and newspapers sit around a table and agree not push the "why does McCain keep spouting overt nonsense" angle.
Ultimately MSM is in the business of making money, so I'm wondering how it could be that promoting Obama as a bumbling fool would be profitable (admittedly a conjecture), but doing the same to McCain would not be? Is it as simple as media narratives being self perpetuating? McCain is a foreign policy guru and conveying anything else isn't consistent with our previous position/reporting? I'm at a loss, and would love to hear anyone's thoughts.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
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2 comments:
I think you'd be naive to think that MSM executives don't sit around and decide not to push that angle. I think that's exactly what they do. I think the whole thing is as simple as what is going to make them the most money? Pushing stories about how mccain is actually a bumbling decrepit old man, or idolize him and the republican party, thereby ensuring they keep the long-term money rolling in from right-minded heads of corporations who wish that McCain not be shown in the ridiculous limelight they place obama in.
Drew--I think you've touched the tip of the iceberg with your closing comments, viz. that presenting McCain as anything less than a foreign policy expert would be inconsistent with prior reporting. I'd take your logic a step further and say that if the news agencies to rigorously question McCain's positions on the war, then that would beg a whole host of other questions, chief among them being: is it possible for a highly decorated veteran and former prisoner of war to be wrong about war strategy? In other words, just because you are a good soldier does not necessarily mean that you're an expert in matters of policy, just as raising blue-ribbon tomatoes does not make you a master gardener. I think it's interesting that anyone criticizing McCain on the issue is always careful to say (usually in the same breath) that he is a hero and that they respect his military service. To suggest that he's wrong would be to turn the whole American notion of radical individualism on its ear by implying that experience is not always the best teacher. And that McCain, who was a good soldier in a bad war and is now running for the highest office in the land (and one of the most powerful positions on planet Earth), might not have learned anything from his experiences. Or worse yet, that his judgment may have been impaired by his experiences in Vietnam. His dogged insistence that the War on Terror can be won (and notice that he uses the language of winning and losing as easily & uncritically as Bush used the vocabulary of good and evil) might be a function of ego. Is McCain trying to make amends for the war he lost by "winning" the War on Terror, even if it means keeping American troops in the Middle East for the next hundred years?
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