Mediasphere

We're coming up on the five-year anniversary of Jon Stewart's verbal skewering of Crossfire in particular and the whole genre of left-right cable gabfests in general.  Stewart said these kind of shows were "hurting America" because of their general blather and failure to ask politicians good, sharp questions. 

Stewart's appearance on Crossfire generated quite the navel-gazing among the commentariat, and played no small role in the eventual disappearance of Crossfire, The Capitol Gang, Hannity & Colmes, and shows of that ilk.  

So, five years later, I have a half-assed blog question to ask -- did Jon Stewart hurt America by driving these shows off the air? 

If you're expecting a lengthy defense of the Crossfire format right now, well, you're going to be disappointed.  My point rather, is to question what replaced these kinds of shows on the cable newsverse.  Instead of Hannity & Colmes, you now have.... Hannity.  Is this really an improvement?   

As inane as the crosstalk shows might have been, one of their strengths was that they had people with different ideological and political perspectives talking to (and sometimes past) each other.  You could argue that the level of discourse was pretty simplistic and crude -- but at least it was an attempt at cross-ideological debate.  People from different ideological stripes watched the same show and heard the same arguments.  Nowadays, if you're looking for that kind of exchange, you either have to fast all week until the Sunday morning talk shows, or go visit bloggingheads. 

Instead of Crossfire-style shows on cable news, you now have content like Hannity, Glenn Beck, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, etc.  These programs have no cross-ideological debate.  Instead, you have hosts on both the left and the right outbidding each other to see who can be the most batsh**t insane ideologically pure.  These shows attract audiences sympathetic to the host's political beliefs, and the content of these shows help viewers to fortify their own ideological bunkers to the point where no amount of truth is going to penetrate their worldviews.  Which allows these hosts to say any crazy thing that pops into their head and hear nothing but "Ditto!" after they say it. 

Again, you have to discount this as a half-assed blog observation, but it seems to me that shows like Glenn Beck or Keith Olbermann are now sucking up the available oxygen in the cable newsverse that programs like Capitol Gang use to breathe.  Is that really a good thing? 

So, five years later, I'd like to ask Mr. Stewart a question -- was your rant good for America? 

UPDATE:  Two quick responses.  First, this commenter argues that the Glenn Becks of the world are far worse than the Keith Olbermanns of the world, and that this post has a "plague on both houses" quality to it. 

OK, let's stipulate that the bulk of the output that I'm decrying in this post comes from the right rather than the left.  I'll even further stipulate that Rachel Maddow represent the best of this kind of format.  So stipulated. 

Feel better now?  Does that stipulation in any way affect the argument I made above?  No, I didn't think so. 

Second, James Joyner responds with this observation:

Contra-Tucker Carlson, I actually believe shows like Stewart’s “Daily Show” and Stephen Colbert’s “Colbert Report” do a better job of illuminating issues than the screamfests did.  But that’s a rather low bar. 

Well...... maybe.  When Stewart is on his game, he is quite the interrogator.  But Carlson was correct about one point -- politicians had a clear incentive to duck the screamfests in favor of "soft news" formats like the morning network shows, late-night talk shows, "fake news" shows like Stewart's or SNL, or even Oprah.  How many politicians now choose to duck Stewart's show entirely for even softer news outlets.  And, to repeat -- what replaced the left-right screamfests?  Ideologically pure screamfests. 

Thanks, but no thanks. 

Events in Iran have led to a lot of talk about how this is a Twitter revolution, and that Twitter has been the go-to source on real-time developments in Iran.  Stepping onto FP's Evgeny Morozov's turf, however, I have to wonder we're exaggerating its effect juuuuust a wee bit here. 

Twitter is serving two different purposes in Iran right now.  Its first role is as a coordination device for Iranian supporters of Mousavi -- much like events in Moldova from a couple of months ago.  On this dimension, to be sure, it would seem that Twitter has facilitated coordination. 

Well, except for one thing -- the absence of Twitter does the same thing.  According to the press accounts I read, Mousavi wanted to cancel yesterday (Monday's) demonstration because the Iranian authorities had refused to grant permission and warned of bloodshed.  The thing is, since Twitter and other methods of quick communication were down, there was no way to communicate the cancellation messaage to supporters.  In other words, had Iranian authorities not interruped mobile services and the like when they had, Monday's demonstration might have fizzled out.  One wonders if the same dynamic will play out today. 

Twitter's second role is as a source of information for outside observers -- indeed, if Dan Nexon's post is correct, that seems to be the more important function.  It's not the only or even the primary source, however. Kevin Drum gets at this point: 

I followed the events of the weekend via three basic sources.  The first was cable news, and as everyone in the world has pointed out, it sucked.  Most TV news outlets have no foreign bureaus anymore; they didn't know what was going on; and they were too busy producing their usual weekend inanity to care.  Grade: F.

The second was Twitter, mostly as aggregated by various blogs.  This had the opposite problem: there was just too much of it; it was nearly impossible to know who to trust; and the overwhelming surge of intensely local and intensely personal views made it far too easy to get caught up in events and see things happening that just weren't there.  It was better than cable news, but not exactly the future of news gathering.  Grade: B-.

The third was the small number of traditional news outlets that do still have foreign bureaus and real expertise.  The New York Times.  The BBC.  Al Jazeera.  A few others.  The twitterers were a part of the story that they reported, but they also added real background, real reporting, and real context to everything.  Grade: B+.  Given the extremely difficult reporting circumstances, maybe more like an A-.

This matches my assessment as well. 

Which, again, is not to diss Twitter.  It's merely to suggest that life is a bit more complex than simple memes of "this new information technology is supplanting all prior forms of information technology!" 

UPDATE:  Over at The Monkey Cage, John Sides and Henry Farrell offer further ruminations on Twitter. 

I've blogged before about the awesome and misplaced power of headline editors.  They can erroneously move markets and piss off bloggers who don't read through to the end of an article -- confuse readers. 

Well, USA Today let me down.  Google News sent me to this USA Today story (really a blog post) with the headline, "Obama says nation needs more nerds."

And I thought to myself, "Yes!!!  Finally, we can expand our power from out current base of Hollywood comic book movie franchises and start to dominate the real corridors of power." 

Alas, there's nothing in the actual story to suggest that Obama said those words.  Indeed, there's nothing in the fact sheet on the Cyberspace Policy Review report where Obama says that either. 

Now I must go back to my regularly scheduled work, while adding another headline editor to my list. 

Oh, yes, there's a list. 

Since I'm apparently picking on the New York Times op-ed page today, it's worth linking and quoting from George Packer's one-paragraph evisceration of how the Times' columnists have weathered the financial crisis: 

These days, it’s striking that the Times’s columnists seem unable to contend with the earthquake rolling under our feet. With the whole world undergoing a once-in-a-lifetime upheaval, the stars of the Op-Ed page have almost without exception fallen back on the comfort of well-worn stances and personality tics, which are the habitual danger of publishing one’s thoughts every week for years. Friedman, who knows a lot about economics but has too much faith in elites, calls for a summit of “the country’s 20 leading bankers, 20 leading industrialists, 20 top market economists and the Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate,” as if these very individuals are not the main agents of the catastrophe. Dowd publishes a column of inadvertent self-parody whose subject is Michelle Obama’s arms, and whose sum total of reporting is a conversation in a Washington taxi with her fellow columnist David Brooks. Kristof continues to call necessary attention to chronic, less-noticed disasters, but he does it more and more by making himself the hero of a moral drama and, in a recent series of columns from Darfur, insulting his readers with the suggestion that they’re too shallow to read on unless he bribes them with celebrity gossip. Rich never challenges his own side, and the result is a weekly display of rhetorical bravura and cheap shots. Bob Herbert has one tone of voice, and as often as outrage is called for, it’s also tiresome. Only Brooks and Krugman seem to be registering the earthquake in a meaningful way, asking themselves difficult questions on a regular basis and struggling out in the open with the answers, which is why the page is at its best on Friday.

Indeed. 

I'm 50% convinced that Paul Krugman's op-ed today is correct, and the moderates wound up damaging the stimulus more than they improved it. 

The thing is, I'm also 50% convinced that Krugman is to Keynesians as Richard Perle is to neoconservatives.  When an embittered ideologue derides his political leader for demonstrating a willingness to compromise and "negotiating with yourself," well, one does get the sense of deja vu. 

The rhetorical parallels between neocons and Keynesians are increasingly disturbing.  Martin Wolf argued late last week that "shock and awe" is required to stimulate the global economy -- a point seconded by Krugman.  Critics of the Keynesian approach are summarily dismissed as wingnuts. 

Not all Keynesians are acting in this manner.  Brad DeLong has provided substantive rebuttals to critics of the stimulus. 

I'm in the Ken Rogoff camp on the economy -- I'm somewhat dubious about the ability of any stimulus package to really jumpstart the economy, and very wary about the long-term costs of this strategy (for one thing, Bretton Woods II still needs to be unwound).  But I also don't have a better idea and "the situation is so dangerous it has to be tried."

But I also know that when I hear anyone using rhetorical tropes that remind me of Richard Perle, I run like hell in the opposite direction.  And Krugman is increasingly sounding like Perle. 

UPDATE:  See Clive Crook and Will Wilkinson on this point as well. 

Shorter Paul Krugman:  "We're headed for deflation and depression, we need a really big stimulus, and if Barack Obama keeps trying to placate Republicans in the name of post-partisanship, we're all gonna be living in grass huts."

Shorter David Brooks: "There's a new coalition of moderates asking sensible questions about waste in the stimulus package, and if Barack Obama keeps trying to placate liberal interest groups and Congressman, we're all gonna continue to live in the era of extreme partisanship." 

Intriguingly enough, there is one point on which both Brooks and Krugman agree -- Barack Obama has been surprisingly passive during the drafting of the stimulus bills.   

I think there's a way to thread the needle.  If all the moderates want is to trim the package a little, then Obama could likely get yes votes from GOP moderates.  That would (just) be enough for him to claim bipartisan support, and then a package is passed.  I don't think it would be large enough for Krugman's tastes, but on the other hand I'm hard-pressed to believe that ust another $100 billion in stimulus is the difference between recovery and grass huts.

This, by the way, is the most pernicious effect of the entire financial meltdown on fiscal policy.  When $100 billion no longer seems like a significant sum of money, it's time for a good stiff drink. 

Your humble blogger has long been interested in the intersection between celebrity and politics.

I therefore feel compelled to report the following anecdote concerning Jessica Alba and Bill O'Reilly:

Jessica Alba is setting the record straight: Sweden was neutral during World War II.

Alba and Fox TV show host Bill O’Reilly traded punches last week after the presidential inauguration. After Alba told a Fox reporter that O’Reilly was “kind of an a-hole;” he retaliated by calling her a “pinhead” for telling a reporter to “be Sweden about it,” assuming she meant Switzerland.

“I want to clear some things up that have been bothering me lately,” Alba blogged on MySpace Celebrity. “Last week, Mr. Bill O'Reilly and some really classy sites (i.e.TMZ) insinuated I was dumb by claiming Sweden was a neutral country. I appreciate the fact that he is a news anchor and that gossip sites are inundated with intelligent reporting, but seriously people... it's so sad to me that you think the only neutral country during WWII was Switzerland.”

For the record, Alba wins this fact fight. This is the second time in the past year that a right-wing political figure has been brought low by a celebrity.

This is surprising. It's pretty easy to poke fun at celebs like Paris Hilton or Jessica Alba (the latter's inauguration video is unintentionally very funny). Right-wing politicos and pundits should be used to debate.

So why are celebrities schooling them? Has the quality of conservative leadership really fallen so far? What happens when the true A-listers, like, say, Salma Hayek, start focusing their fire on Mitch McConnell or Rush Limbaugh?

Christopher Beam has an entertaining story in Slate about the various backroom machinations TV bookers must undergo in order to get the right set of talking heads.  

There are some guests who simply refuse to go on the air with other particular people or with anyone at all. Likewise, there are some people who no one else wants to appear with. It's rarely discussed, because the bookers who mediate these ego wars are bound by contract—and their own interests—to keep quiet. And hosts rarely mention the snubs on-air, since they want guests to come back. But snubbing happens all the time, and conversations with bookers, producers, and guests reveal that some divas are especially notorious.

This part stood out for me: 

The biggest offenders are usually the ones whose egos are too big to accommodate any company: Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Alexander Haig, and others who figure they have better uses for their time than debating some flack on the air. "They would only go on if they could do the show alone," says a former producer for Crossfire. "Brzezinski won't debase his cable currency by being a two-box," explained a current booker, referring to the practice of displaying guests on a split screen. Another booker cited Brzezinski's refusal to go on with Pat Buchanan—"probably because he thinks he's an anti-Semite." (An assistant to Brzezinski says: "It isn't true that he will only appear alone. He has appeared many, many times with other guests." Maybe so. But bookers say he doesn't do so willingly.)

Here's a piece of advice to TV bookers -- surprise these mooseheads with another guest just before they're going to go on.  Why?  Because, in my experience, when mooseheads at the Kissinger-Brzezinski level are alllowed to pontificate at will, they are unbelievably boring and rote.  On the other hand, they are at their best precisely when they are challenged by someone.  Maybe they get riled up at having their authority questioned, or maybe they want to smack down the young whippersnapper tring to unseat the Pundit King.  All I know is, when they are poked and prodded, the analytical sharpness that got them to their exalted position comes out, and then the fun starts.  I've seen this in person -- but Josh Marshall David Kurtz captures an example of this on video.  Zbigniew Brzezinski doesn't like it when he's challenged on the Middle East -- watch what happens: 

 

Oh, and it makes for good TV -- though in this case it has the added frisson of Mika Brzezinski's uncomfortable body language.