Friends With Benefits

Any further questioning of the Tim Russert hagiography seems destined to come across as impugning the man's personal integrity. I think that might almost be by design, insofar as it discourages any speculation about anything useful. But one can certainly acknowledge the decency of the individual while challenging the integrity of the institution, it simply requires extra effort to separate the two.

Why does a journalist get the practical equivalent of a state funeral, with the direct wielders and beneficiaries of power -- the very people whom by definition are supposed to be the primary targets of the institution -- showing up in droves? On one level, we can give them some benefit of the doubt and say that they liked and respected Russert because they felt he treated them "fairly", which is naturally subject to their own peculiar interpretation.

But the anchor-level figureheads are also chroniclers of empire, courtiers occasionally affecting a harmless pose of seriousness of purpose, usually with a safe line of questioning that then gets regarded as "aggressive". Yet it rarely gets beyond the level of getting a guest to offer something resembling a quantifiable opinion on something, and immediately unearthing a quote from that same person on the same subject, from a year or ten years ago, that might seem to contradict the new iteration.

This eventually transforms the designated asker into a star of sorts, and as politics is show business for ugly people, the stars of the Beltway entertainment world come out for their own when the time comes. I'm honestly a bit surprised some enterprising lobbyist hasn't come up with some DC version of the Walk of Fame, though no one wants to see Dennis Hastert accidentally imprint his tits in the wet concrete outside the Morton's on Connecticut.

Real journalism appears to me to be a rather dangerous undertaking, done correctly. You're supposed to be asking questions and researching data about people who would rather not have those things aired. In Russia, for example, this pursuit literally puts your life in danger. Here you can be bought and co-opted, and if you persist in committing serious journalism, it can still be a self-destructive endeavor, whether it's Lara Logan constantly risking her life in war zones only to be told by editors that Americans are bored and inured to the prospect of dead soldiers they've never been permitted to see, or more sinisterly, Gary Webb who, even if he wasn't "suicided", was certainly driven to committing the deed by what he knew, what he sought, the information and knowledge he had amassed, and ultimately how all of it was blithely ignored, dismissed by "serious" people as conspiracy-guy piffle.

None of that is any individual journalist's fault, but rather a collective failure of all the things a genuinely independent entity must do to maintain its separation from its subjects. It's understandable; these are very rich and very powerful people, and they all want to be your friend, because they know it's very difficult for decent people to publicly embarrass their friends with awkward questions. So of course it's turned into a club, one whose standards are simply discretion and palm-greasing.

In the Clinton era, the modus operandi was to focus on the tawdry antics of the chief executive, though you'd think selling artillery to the Turks so that they could decimate Kurdish villagers and slaughter more civilians than Slobodan Milosevic ever thought about would be plenty tawdry. Instead it was this pointless fixation on the very same activity everyone in that town does to each other as a matter of professional courtesy. But they had to maintain the pretense that they regard such things with disdain. Fine. Then explain the continued employment of Bobo Brooks.

In the current era, it consists of ignoring or explaining away the deliberate effort to undermine fairly simple constitutional precepts, and establish a de facto monarchy, euphemistically called a "unitary executive". Instead we've been treated to endless, tedious play-by-play breakdowns of the extended slap fight between the Democratic candidates, any of whom (even Mike Gravel) would have been preferable not only to the current crew, but to any of their would-be Republican replacements. And now that Obama has finally been anointed with the nomination, we'll get a summer of "be careful what you wish for" coverage from the dictators (in both senses of that word) of narrative.

These two groups of people, those aspiring to power and those who chronicle their deeds and words, are supposed to be at least somewhat antagonistic. They should be cats and dogs, or at least cats and mice. Instead they are peanut butter and jelly. Why do you think that is?

[Update: What Thers said (and brilliant Photoshopping from Watertiger). "You went on Meet the Press to have your legitimacy consecrated." That about sums it up, the entire Washington journamalism establishment. Chroniclers of empire, maintainers of acceptable official narrative.]