Annointed liberal media figures disappoint

Those who control the media are so overwhelmingly right wing, that the caste of characters we see every day in the world of pundits is heavily skewed.   We have a huge collection of mad extremists like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly and Michael Savage.  We have people like Scarborough who are just as rabid but more polished in making false shows of occasional moderation.  Then we have the ones the wingnuts call the liberal media -- people like the network anchors, Katie Couric, Dan Rather, Matt Lauer -- people who seem culturally in tune or at least not in opposition to northeast USA bluestateness, but who always reinforce the underlying themes of those in power.  For example, President Bush's poll numbers may be slipping, but still unquestioned is the idea that we are waging a legitimate, desirable war in Iraq.

There is a very sizable segment of the population of our country that holds in common certain points of view that are barely represented at all on TV, and when they are, those who voice the views are framed as on the left edge of permissible decent comment.  I belong to this segment, as do many who comment on dailykos.  I believe that there is no justification for torture.  I believe that John McCain is a vicious and selfserving rightwinger who poses as a moderate because it's so easy to do in the current circumstances.  I believe that when politicians, Democratic or Republican, say that we need to win this war in Iraq, it is part of a fabric of lies that hardly get debated. The underpinnings of this article of faith, that there is good reason for the war, are constantly exposed by events that can't be hidden. But the obvisous truth, that the war is unjustifiable and digging us into an ever deeper hole, is usually instantly condemned across the spectrum of political opinion that you are likely to find in the mass media. And all too often "our guys" in the mass media do the dirty work.

We have on our side some liberal voices.  We have Jon Stewart, whose show may be 'fake news ' but has much more truth in it than the daily news the mass media provide.  We have Howard Fineman, who sometimes expresses clear and significant difference with the ruling assumptions.  These are near the extreme of what is allowed.  If your opinion is much further away from the President's than these guys you have little chance of getting on the air.  You do have Seymour Hersh, who is too well established after so many decades of powerful factual reporting that he can only be contained, not stopped.  You have Rachael Maddow, who is brilliant and charming and has a miraculous power to tolerate and maybe even like Tucker Carlson.  She is positioned subservient to him, but her power shows up well against his mediocrity.

But because so few liberal voices are allowed on air, and because their selection is so heavily influenced by power centers so far to the right, these liberal voices often serve as a borderline.  You can go about this far, and no further.  This sets us up for terrible disappointment.  We don't have, and don't want, a Michael Savage or a Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly or an Ann Coulter, violent liars who would have gone down in flaming scandal long ago were they not made men, protected in their hate by large corporations.

But we need more people who speak the truth plainly and without feeling a need to make dishonest or ignorant displays of a phony moderation.

Example:  On the Daily Show the other day, Stewart made a big point of calling Dean a crazy idiot for saying that the war in Iraq can't be won.  His comment was supposed to be humor or satire, but his framing posited the war in Iraq as something the people of this country could unite behind. He even resorted to the "scream" smear. It has me so disgusted that I will have a hard time watching that show any more. (Colbert is both funnier, and so far seems to have better politics.)  The idea Stewart forcefully promoted was that although Bush's prosecution of the war has been incompetent, it is ultimately in the interests of the American people.  This comment and framing undermines everything important Stewart has done to win himself his audience.

Example:  Last night, Chris Matthews was talking about the domestic spying issue with a reporter from the New York Times, Anne Kornblut, and Howard Fineman.  Fineman's important point -- which undercut everything he has said in the past to gain my respect -- was that this was an embarrassment but that in the long run, the important news of the day was the wonderful success of the Iraqi elections.  My 90 year old mother turned to me and said, "Are people actually buying this garbage?"

I did not feel like answering her with the truth. She is still too young, maybe later. Yes, many are buying it.  Many buy it because the media owners' strategy works.  Populate the pundit world with a range of right-wing extremists, apolitical sellouts to represent the center, and clipped wing liberals who know which side their bread is buttered to represent the "left."  You are so glad that someone is speaking RELATIVE sanity that you hardly notice when they slip in the knife, to contradict themselves and what they've said in the past, to establish the borderline of decent dissent.

This behavior on the part of Stewart and Fineman will win them friends in the right places.  Ultimately, they expose themselves, as Christopher Hitchens has irretrievably by now.  They do some good work along the way.

But it makes it harder to say the following true things and get heard in the public square:  "The war in Iraq was based on lies, and should never have been started.  Although if we leave now we will be leaving a terrible mess, the fact is our nation is capable only of making the mess worse.  We should be worried about the erosion of Democracy in our own country, rather than arrogantly believing we can provide democracy to another culture, especially when we have shown that as a nation we do not care to learn (except in the shallowest way) about other cultures.  The elections in Iraq cannot be successful, because we ultimately will not be able to deal with the results of true democracy."

If you say something like that, you are going beyond what even the "liberal" Howard Fineman believes, and beyond what the wild and crazy Jon Stewart believes.  So ultimately, these people steal the voice of protest -- and all too many would-be dissenters buy into it from exhaustion.