TNC on fake “objectivity”, Rahm, and majorities worth keeping.

From TNC, on Rahm Emmanuel as Chief of Staff and on media bias masquerading as objectivity. I especially liked his comparison to sports commentary. Hate the team, love the team, the job is to talk about what’s going on.

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Ezra nailed it a few months back when he noted, and I’m paraphrasing here, that a majority is meant to be used and eventually lost. There is, in the press, a profane bias toward political success, a sense that success is strictly defined by elections won. Left uninterrogated is the ends to which those elections serve.

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What we’re really talking about is the fake “objectivity” which the press worships. Serious policy reporting necessitates making calls, and making calls open you up to the charge of political bias. A good one to avoid that charge is to cover elections, in the way you cover sports. Ron Jaworski may love the Eagles, but if they’re sucking it up, he has to say as much. Likewise, a reporter can be a socialist in his private life, but by covering the horse-race he’s magically become objective.

Haha, media.

Courtesy of the other Atlantic blogger that I now read, at The Daily Dish:

Well worth watching.

Seeing this made me pretty giddy. I’m a total nerd. But as a friend pointed out, what does it say about the current state of American politics that I should feel ridiculously excited to see substantive debate happening? In fact, it isn’t even that substantive, it’s not the Prime Minister’s Questions. Why, instead of Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, am I not hearing Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Boehner, Peter Roskam (D-IL) every evening?? Why do Americans need their opinions shaped by TV personalities rather than given the chance to form their own opinions? What a shame that it has come to this.

I watched the discussion and felt so hopeful. I really do hope that the Dems and Reps can come to sane agreements. God I wish that the tone of politics could change.

But after watching the Q&A, I read comments on the Youtube site and on TNC’s blog, watched FOX and MSNBC commentary, and felt disheartened again. Even if they understood the point, they pretended as if they didn’t. The Democrats gloat at how Obama schooled the Republicans, how “Obama Goes to the Lion’s Den–And Mauls The Lion”; I don’t know much about the Republican side, but I hear that their commentators are claiming victory after having ‘forced’ Obama to admit to mistakes. Why don’t they get it?? Why do they continue this stupid, superficial, dumbing-down style of turning everything into a win-lose conflict?? I mean I know why the TV people do it, it’s how they get ratings up, but it is still so damned frustrating.