Sabotage

I can't stand it. I know you planned it. I'ma set it straight, this watergate.
I can't stand rocking when I'm in here, 'cause your crystal ball ain't so crystal clear
So while you sit back and wonder why I got this fucking thorn in my side
Oh my god, it's a mirage, I'm tellin' y'all it's sabotage
-- Beastie Boys

Might as well have some fun with this Coulter bullshit, right? Because otherwise, we might have to consider the truth of the matter, that the "responsible" media, for all practical purposes, might as well be deliberately sabotaging political discourse.

Not only did they refuse to repudiate Coulter's latest round of nonsense, NBC brain surgeon David Gregory decided to turn the tables on Elizabeth Edwards, and innocently ask if perhaps, once we strip away the toxic rhetoric and "ask me about my dead son" cheap shots, Coulter has an actual point?

Well, no. If she had an actual point, she wouldn't need to conceal it with obnoxious stunt columns and endless hair-tossing, which seems to be her tell that she's on her heels in the debate. That's obvious enough.

For anything noteworthy to be accomplished -- that is, to be rid of this vile beast, and have it expelled from our teevee screens, so that we can get back to the all-important Paris Hilton coverage -- the debate has to move beyond Coulter herself. She's merely the current totem for the channeled, choleric nonsense coming from the Archie Bunker sector of American politics. She speaks for idiots who have deluded themselves into believing that they are disenfranchised by special interest politics, when the fact is that they -- and Coulter -- are The Man.

Anywhere white middle- and lower-middle-class Americans have found themselves on the outs, it's because they've allowed themselves to be bamboozled by Jeebus-abusing hucksters and their paid liars in the opinion-making industry. They get all ginned up over gay marriage, and then wonder why their jobs have been outsourced to Bangalore or Guangzhou.

Tragically, I find myself agreeing with the people who work these rubes over, again and again -- fuck 'em if they're not going to pay attention. American political capitalists enjoy pretending that their hero is Adam Smith, but it's really P.T. Barnum, who famously opined that it is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money. They do not seem to be going broke with that philosophy.

But the media's bidness is show bidness, and their product is conflict, and Coulter is a master salesman of that product. So she comes on to Tweety's dog-and-pony show, Tweety makes an ass out of himself by kissing her ring, Coulter makes an ass of herself every time she opens her cakehole. And folks talk about the Conflict Product they were sold between all the commercials for trucks that carry nothing to nowhere, and pills designed to stave off the realization of a crushing hamster-wheel existence -- which, when you get right down to it, is why most of these shows are really on in the first place.

So these meat puppets preach the gospel of "objectivity" when it's an inversion of the conventional meaning of that word on at least a couple levels. For one, there's nothing "objective" about presenting two opposing viewpoints -- say, evolution versus "intelligent design" -- as if they were merely equally valuable differences of opinion. One has an overwhelming reserve of peer-reviewed expert analysis and empirical evidence bolstering its case; the other is a ham-fisted political concoction playing dress-up with religion and science, and abusing both in the process.

Another way "objectivity" is degraded in the media meat grinder is that there is no recognizable counterpart on "the left" (whatever that is anymore) to Coulter's level of availability and screen time. As I said before, when Chomsky gets an hour with Tweety, then we can talk about "both sides" being heard; till then, five minutes with this or that interchangeable mealy-mouthed, co-opted limousine liberal commentator doesn't equate, not by a long shot. Even then, at least Chomsky, whether or not you agree with his various analyses, does his homework; he attributes obsessively and is as solid an extemporaneous thinker/speaker as you can find in politics. He's every bit as strong a polemicist as Hitchens or Coulter, so what's the problem here?

Obviously, the problem is ratings, in the minds of corporate media, but again, that's another issue if their concern is really "objectivity". Clearly, it isn't. Chomsky is not a screamer, nor does he insult and berate his opponents the way Coulter or Hitchens do. And unless you are willing to pull on the colorful latex mask and cape, and strut around the ring like a preening asshole, you do not get invited to the big show, podna.

Another media syndrome is that of contrived contrarianism, an art form which people such as Coulter have mastered, and many would-be media princes are apprenticing. It explains Gregory's stupid question of Elizabeth Edwards, even as he has cultivated something of a rep as one of the more contentious members of the MSM, able and willing to ask Bush the "tough" questions. Or so the theory goes.

No, if we had a press with a backbone, they would stand up and walk out en masse the next time they are being lied to or stonewalled by Bush, Pony Blow, or Dana Perino -- which is to say, at the very next press conference. Look, it's simple: if the people you are covering are not helping you move your story forward in any appreciable way, then you are merely transcribing, you are not reporting. This is why it sometimes appears as if David Gregory asks the "tough" questions -- because hardly anyone else ever does much of anything at all. They're deathly afraid of never being called on again, or losing their press pass, or whatever. They are more worried about being accused of bad form than bad reporting. Bad reporting doesn't get you disinvited to Sally Quinn's next appletini schmoozefest.

I don't understand why they should fear such a thing. The object of their profession is to gather news. There is no news at a press conference, there is only spin. You can either keep transcribing spin, and get a shot at the gravy train, maybe roll wif MC Rove and his posse at the next par-tay, or you can dig up facts and then report on those facts.

Guess which choice feared media pit poodle Dave Gregory made.



It must be hard to avoid the blandishments and temptations, the golden opportunities to rub elbows and bump uglies with brilliant philanthropists such as Karl Rove. What this has done systemically to a large swath of the Washington press corpse is to imbue them with that smug, jaded elitism it takes to buy into their own jaundiced redefinitions of "objectivity" and "contrarianism". As long as Gregory asks the tough questions of the preznit, and gives Elizabeth Edwards a hard time, he's shown his "objectivity". He's vetted his quals to his bosses, who after all may need a favor from some scrub in the House who's owned and operated by MC Extra Chins' big red machine.

It's vital to the continued operation of the corporate media machine that its components and self-delusions -- objectivity, contrarianism, probity, controversy -- remain contrivances for our bread-and-circus consumption. Real objectivity, real contrarianism, those things would bring the house down. They don't want people asking "what the fuck" about Dick Cheney's little policy chop-shop that's fucked up this country for six years running; they want that resentment channeled at Paris Hilton, and her pseudo-political doppelganger, Ann Coulter. But they would have to put Cheney on To Catch A Predator for people to get up on their hind legs and take notice.

Television had already subverted our epistemology long before Survivor and its inbred ilk further confused the notion of what comprises "reality". But those shows have cemented, especially among younger-skewing viewers, that reality is whatever you want it to be. It becomes a very solipsistic, self-referential way of viewing what is obviously a hugely interdependent framework, and it has the ancillary benefit (for the people at the top) of communicating very clearly that the best thing you, Joe Citizen, can do is just STFU and get back to work. That was the idea all along, keep people confused and broke, addled by energy drinks and toys, living beyond their means, slavering at the chops for months for a fucking $600 phone.

That's why, as interesting and important as the Post series on Cheney's machinations truly is, it somehow ends up being published at the end of June, traditionally the dog days of hard-news stories. People are gearing up to watch some retard gorge on hot dogs next week; multi-part stories about the internal unraveling of their government don't gain much traction. Indeed, by the time the series appeared, Jo Becker had already been at the NY Times for a month or so, and coincidentally had a byline in that paper the same day the Post series finally broke. That strikes me as an editorial issue, certainly not one of reportage in this instance, but even here, it's hard not to wonder whose thumb might be on the scale.