Useless pundits

I couldn’t agree more with Jay Rosen:

And according to Blitzer, Obama’s speech boils down to a “pre-emptive strike” against various attacks on the way: videos, ads, and news controversies that are sure to keep Reverend Jeremiah Wright and “race” in play as issues in the campaign. (I don’t have his exact words; if someone out there does, ping me.)

Wasn’t the speech about that very pattern?

This is the style of analysis–and the level of thought–we have become miserably utterly used to, especially from Blitzer, but also many others on TV: everything is a move in the game of getting elected, and it’s our job in political television to explain to you, the slightly clueless viewer at home, what the special tactics in this case are, then to estimate whether they will work.

That Blitzer, offered the first word on that speech, did the savvier-than-thou, horse race thing tells you about his priorities (mistakenly “static,” as Obama said about Wright) and his imaginative range as an interpreter of politics (pretty close to zero.)

It isn’t often that a politician makes a speech that treats the audience like people capable of thinking with complexity and consideration.  Its even less often that pundits treat their audience this way.

Glen Greenwald is so good

I wish every political journalist was as meticulous as Salon’s Glen Greenwald.  First, he points out the baseslessness of the accusations that Barack Obama’s real estate partnership with Tony Rezko was nefarious, after surveying every article on the subject that he could find:

The only substantive connections Obama and Rezko have is that the latter was a contributor to Obama’s campaign and was a partner in a standard residential real-estate purchase which nobody suggests, at least in terms of Obama’s conduct, was anything but above-board. But Rezko himself has a sinister-sounding, villain-like last name and is of Syrian origin, which, for multiple reasons, helps build the shallow media drama.

But Obama isn’t even accused of — let alone proven to have engaged in — any wrongdoing at all.

In another post, he scrutinizes accusations that the media is too easy on Obama

The reality is that the Clinton campaign has been complaining bitterly for months and months that the media has not subjected Obama to any real critical scrutiny. For the most part, that fell on deaf ears. The only thing that has changed over the past couple of weeks is that the right-wing noise machine, which now sees Obama as the likely Democratic nominee, began complaining just as bitterly that the media is “in the tank” for Obama. That is what moves them. As Harris himself wrote in his own book, it is Drudge — not Howard Wolfson or SNL — who rules their world.

 and spotlights a recent, disgusting episode in which journalists were feted at the McCain estate in Arizona:

But just behold all the great investigative reporting, all the reactive tension, all the aggressive scrutiny those claims have spawned. Why, just this weekend, these prideful reporters went to “McCain’s ranch” and, in exchange for having him cook them some ribs and chicken and give them a grand tour of the property, agreed to have the event just be a fun, playful social affair where no real questions would be asked (as though the Straight Talk Express tour is ever something other than that).

Columbia Journalism Review on the brigadier general uproar

CJR has a similar view on the issue of the gay brigadier general:

The YouTube debates are a new forum and everybody has his own interpretation of who exactly constitutes a member of the Joe Schmo public. CNN is understandably touchy about this subject, not wanting to turn the mike over to rabidly partisan questioners. But the case of Brigadier General Kerr is not as problematic as it is being made out to be by the right-wing blogs.

Kerr was asking legitimate question, not of the “gotcha” variety. He was not put up to it by anyone. He submitted his own YouTube video, and told CNN the following day that it was “a private initiative on my own.” All of this, in my book, should qualify him to ask a question as a member of the public without any need for disclaimers.

[...]

Where does it end? Does CNN need to weed out of the audience anyone who has ever attended a Democratic rally or flipped through Barack Obama’s book at a Barnes and Noble?

The gay brigadier general controversy

Besides making “gay brigadier general” a familiar phrase, the controversy over Keith H. Kerr’s affiliation with the Clinton campaign has made CNN “redouble its efforts to vet the campaign affiliations of questioners at open-forum debates” (New York Times). What seems to be missing in this uproar is that Kerr is a citizen of the United States first and an involved one at that. Since when did being part of a political campaign blacklist someone from asking candidates a question that has nothing to do with propagandizing about one’s own candidate or slandering an opponent.

At some point, having political allegiances became a sign not of one’s civic involvement and awareness but of some insidious bias. I currently support Barack Obama. Does that mean that I am suddenly not eligible to ask the Republican candidates or the Democratic candidates, for that matter, about their opinions on gays in the military? Can someone tell me how one’s working or volunteering for a candidate suddenly nullified that person’s interest in getting candidates’ answers to questions about issues?

The way the media writes about it, it is as if Kerr was wired to be a Hillary supporter rather than that he arrived at it after consideration of various candidates’ positions, as if Kerr is an automaton and not a thinking person. Again, I would argue that often times, those who have figured out which candidate to support are the ones thinking most about the issues in an election and therefore offering up the most thoughtful questions.