As long as I am praising articles from the Sunday New York Times, let's give a shout out to Lee Siegel, who makes the point I was trying to make about the New Yorker cartoon being poor satire... and of course, doing it that much better.
Oh, and as long as I'm at it, let's give a link to TalkLeft's presentation of Vanity Fair's tweak of their Conde Nast cousin, with an even funnier version of a McCain cartoon.
Time and others are taking her (as usual) to task for her snarkiness, but I have to say I think Maureen Dowd is onto something... though not something that's as bad as she thinks.
Flash forward to the kerfuffle — and Obama’s icy reaction — over this week’s New Yorker cover parodying fears about the Obamas.
“We’ve already scratched thrift, candor and brevity off the list of virtues in this presidential cycle, so why not eliminate humor, too?” wrote James Rainey in The Los Angeles Times, suggesting “an irony deficiency” in Obama and his fans.
Many of the late-night comics and their writers — nearly all white — now admit to The New York Times’s Bill Carter that because of race and because there is nothing “buffoonish” about Obama — and because many in their audiences are intoxicated by him and resistant to seeing him skewered — he has not been flayed by the sort of ridicule that diminished Dukakis, Gore and Kerry.
Dowd, of course, is worried about being out of a job... or at least, as Joe Klein suggests, forced to be serious.. but as I said, I think she's on to something, something I've been noting for a couple of posts and counting: the New Yorker flap, the discussion of humorlessness... there's something of a sea-change coming in political comedy, I think.
Continue reading "One... And That's Not Funny. (Or, Are You Ready For The New Seriousness?)" »
For some odd reason - yet to be explained - my Mom's copy of The New Yorker hasn't arrived yet (she's a subscriber - oh, come on, like that's a surprise); thus, both of us had to wait until it made the news to discover the controversy of the cover.
Now, I have my Obama issues, but this one is actually one where I kind of have to agree: the artwork is amazingly offensive, at least from what I can tell. Playing up the worst perceptions of stereotypes about the Obamas (he's a Muslim terrorist sympathizer! she's an anti-American radical!) may seem witty on the Manhattan Cocktail Party Circuit... but out here in Elsewhere, we've got people actually believing this nonsense. Thus, the "this is satuire that plays on people's extreme fears" stuff misses an important point... this isn't really satire.
i tend to think satire has become the ugly stepchild of humor these days - lots of people claim to like it, or know how to do it... but few really do. Satire, sadly, is not saying some snarky, asinine thing about something you don't like and then laughing as if it were funny. That's just being mean... and something of a jerk. Liberal that I am, I tend to blame conservative "humorists" for this sad state of affairs; the dark strains of bitterness and sarcasm that have animated much of the right's approach to political debate in the past 15 years or so have done little to lift the discourse, or improve the state of our humor generally. But with
lefties moving into the ascendancy, I can see I was too narrow, and lately, that same sort of unfunny bitter sarcasm can come just as jarringly from left as right.
Look, I'm about as dry and upscale as my humor as you can be - browsing Mom's New Yorkers, I'm still surprised how many times I laugh at especially Manhattanite notions of humor - but this thing isn't funny (and PS, am I the only one thinking "that looks more like Angela Davis than Michelle Obama"?). It's more that notion that shock and outrageousness sells papers, and controversy - any controversy - is good publicity. Perhaps the best news is that the New Yorker flap disctratcted me from the mag cover that really had me offended - that glamour shot with no text that Jann Wenner put on the cover of Rolling Stone. It's clear that an Obama Presidency will be a real sea change in our humor nation; comedy is far enough along that making fun of the black guy for being black will seem inappropriate, and Obama's deification has clearly put him out of reach of a lot of comedy. And surprisingly, for me anyway, I think that's probably not such a bad thing... a deification rules go.
It's only in the last six months or so - since I moved back home - that I've been tuning in regularly to Meet The Press. Within the last 3 years, I'd pretty much stopped watching; partly out of
convenience (I would DVR it and never watch those either), and partly because I really found it utterly unsatisfying.
It's these things that come to mind when I think about the sudden, stunning loss of Tim Russert.
In his way, by the time he died, Russert was legendary. Partly that was due to ratings - Russert was the number one Sunday talk show anchor almost without interruption (I think ABC was on top for a while there, but I can't confirm that). Partly it was due to a reputation as the "serious" interviewer, the litmus test of any major political figure, certainly any American one (and really... what's the alternative... Charlie Rose?).
Neither of those, I think, really speak to what made Russert so successful, which was really about personality. Russert was a prime example of news reader celebrity, and almost everything - his role as political commentator, his hosting duties, his role as "Washington Bureau Chief," was subsumed to his star quality. Buoyant, gregarious, full of that manly bonhomie that people seem to like so much, Russert filled up the space - literally - and the room. I may not have loved Meet The Press... but I always liked the guy. How could anyone not?
Update and NEWS FLASH, apropos of this post: Tim Russert has died.
I saw on the front page of the NYT today (before my Mom dashed off to her babysitting gig) that media organizations are under fire for sexist coverage of the campaign. Via Jeralyn at TalkLeft, it appears that MSNBC and NBC are being defensive about it:
Keith Olbermann, the host of “Countdown” on MSNBC, said that while there were “individual, sexist, mistakes,” there was no overall sexism. Any suggestion that MSNBC “was somehow out to ‘get’ Senator Clinton is false and unfair,” Mr. Olbermann wrote in an e-mail message. “We became a whipping boy.”
Well, if the whip stings...
Lost in the general negativity about sexist coverage is the notion that not all failure are equal - while I think it's poor judgment on the part of CNN to treat contributors like Donna Brazile as unbiased or neutral, much of CNN's coverage of the primary season set the bar for good reporting and sensible analysis (that was helped, in no small part, by actually knowing who was backing Clinton, and including them in discussions and interviews). And while Fox News is, well, Fox News, their umbilical cord to the right wing provided them a vantage point over the Democratic primaries of a certain sort of unique objectivity: when you're rooting for no one, it's easy to be evenhanded.
Even at the network level, it's hard to fault much of the work CBS (where Katie Couric, and her troubles, made their treatment of Clinton the least of their problems) and ABC (even though Stephanopolous seemed especially non-plussed at revisiting the Clinton experience, he did know his subjects; though his use of Brazile was also highly problematic).
But NBC and MSNBC... well, that's another level.
Scott McClellan is not Cher; nor is he Charo, Madonna, Fabio, Fabian, Jaylo, The Rock, or The Edge.
I say this as preface to more on why I don't think I'll ever fully understand the MSM.
Apparently, one-time Bush Press Secretary, Scott McClellan has poison-penned a tell-all on his former boss.
What I'm finding odd is that, for the last twenty minutes, as both Campbell Brown and Keith Olbermann (I'm shamelessly fickle with the remote) have been reporting this story, chock full of interviews and pundits from both sides of this rancor, everyone of them, to the last, is referring to McClellan as "Scott." Not "Scott McLellan," once followed by "McLellan" later, but just "Scott.":
"If Scott felt this way, why didn't he speak up then?"
"I think Scott's intentions are good here."
"Scott wouldn't have been involved in those meetings."
"Scott was unhappy with his exit."
Now, I understand that many of these people may have been used to calling McClellan "Scott" when they were working with/alongside of him, but surely when he becomes the story, his last name should be used. I lose little sleep over the MSM treating GW unfairly, but what kind of press gives us half of the story on a first name basis? This Scott sounds about eight years old to me, wide-eyed and innocent, you know, maybe a neighbor of Lassie's Timmy.
Google Image Search, for now, anyway, agrees with me, in that all Scotts are not created equal, nor that McClellan is The Scott. Pictured above is Google's first entry under just "Scott," April Scott, that is, who either won or is entered in something called Quattro High Performance Disposable Babe Tournament. But Google and its, ahem, priorities, are topics for another day, or week, I think.
- jinbaltimore
It's going to be a light posting day... for me, anyway. I never know what the other folks might be coming up with... so when I get home tonight there may be a few new things to read... but I'll probably post again about West Virginia results later tonight.
Til then, I only have a short one...
I used to read Matthew Yglesias a lot. This was in the "early days" of blog surfing - at least for me - when the bloggers were largely independent, even if they wrote for publications as well. Yglesias - young, hip, interning at The American Prospect - was the first place I saw someone talking about politics, and generating conversations in comments, like I wanted to talk about politics.
Even then, I tended to chalk things up to his youth - his enthusiasm for sports and sports metaphors, his not especially well developed notions of feminism, the often too conclusive nature of his thinking. Some of that has gotten better (like most of the Atlantic's blogroll - hi Andy - the mix of anti-Clitnon because she's her and/or because she's a woman gets muddled)... but one thing hasn't: the not especially deep way Matt sees polling and statistical analysis.
I think it's hard to be a writer and good at math: SAT scores tend to be higher in math than verbal, but the high verbal people often do terribly at math. And then you get out in the world, you start writing... and you have to interpret numbers. Oh dear.
All of which is to say I find this post on the notion of Spanish speaking television news having extra special seriousness in LA hilarious. Because the reason Univision is the number one local newscast in LA is probably because... there's a lot of Spanish speaking people in LA. (As mom reminds me, this is called "the simplest explanation is usually best".) And unlike New York (where the number one local newscast, still, is WABC), there's less assimilation... and less accommodation by the English speaking majority (WNBC, which is affiliated with Univision through parent Universal/NBC, makes the most concerted effort to have Hispanic on-air talent and outreach). And, as far as I can tell, the New York spanish newscasts are not particularly "news-ier" than the English ones. Or more successful.
Yet another reason, I guess, to pick NYC over LA.
As if I had a choice. :) See ya on the evening side.
One of the most useless classes I ever took at any college was "Theories of Mass Communication" as part of my (painful) year studying Magazine Journalism in grad school. (I should point out that the "painful" part of going to Newhouse, mostly, was the fact of living in Syracuse, and especially in close proximity to what is, quite possibly the parti-est school in Upstate NY - Newhouse itself was great).
The problem really, and I realized it just glancing through the textbook, was the vague nature of the discussion; "communication theory" is one of those things that I find to be using a lot of big words to explain relatively simple things, like "why do people watch so much television," or "why don't people like to read newspapers anymore." And here I was, stuck in these long, pointless, hourlong lectures, based on readings I could barely stay awake through, to analyze concepts I'd already figured out long ago.
Such is the nature of my disdain for much of what passes for "media analysis."
There's been a lot of "media analysis" lately, as so often happens during the political campaign season; the general annoyance with ABC News, especially, after the Philadelphia debate, drew a lot of people back into the "MSM analyzing" game after months of relative silence, or distraction. Much of the blogosphere, really, trucks in this kind of thing; too many folks fancy themselves experts on the topic of big media simply because we're all watching it, or reading it, or listening to it. And for many bloggers, especially political ones, a blog becomes the way to respond to that Maureen Dowd column nobody liked, or to join in the chorus of hating Chris Matthews.
The aforementioned pair - Dowd and Matthews - along with, I'd guess, David Brooks and Paul Krugman, are easy, obvious targets. You don't get a lot of points, these days, for finding "MoDo" to be insane, or "Tweety" Matthews annoying, or Brooks incomprehensible (nor do you get points on the left for calling Krugman a genius, or on the right for calling him an idiot). I could have told you Dowd was hopeless at least 15 years ago, and really, she's only gotten worse.
Here's my point - we need good substantive analysis of the "mainstream media", and very rarely do we - or at least I - get much that's really insightful and unexpected. I wasn't surprised at the outrage over the Philly debate; what surprised me was people complaining about it as if a season's worth of poorly moderated debates, with terrible questions, hadn't already been perpetrated.
As a result, I've been steaming for about a week, and last week, visiting Red and my relatives in Maine (and finally getting to see cable news after a long drought), drove me to put some of this down, my own take on what's good and bad in political media at this moment, and why we can and can't expect better. I know it's nervy to claim to be better, less ordinary, than a dozen other bloggers, but honestly: I waited my whole life for this moment. I'm not going to pipe down now.
I'm working on a longer post about the media, but I need to let it... marinate. In the meantime, there's one media related development that I think deserves some attention.
Tonight the News Hour did the first outside piece I've seen on this Sunday's NYT piece on the role of Military analysts on the TV news, and a concerted effort by the Bush Administration to shape their "analysis." Mom and I read it on the way to Maine, and it was pretty bracing.
I think the lack of greater coverage is the sense that we already knew this - the Bush Administration's perversion of the usual ways government does business has been so complete, that little, really, shocks us anymore. So they went out with a concerted effort to stage manage the "war analysis" of network news... what's new?
Well, a lot, really; as with so many things, this Administration seems determined to mistake PR for policy: rather than, say, actually making headway in Iraq, they nurtured and briefed and flattered and cajoled and threatened a malleable crew into saying that as long it looked like headway... that was enough. And, in exchange, they perpetuated and strengthened a system of perks and influence peddling within the military-industrial complex. The energy that they wasted - the fact that Donald Rumsfeld sat around figuring out who among this cadre would be catered to and sought after... what on Earth kind of prioritizing is that?
This is horrifying. Simply horrifying. No, it's not on the "high level meetings to decide on torture tactics" horrifying, sure... but it's pretty damn close. As others keep saying... this nightmare can't end soon enough, And while I tell my Mom that we only have less than a year, aI think she's right... just imagine what they can do between now and then. And imagine how beat down we are that we find out we've been lied to... again... and we don't even care
So there I was , scanning the New York Magazine website, reading this fascinating article on AIDS Doctors who seem to have a "survivor's guilt" problem leading to drug abuse and other problems (I don't know the man in the article, but I do know a few other examples, anecdotally)... and reading this illuminating piece on the disaster that is The New York Knicks... until I came upon this: Lawrence O'Donnell on a fantasy notion of how the Democratic National Convention might look if Obama and Clinton have to take the fight to the floor.
I have to say reading it was disconcerting. You can argue particulars of O'Donnell's scenario - I tend to disagree with his finale, because I think both parties have a certain ruthlessness, not just one... but two things nag at me - one is that O'Donnell offers a clear view of the deliberate self interest of certain parties (Wesley Clark and Al Gore, most obviously) that can't be argued away; and the other is the dark, cynical, pessimistic nature of the whole thing... which again, I think shouldn't be ignored.
That said, as I was writing this, it suddenly occurred to me... where is John Edwards in this scenario? Naughty, Larry. Very naughty. ;)
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