Fri, Sep 5, 2008

Slacker Friday

We've got a new "Think Again" column here called "Remember Iraq?"

Also, my (long) account of my trip to Israel is in The Nation this week and it's called "Israel Sixty Years On: The State of the State." And my column on Denver, et al, is also in this issue, and it's called "The Times, They Have A-Changed."

This week on Moyers:

Bill Moyers Journal gives viewers an intimate look at how deployments of National Guard troops to Iraq affect the state governors' ability to swiftly respond to domestic disaster at home and impact the families left behind. Traveling to New Jersey, the Journal follows families preparing for the deployment of nearly half of New Jersey's National Guard to Iraq. Says Guardsman Roy Parks on deploying to Iraq, "It's a hard life being in the military. Once you're in, you realize it, and you get so attached to it and everything, it just becomes second nature, and then you don't want to quit. But you're never realizing how much you hurt your family and other people when things like this come up." Also on the program, Journal contributor Kathleen Hall Jamieson returns with a recap of the key moments and messages of this week's Republican National Convention.

From ANP:

Sarah Palin and the GOP leaders at their 2008 convention avoided speaking frankly about abortion with the mainstream media, but pro-Palin delegates meandered from the talking points and spoke openly with ANP. Turns out that Palin's thriving base among social conservatives are more excited by the likelihood of the overturning Roe v. Wade than just about anything.

Presidential candidate John McCain thinks that global warming is created, in part, by humans, but his running mate, Sarah Palin, disagrees. Indeed the Republican Party Platform cautions people to be skeptical of the theory of global warming. ANP spoke with delegates at the Republican National Convention about their thoughts on climate change.

A lot has changed since the tumultuous conventions of 1968. Maverick journalists Dan Rather and Jim Lehrer lament the old days when political conventions were spontaneous and less immune to corporate influence. Both are searching for substance behind the spectacle.

From TomDispatch:

Here's how Tom Engelhardt begins his latest piece, "Going on an Imperial Bender": "Here it is, as simply as I can put it: In the course of any year, there must be relatively few countries on this planet on which U.S. soldiers do not set foot, whether with guns blazing, humanitarian aid in hand, or just for a friendly visit. In startling numbers of countries, our soldiers not only arrive, but stay interminably, if not indefinitely. Sometimes they live on military bases built to the tune of billions of dollars that amount to sizeable American towns (with accompanying amenities), sometimes on stripped down forward operating bases that may not even have showers...

"The fact is: We garrison the planet north to south, east to west, and even on the seven seas, thanks to our various fleets and our massive aircraft carriers... And here's the other half of that simple truth: We don't care to know about it. We, the American people, aided and abetted by our politicians, the Pentagon, and the mainstream media, are knee-deep in base denial."

The rest of Engelhardt's piece explores how we have garrisoned the planet, why it's not news in the United States, and what the costs of ignorance are to this country, literal and figurative. In the process, I discuss two specific ways I've personally run into the phenomenon of "base denial" -- in one case as the editor of a book by Chalmers Johnson that was remarkably well reviewed without a single American reviewer thinking to mention that it dealt centrally with the issue of Pentagon basing policy.

Engelhardt concludes: "Today, you have to be in full-scale denial not to know that the twenty-first century -- whether it proves to be the Century of Multipolarity, the Century of China, the Century of Energy, or the Century of Chaos -- will not be an American one. The unipolar moment is already so over and, sooner or later, those mega-bases and lily pads alike will wash up on the shores of history, evidence of a remarkable fantasy of a global Pax Americana. Not that you're likely to hear much about this in the run-up to November 4th in the U.S. Here, fantasy reigns in both parties where a relatively upbeat view of our globally dominant future is a given, and will remain so, no matter who enters the White House in January 2009. After all, who's going to run for president not on the idea that "it's morning again in America," but on the recognition that it's the wee small hours of the morning, the bender is ending, and the hangover... Well, it's going to be a doozy. Better take some B vitamins and get a little sleep. The world's probably not going to look so great by the dawn's early light."

Slacker Friday:

Name: Eric Alterman
Hometown: Long Island, NY

If you are near enough to Stephen's Talkhouse in Amagansett tonight, and money is not too tight, you can see a rare and, I'm sure, wonderful Rosanne Cash performance tonight at 8:00 and say hello to the Alterman mispucha. I'm squeezing in some extra beach time, and John McCain inspired me break down last night and finally join Facebook, though it wasn't easy, so profound is my distaste at the notion of using "friend" as a verb. In any case, within seconds, Petey was kind enough to invite me to join the "Eric Alterman Sucks" group. They're all a great buncha guys, I gotta say, but I have one particular fave ...

Ted Barrington (Williamsport, PA) wrote at 8:39pm on August 27th, 2008

ERIC ATERMAN IS A JERK. HES A SECRET MUSLEM I HEARD. HE IS NOT A REAL JEW AND HATES CHRISTIANS AND CHRIST, HE SAID SO IN HIS BLOG. IHE THINKS HES COOL BUT HES A JERK AND IS A SEXIST AND SECRET MUSLEM.

And this:

Ted Barrington < (Williamsport, PA) wrote at 6:39pm on September 2nd, 2008

ERIC ALTERMAN IS A LEFTIST RADICAL COMMUNIST!! HE HATES GOOD CHRISTIANS AND SUPPORTS BABY MURDER! HE ADMISTS IT! JESUS CHRIST IS THE ONLY SAVIOUR AND ALTERMAN IS A HATER! HE IS A MOSELM LOVING JEW WHO HATES HIS JEWISHNESS! HIS GOATEE IS CRAPPY!

Thanks, Ted. Thanks, Petey ...

Name: Charlres Pierce
Hometown: Newton, MA

Hey Doc: "He's a complicated man/and no one understands him but his woman."

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "Lulu's Back In Town" (Egg Yolk Jubilee) -- Once again this week, I failed to kill and gut a moose and carve into its pale bones a scrimshaw tribute to how much I love New Orleans.

Part The First: About this whole "Hockey Mom" business. Sorry, I'm not buying it. First of all, if she's really a Hockey Mom, where in the hell is her bowling jacket? As the great Bonnie Lindros -- mother of Eric -- once told me: "They hate me because I don't wear my name on all my clothes." Put a Styrofoam cup of really bad vending machine coffee in front of her and see if she goes for it. That's the test. There's also a joke out there about someone's being one-timed through the five-hole to which I will not stoop. The many hockey fans in the extended Alter-family will catch my drift, though.

Part The Second: The other night, I heard John King on CNN earnestly explaining to me the difference between "Wal-Mart Moms," "Soccer Moms," and "Hockey Moms." Basically, it caused me to wonder why smart women don't just go around to the cable news outlets explaining things with Louisville Sluggers. As Alison Porchnik says to Alvy Singer in Annie Hall, "No, I love being reduced to a cultural stereotype."

Part The Third: My favorite pundit ID of the week came when, on the heels of Jeffrey Toobin's gobsmacked reaction to John McCain's acceptance speech, Wolf Blitzer, the most thoroughly worked ref on television right now, threw it to Amy Holmes, whom he described as a "former speechwriter for Bill Frist." No! Really? THE Bill Frist? Did she write the Senate speech about Terri Schiavo? Because that really worked out really well for him.

Part The Fourth: Splitting up Matthews and Olbermann was a terrible idea. The MSNBC broadcasts from Denver were terrible, but they were at least coherent. This was just a mess.

Part The Fifth: Worst visual of the convention: watching the Palin family hand baby Trig down the line every time the camera went on. They could teach something to the U.S. 4X100 relay teams, I'll tell you that.

Part The Last: RIP, Amos Moses. Outside of Joe South, there aren't many more underrated figures in pop music than this guy. And he was hell on the guitar, too.

I have no hope for the next 56 days. None whatsoever. Reality's relevance was lost somewhere between Invesco Field and the Xcel Center. We're going to get lofty post-partisan dreariness from both presidential candidates, and a vicious 1992 culture-war brawl under the radar, which will be thoroughly deplored in public by the people who profit from it most. I shouldn't have to watch Karl Rove tell me about the American people and how they vote. I should get to watch Karl Rove being hauled off in chains to Danbury. The major television networks will curl up into a ball roughly five minutes from the start of the first presidential debate. The whole campaign is now going to be conducted on the level of pure mythology. If they had any intellectual honesty whatsoever, the people on TV would dress in white robes and divine the campaign through the movement of waves and the burning of laurel leaves. For a minute back in the spring, it seemed like the country was ready to admit to itself that it poisoned itself with bull***t over the past seven years and was prepared to issue itself a corrective. Not any more. We're back to "personality" and "character" and "narratives" and all the other stuff that keeps anyone from thinking about what's really at stake here.

And Jeannie Moos was Not Funny. Call me Kreskin.

Name: Stephen Troutt
Hometown: Murfreesboro, Tennessee

Hiya,

Have you noticed that, in MSM "labeling" world, bedrock Republicans, as in say, Governor Palin, suddenly become more "moderate" than their record would seem to indicate while Democrats, say Senator Obama suddenly become more "Liberal" than their record? I guess it is the same sort of the journalistic sleight of hand magic that produces "The Maverick" -- all the MSM has to do is repeat it as "fact" long and loud enough. Talking heads do need to keep talking, you know.

Name: John B
Hometown: Des Moines, IA

Politico has richly earned the criticism it has received from Liberal corners, with Altercation not the least of those. That said, even a broken clock is right twice per day, and they couldn't have been more right today. Maybe even people who live in Matt Drudge's world get tired of serving as punching bags after a while. In any case it's obvious that we're in for a particularly nasty campaign season. The Obama/Biden campaign had better be ready to deal with pit bulls, with and without lipstick.

Name: Larry Howe
Hometown: Oak Park, IL

Eric --

Your point about Kristol's potential work for McCain while employed by the NY Times is worth noting. In addition to his August 25th column, he was promoting Palin even earlier, I believe, on one of the political TV shows. He needs to disclose any connections to the campaign not only to his employers but to his readers.

And if Noonan looked like a conflicted personality when her hot mic revelations contradicted her column from the same day, her subsequent disavowal of what had been revealed for all to hear on the internet brought her credibility even lower. That lame explanation was a transparent attempt to keep her job.

What would our media be like without the likes of Kristol and Noonan adding to the cacophony?

Name: Greg Hilliard
Hometown: Phoenix

Interesting that Mike Murphy dropped his guard and called the Palin pick "cynical" and "gimmicky." This is the same Mike Murphy who on MSNBC at the Democratic National Convention claimed that Bill and Hillary Clinton would be voting for McCain. Which one should we trust? The one playing a role on camera or the one being honest off screen?

Name: kathleen suits
Hometown: Lancaster MA

I recall a certain well-known, bow tie-wearing columnist who helped prep Reagan for a debate with Carter and then praised the Republican candidate's performance in his column and also, I believe, on one of the panel shows without noting his participation in the rehearsal. A few commentators complained about this action, but there were no sanctions to my knowledge.

Name: Michael
Hometown: the Ozarks

While I may moan and cringe at parts of "Washington Journal," the DNC and RNC have once again proven the invaluable contribution of C-Span to our political coverage. Watching Obama, Clinton, et. al., and now Thompson and Palin without listening to Brokaw gargle out inanities or watching Matthews sputter and spew is like a drink of cool water at the end of a hot day.

Name: David Fuller
Hometown: Peotone, IL

I was heartened to see that msnbc.com actually pointed out here -- that, contrary to the RNC assertions that Obama has, "...done nothing, has not reached across party lines and has no record as a reformer," the reality is that he has done all three, and in one fell swoop, at that.

Now, if only the pundits and the rest of the reporters in the SCLM would actually bother to point that out when challenged by a Republican to name an Obama accomplishment (with John McCain the "maverick" no less!), we'd all be a lot better off and well-informed.

Alas, I hold little hope that such an obvious fact will be used frequently -- if at all -- as a refutation to such silly challenges. Ironically, I believe it was Ronald Reagan who said that "Facts are stubborn things," (even if John Adams said it first). Indeed they are. If reporters and pundits would use them once it a while, well, that'd be a refreshing change, wouldn't it?

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Thu, Sep 4, 2008

The sun ain't gonna shine anymore ...

We've got a new "Think Again" column here called "Remember Iraq?"

Also, my (long) account of my trip to Israel is in The Nation this week and it's called "Israel Sixty Years On: The State of the State." And my column on Denver, et al, is also in this issue, and it's called "The Times, They Have A-Changed."

There's a lot about David Broder in that column, and I imagine it's the first time he's ever been compared to the mighty Allman Brothers Band (though not, I promise, in a good way). I'm reminded that about 20 years ago I interviewed Broder for my first book on punditry and I told him I thought it was silly to devote so much attention to the fact of whether a candidate could give a decent convention speech or not. I mean how important was that to governing effectively and or even honestly. He argued that because George H.W. Bush had focused attention on the contras, this meant he would never sell them out and this was the kind of signal you could read into such speeches. In fact, Bush sold them out rather quickly. And I happened to be in the room when some of Bill Clinton's acceptance speech was being drafted in 1992 -- something Broder's never done -- and I wanted to tell him that nobody gives a s**t about the things he and his ever so serious reporter friends think is important. These speeches are about winning elections, period. After the election, it's a brand new day all around. So if someone turns out to be able to give a speech that has been written by other people, that means they might have a decent future as an actor, nothing more, the "dean" notwithstanding.

Mixed Emotions: Last spring, I wrote a column about The New York Sun called "Potemkin Paper?" For those of you outside the New York City area (or for the many of you in it that still likely don't read the paper), it's something like what you'd expect if Marty Peretz ran a daily broadsheet. My Nation colleague Scott Sherman aptly described it as "a journalistic SWAT team against individuals and institutions seen as hostile to Israel." It's targeted the Ford Foundation, which it accused of aiding Palestinian terrorism; Columbia University, accused of creating an atmosphere unfriendly to Jews; Kofi Annan's office at the U.N., accused of rampant corruption; and Harvard University's Kennedy School, publisher of the famous Walt-Mearsheimer paper, likened to a David Duke neo-Nazi screed.

It also specializes in some rather strange editorial ideas. For instance its editorial board advocated Dick Cheney for president in 2008, and just recently predicted Democrats would dump Obama a week before the convention for Hillary. Just about the only person I could find who took any of these seriously was Rick Klein of ABC's The Note, a man with the softest of spots for crazy neocons ...

Even stranger, as I noted back in May of last year, were the Sun's business practices:

I did no sleuthing myself, but not only is this a business rampant with fraud, it's also characterized by more shady-but-legal tricks of the trade than a border-based bordello. According to William Breen, for instance, who says he worked for a New York City wholesaler (and wrote a 2004 letter to Jim Romenesko's blog, MediaNews), city news dealers paid just a penny per copy. That means it makes no economic sense to return the leftovers. The result, Breen claimed, was "their circ figures look great. Virtually every copy they print is 'sold.' "

(An additional peek into the lunacy that must take place inside that newsroom is here. That's a guidebook for how to get virtually zero productivity -- and a lot of bitter feelings -- out of your interns).

Anyway, who said the free market doesn't work? Here's today's news from the already-established (although notably unreliable) New York paper, the Post:

The sun appears to be setting on The New York Sun some 6½ years after it began.

Investors are said to have given founder and Editor Seth Lipsky until the end of the month to find new angel investors - or else the plug will be pulled.

The right leaning, pro-Israel broadsheet is believed to be losing money at the rate of $1 million a month for total losses surpassing $70 million.

The Sun was never about profits, just its SWAT tactics. And if my building was any guide, most people did not even bother to pick up their free copies from the security desk. But there is only so much love among crazy neocons when it comes to a paper that is primarily trash and it looks like the bill has finally come due. Even so, as I said, I'm a bit regretful. The paper's art section was stellar, particularly in its coverage of the local jazz and cabaret scene. Getting to read Gary Giddens and Will Friedwald, the smart book reviews of Adam Kirch and the absolutely terrific obit section was a pleasure that almost justified the fish paper they came wrapped in.

We've seen a dramatic drop in discussions about the Great Clinton Question since the Democratic convention, but there are apparently still a few droplets of blood left in that dead horse, and damned if the media aren't going to beat them out. (Last night, after Sarah Palin's speech, Wolf Blitzer asked: "Did Barack Obama make a mistake in bypassing Hillary Clinton as his running mate and going with Joe Biden?")

Here is MSNBC's David Gregory, on Race for the White House last night:

GREGORY: There are still questions about whether Senator Obama is qualified and experienced enough to be commander and chief. Those are questions within the Democratic Party. Notwithstanding the fact that Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton now vouch for him, there were still 18 million voters who had questions about that, who voted for her.

Did all of those 18 million voters all have questions about Obama's qualifications and experience? Of course not. They just preferred Hillary, for a vast array of reasons that Gregory doesn't know, including the fact that they hated the way MSNBC in particular covered the race. And a bunch them, no doubt, changed their mind over time. But because the race was so close and went on for so long, Gregory and others view it as something akin to the Civil War, with differences that will never be reconciled. Not, you know, a standard political primary. And it further allows them to use the 18 million who voted for Hillary as a palette for whatever anti-Obama feeling they care to impute, sans any evidence.

Speaking of imputing non-existent feelings on liberal voters, Ron Fournier's bureau pushed this story out on Tuesday:

Many liberals are belittling the choice [of Sarah Palin], suggesting that as a mother of five children -- including an infant with Down syndrome -- she has neither the time nor the experience to become vice president.

Atrios challenged the reporter, Tom Raum, to name one liberal who suggested any such thing. So far as I'm aware, Raum has not. But MoveOn has started another campaign based on that story as well. Have a look.

George Zornick writes: Department of Corrections: In Eric's recent Nation piece, "How to Cover the GOP," he noted that in Denver, the media were talking about Kwame Kilpatrick, the embattled mayor of Detroit, who would not be showing up to the DNC because of criminal charges. He wondered if they would talk about indicted Republicans not showing up this week -- including former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who is awaiting a state trial in Texas.

His error was in optimistically, and incorrectly, assuming that Tom DeLay actually wouldn't show up, let alone host a private party that drew "hundreds of delegates and Republican officials," let alone be celebrated as "the man, he's the man." But all those things happened. We regret the error, but submit that it's still a hell of story.

From FAIR:

"Maverick No Matter What"

When John McCain selected Alaska governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate, pundits and reporters saw the move as more proof of McCain's "maverick" nature--despite the fact that Palin's selection would seem in large part to be an attempt to placate the Republican Party base, further undermining his media-sustained reputation as an independent politician who breaks with his party.

The day after the announcement, a Washington Post headline (8/30/08) declared, "With Pick, McCain Reclaims His Maverick Image." The following day, a Post subhead was "Fellow Maverick Survived McCain's Thorough Vetting Process, Aides Say." On NBC's Chris Matthews Show (8/31/08), reporter Norah O'Donnell asserted, "He's trying to recapture the maverick label." Fellow panelist Howard Fineman of Newsweek weighed in: "Sure, it's risky, but he had to shake things up, and as his top advisor told me, this is a maverick picking a maverick." O'Donnell later added: "All the headlines in the papers were 'Maverick chooses maverick.' McCain couldn't be happier with the headlines the day after."

More here.

Great questions for the New York Times editorial page editor, via Poynter Online:

1. It has been reported that [Bill] Kristol was part of a McCain kitchen cabinet in 2000. Is he still? Unlike fellow Op-Ed columnist David Brooks, who has disclosed McCain's canny solicitation of advice, Kristol hasn't said yea or nay.

2. Did he get consulted on the Palin choice? When? Was he informed of the choice before or after his Aug, 25 column mentioning Palin?

3. Are there any rules about a columnist actively advising a political campaign that he is writing about? Are there any rules about disclosing such a role? Should New York Times readers know, one way or the other?

4. I doubt that a NYT columnist would be allowed to keep writing while being employed in a political campaign. But in the pundit/influence game, status (and eventual riches) often are conferred without a paycheck changing hands. Is this immaterial to his obligations to New York Times readers?

Also, I imagine some questions are being posed to the Wall Street Journal editorial page editors after this incident. Which is the real Peggy Noonan?

Speaking of Noonan's accidental live-mic admission, Dan Froomkin's piece yesterday at Watchdog Blog was quite well timed:

One of the problems with modern political journalism is that when something manifestly absurd takes place, as long as there are people willing to argue both sides, our top reporters feel obliged to treat it as deserving of serious debate.

[...]

Even though the cable networks can find matched pairs of pundits to take opposite sides on just about anything, I can't help but think that the vast majority of political journalists recognize that there is something seriously out of whack with the Palin selection.

So it's time for our elite political reporters to look into their own heads and decide: Do you value what's in there? Or are you willing to report whatever people tell you?

Indeed. Note that, caught along with Noonan were Mike Murphy and Chuck Todd.

Correspondence Corner:

George Zornick writes: Hey folks. One of the many things Eric employs me to do is screen the mail that comes into Altercation. You may have noticed that recently, the Correspondence Corner has been a little thin, and so I wanted to re-state a policy of Media Matters, which is a tax-exempt, non-profit outfit. Any statements that advocate for (or against) the election of any candidate, or support (or denounce) any piece of legislation can't be printed on this site. Media criticism is fine -- why doesn't the press ask such-and-such about Candidate X, and so on. But we've had to screen out a lot of mail that openly slammed a particular candidate, party, or legislation, and as you can see, the Correspondence Corner has suffered in volume. Please keep this in mind when you write in -- and keep the letters coming.

Name: Meremark
Hometown: Portland

When Obama met Murdoch making concessions for civility, then fees from subscription TV is hurtin' for certain.

Don't go there, Obama, leave mainstream media running its course, bogging down, and stay out of the mud.

Name: T. O'Dell
Hometown: Port Angeles, WA

Never woulda thought the guy would have anything useful to say but - Quote of the day: "There is a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw, when we are criticized"- Joe Klein.

Hey someone should write a book about this!

Name: Ben Vernia
Hometown: Arlington, VA

My wife, a former editor, spotted the real story buried a few paragraphs into this human-interest story on Gov. Palin's preparation for "her" speech tonight:

"Not anticipating that McCain would choose a woman as his running mate, the speech that was prepared in advance was 'very masculine,' according to campaign manager Rick Davis, and 'we had to start from scratch.' "

Prepared in advance without regard to who would give it? Too "masculine"?

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Wed, Sep 3, 2008

Gimme that old-time religion ...

Tom Brokaw keeps the hits coming -- here he is last night on MSNBC: "I would not like to be Joe Biden debating Sarah Palin, because she is going to have a lot of momentum by the time she gets to that debate if things go as well as the Republicans hope they will."

A reminder, if you needed it, that Brokaw apparently spends his non-broadcast time at a cabin in Montana.

In my Nation post last week, "How to Cover the GOP," I wondered if the media would obsess over every disagreement or sign of disunity in St. Paul, as they so enthusiastically did in Denver. (Jamison Foser notes a nice moment in his column where Jeffrey Toobin and Carl Bernstein explode on CNN's Soledad O'Brien in Denver after she asked about the millionth variation of the Great Clinton Question: "Do you think it matters at all -- anyone can jump in on this -- that President Clinton will not stay for Barack Obama's speech on Thursday?")

Anyway, it's obvious the media are suddenly tired of ferreting out intra-party insults and squabbling. The huge Ron Paul counter-convention, and McCain's subsequent effort to keep Paul off the convention floor, just haven't done it. So may I suggest another possibility? Last night, Joe Lieberman gave a speech in support of John McCain. Lieberman was the Republican nominee's choice for vice president as recently as 10 days ago, has been one of McCain's most visible supporters on the campaign trail, bashed Obama during his speech, and is beloved by the national-security wing of the Republican party. But in his speech, Lieberman said this:

If John McCain was just another go-along partisan politician, he never would have taken on corrupt Republican lobbyists, or big corporations that were cheating the American people, or powerful colleagues in Congress who were wasting taxpayer money.

But he did!

If John McCain was just another go-along partisan politician, he never would have led the fight to fix our broken immigration system or to do something about global warming.

But he did!

Um, reading between the lines, didn't Lieberman address the Republican convention -- shortly after the sitting Republican president -- and call the Republican Party a bunch of corrupt, cheating, tax-wasting do-nothings? That seems awful juicy to me. Reporters should ask other Republicans if they agree with Lieberman, and if not, if they still want him by McCain's side this fall. They should also ask Lieberman to expand those critiques, and why, if he believes them, he is still supporting the Republican presidential ticket in November. (Also, by "taken on," he means what exactly?)

George Zornick writes: Michael Wolff has an interesting profile of Rupert Murdoch, here, and this account of a secret Obama-Murdoch meeting seems to have the most immediate relevance:

It wasn't until early in the summer that Obama relented and a secret courtesy meeting was arranged. The meeting began with Murdoch sitting down, knee to knee with Obama, at the Waldorf-Astoria. The younger man was deferential -- and interested in his story. Obama pursued: What was Murdoch's relationship with his father? How had he gotten from Adelaide to the top of the world?

Murdoch, for his part, had a simple thought to share with Obama. He had known possibly as many heads of state as anyone living today -- had met every American president from Harry Truman on -- and this is what he understood: nobody got much time to make an impression. Leadership was about what you did in the first six months.

Then, after he said his piece, Murdoch switched places and let his special guest, Roger Ailes, sit knee to knee with Obama.

Obama lit into Ailes. He said that he didn't want to waste his time talking to Ailes if Fox was just going to continue to abuse him and his wife, that Fox had relentlessly portrayed him as suspicious, foreign, fearsome -- just short of a terrorist.

Ailes, unruffled, said it might not have been this way if Obama had more willingly come on the air instead of so often giving Fox the back of his hand.

A tentative truce, which may or may not have vast historical significance, was at that moment agreed upon.

We don't know if that's exactly true, nor if it has anything to do with Obama's upcoming, first-ever appearance with Bill O'Reilly on Thursday. If true, it's very interesting, although not surprising, that Ailes stipulated to said treatment of Obama. Frankly, he would have to be blind not to. Sean Hannity has done all of the above, and in recent weeks has added baby-killer to the mix. (Not baby-killer in the usual pro-choice sense, but literally, a real baby killer.)

As to the potential "vast historical significance," I don't think Obama's appearance on the network, nor any subsequent appearance, will temper the outrageous rhetoric much. Not to get ahead of ourselves, but should Obama ascend to the presidency, Fox is going to continue to be a huge problem -- they have abandoned all pretense, to the extent any existed, and are basically a televised version of right-wing talk radio. Will they actually accuse the sitting president of being a near-terrorist and baby-killer? I'd think not, but there was that whole Vince Foster thing ...

I do think it's likely the onslaught will continue, "truce" or not. It's how News Corp. pays the rent, frankly. In the piece, Murdoch's ominous response to who he preferred in the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama contest was: "Obama -- he'll sell more papers."

Quote of the Day, courtesy of McCain campaign manager Rick Davis: "This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates."

Daily Show segment of the day: Brilliant.

Correspondence Corner:

Name: Alex Neill
Hometown: El Paso, TX

I just wanted to call your attention to tonight's ABC Nightline program and its section on Sen. John McCain and his time as prisoner of war. John Donvan interviews several Vietnam POWs who were in captivity with Sen. McCain. The report states that all of the former POWs were against the use of torture. The report then references one of John McCain's "hallmark positions" being his opposition to the use of torture in the war on terror.

At no time does the report bother to mention that McCain voted against the Feinstein Amendment that would have set limits on CIA interrogation techniques. So much for his "hallmark" anti-torture position. So John McCain was against torture ... before he ran for president. Right in the middle of the GOP primary season, he has a change of heart. In the words of the 2004 Bush presidential campaign, echoed in so many contemporary media reports: "McCain was against torture ... before he was for it." The fact that Nightline failed to mention that vote after talking about Sen. McCain's "hallmark" issue is irresponsible to say the least.

Name: Jim Celer
Hometown:

Here's a Bloomberg report, quoting McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt on how poor John (and specifically, poor Sarah) is getting some bad press:

" 'It used to be that a lot of those smears and the crap on the Internet stayed out of the newsrooms of serious journalists,' Schmidt said at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota."

He chose not to finish with: "Until we Republicans encouraged, promoted and sometimes invented the smears and crap and fed them to the newsrooms of serious journalists."

Name: Mike
Hometown: Miami

While it is commendable that the Obama campaign is not taking cheap shots at Governor Palin regarding young Bristol's pregnancy, isn't it fair for the media to note yet another policy failure of the Bush administration -- especially since it is likely to be continued under McCain? After all, if "abstinence only" doesn't work in an extreme right wing Governor's family, where exactly does the McCain camp believe it will be successful? I'd be interested in some "straight talk" on this.

Name: Bob Rothman
Hometown: Providence, RI

Eric,

I'm waiting for Dana Milbank to write about the "presumptuous" Republican nominee. Here's John Dickinson: "Almost exactly three years to the day that President Bush created a new standard for botching the political response to a natural disaster, McCain is not going to repeat Bush's mistake. On Sunday, he flew with Sarah Palin to Mississippi to survey preparations." Will someone tell John McCain that he is not president yet? Why are his actions any less presumptuous than Obama's speech in Germany? Oh yeah, McCain was a POW.

Name: John Sherman
Hometown: Moorhead, MN

When the subject is the media's relation to the McCain campaign, the question "How stupid do they think we are?" is not a rhetorical question.

2:34pm EST | Permalink | | Digg this!

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