If you're concerned about how the media regularly engage in the demonization and denigration of liberal voices in our country today then you should check out the article at FAIR.org Friday. Voices that express mainstream American values and offer the only hope for the future of our country that is.
Taking Offense at Edwards
By the time the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries passed in early January, there had been several distinct cycles in the media coverage of the fight for the Democratic nomination. Hillary Clinton went from inevitable nominee to also-ran to comeback kid in the space of a week, for example, while Barack Obama was transformed from hopeful newcomer to sure-thing front-runner in one evening.
One media trend remained remarkably steady, though: the press corps’ hostility to the John Edwards campaign.
I worked in NH as a volunteer for the Edwards campaign and I must have talked to at least a thousand people up there between August and the primary. A couple of things kept popping up time and time again in my conversations. The first one that really stands out in my mind is that the personality issue is really the ultimate issue for voters. Since it was essentially a sales pitch, one thing you're instructed to do when phone banking or canvassing is to ask people what will decide their vote. "What issue is most important to you personally?" A lot of respondents basically told me that X, Y and Z are important to me, but that they "voted for the person" and not the platform or party. That may seem irresponsible to many readers since it's easy in this day and age to get detailed information on the web about where your candidate stands - but it's not.
The reason that the personal brand or the integrity of a politician is so important is two-fold. First, voters want to give their support to someone that shares their values but more importantly voters are cynical about policy and politicians. In their eyes, policy amounts to an election year promise and not worth much at all. No one can predict the future and the personality traits of a candidate are much more predictive of how they will govern than anything they propose in their campaign.
Branding matters. And the media brand all our candidates without exception.
Edwards’ anti-corporate rhetoric was clearly off-putting to many pundits and reporters, who were shocked that the sunny optimist they covered in 2004 transformed into a serious critic of money-driven politics who talked passionately about poverty. Rather than engage his arguments about corporate control over the political system, the media caricatured Edwards for having a large house, a brief stint working for a hedge fund, and his expensive haircuts (the "three Hs," as they would become known in the mainstream press--see Extra!, 11–12/07).
Yet the sunny, optimistic branding of the Two Americas speech in 2004 was a complete and utter lie to begin with and the poverty issue was the feature of the Two Americas stump - he closed with it. I saw the guy deliver that speech in NH in 2004. I came away with the impression that the janitor would have a hell of a time mopping all that blood up off the floor because Two Americas was an unabashed indictment of the Bush-Cheney right-wing culture pervasive in DC at the time. It was vicious. It was nothing short of a disemboweling of the status quo. He even went one step further and asked us in the audience why we accept the current state of affairs. But Edwards wasn't considered a contender then and it cost the media nothing to talk up his game.
In retrospect, the positive branding and spin the media gave his stump speech in 2004 perfectly book ended the lambasting that Dean was getting in that cycle. Dean was also "angry" - remember that? Dean was a truth-teller and for that he would pay dearly. But 2008 would not just be John Edwards's turn to be branded as an angry, fringe candidate, much worse than that - he was a phony. His populist message emphasizing that bad policy is the direct result of the way we finance our elections in this country could not be allowed to get out into the open.
Attention must not be paid to Americans living in severe and institutional poverty in a vastly wealthy country such as ours. Attention must not be paid to the wealth redistribution system that our Congress has become, funneling money up and out of this country as corporations have become untethered from place through globalization. Amoral for-profit entities can not be expected to act in the public good by definition. Unfortunately our public servants can't be bothered to advocate for citizens either, all for want of the cash they require to serve in the first place.
When you can't discredit the message with a reasonable argument then you discredit the messenger. Simple as that.
Olbermann got into the 3H thing with Dana Milbank in December while discussing the Romney-landscaping problem.
Dana Milbank's haircut smear, video available at mediamatters.org
On the December 11 edition of MSNBC's Countdown, host Keith Olbermann asked Washington Post national political reporter Dana Milbank about the repeated references in that day's edition of the Post to the cost of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards' haircuts. Milbank replied that he is "guilty of the haircut slander." Milbank added: "But what we do in our business, in the shorthand way, is sort of have a phoniness meter out there, and the $400 dollar haircut speaks of that the same way Romney having the illegal immigrants twice return to work in his home even ... as he's complaining about illegal immigrants." Milbank did not explain how Edwards' haircuts are in any way analogous to Romney's reported use of a company that employs illegal immigrants. (The Boston Globe reported that Romney fired the landscaping company that the illegal immigrants worked for only after he was confronted with the issue for a second time.)
While Milbank identified an inconsistency between Romney's actions and his stated views, he offered no justification for suggesting a similar inconsistency in Edwards' efforts to fight poverty while paying for expensive haircuts.
"Shorthand?" You got that right. "Sort of have a phoniness meter?" You got the "sort of" part right at least. The 3Hs were the weapons used to destroy the candidate and since the haircut smear perfectly expressed Ann Coulter's smear of John Edwards as a f8ggot without the need to go to rehab, that's the one they went with and stuck with all year long.
If we really want to examine the 3Hs in perspective then we need to look at two figures in our history: FDR and RFK. Both of these exceptional Americans would have pegged that perfectly calibrated "phoniness meter" held at the ready in for-profit press rooms all across the country.
FDR was not just a staunch and effective advocate for regular people in this country; he was rich and not just rich but ruling class rich. So was his wife. Yet I fear what our country could have become without the public trusting him to make the necessary changes at a time of great upheaval at home and abroad. Without him in that Oval Office fighting hammer and tongs day after day, viciously assaulting the status quo in DC to enact legislation and lead our country through a very dark time anything could have happened.
RFK was a son of privilege who never knew want. Yet his work on poverty in the 60's is arguably the most important contributions he made to this country in his career as a public servant. I heard an interview on NPR in the past couple of weeks, no link sorry, but the interviewee was a Kennedy person in the 60's and had worked in DC and knew the Kennedys well. I think the discussion was about MLK and Obama, not sure. He said something like, "you know, the Kennedy's never knew poor people. That just wasn't in their background." But RFK showed up, he listened, he learned and he used his position to try to wake people up in this country to the plight of so many faceless, unremarkable Americans because it was so important.
So the phoniness meters that only pick-up on Edwards's faults have got to be permanently retired. In the media and at this site as well.
Edwards’ establishment-challenging rhetoric on economics and trade policy would be easier for the media to denounce if the public didn't seemingly agree with him (at least insofar as it expresses itself through opinion polls). So the press has generally either scorned Edwards as a phony or dismissed him as irrelevant.
The second thing that I heard from voters in NH was that they agreed with Edwards's message on the corporate control over our government today and how that control doesn't bode well for our future. When you volunteer in NH you have to be prepared for a couple of things. Since it's an open primary you call and door knock Independents and Democrats alike. The sheets the campaign gave to me never indicated the person's recent voting history or registration so you never know what to expect. Also, multiple voters might live in the same house and believe it or not some people might actually be sleeping with the enemy or at least living under the same roof so you end up talking to a wide variety of people. Okay there's not a lot of diversity of race or income in Dover NH, but there is a lot of diversity in political views.
My pitch was always something like, "I hope you vote for Edwards because he's focusing on the central problem I think we have in government today. If we continue to require that our politicians raise billions of dollars to get elected then we get what we get and we can't expect any better, frankly. Edwards makes the direct link between bad policy and the way we finance our elections."
Not a single person ever disagreed me. Not one. I had a lot of people disagree with my conclusion that Edwards was the best choice to bring some reform to our system and restore some integrity to the government, but no one ever disagreed with the premise that big campaign contributions produced bad policy for most Americans, especially on jobs and health care.
But all that money essentially goes to one place. Advertising. And anything that threatens the for-profit media's bottom line cannot get out into the open. And anything that threatens the sponsor's bottom line? Same thing. Drug company ads? Wal-Mart? BP? BP doesn't stand for British Petroleum anymore, it stands for "beyond petroleum" now. That's because BP isn't in business to make money off the consumption of fossil fuels. No, they just care about the planet these days.
[Jackson] Lears writes, "Ruling groups resort to force when their hegemony breaks down or when it has not yet been established." In Lears's view, the period from 1877 to 1919 was such a time.
High theory suggests the why of violence, low politics explains the how. The parties placed the coercive machinery of the state - Gatling guns, anti-"tramp" legislation, Supreme Court rulings - at the disposal of the industrializing elites who, in a quid pro quo, underwrote the costs of Gilded Age electioneering. What Henry George called "government by campaign contribution" produced the most violent strikes in the industrializing world.
Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865-1900. by Jack Beatty.
pg 25.
The industrializing elites are now the globalizing elites hell bent on seriously reducing the standard of living in this country and the machinery of the state now includes almost all broadcast and print media. Beatty wrote the book because he thinks we're in the same place today in this country and I think he's right. You can hear Beatty discuss his book in an interview at wbur.org.
So can we please retire the phoniness meters at this site and appreciate the merit of the message Edwards put together during his last run? I think it's important.
I do not support either candidate for the nomination. I voted for Edwards in my primary on Feb. 5th, but as a Democrat I will work for our nominee in November because I know it's so damn important.