People are railing on these stories individually, but together they’re even worse. On one hand, we have the Politico, a political web site founded by former Washington Post editors, reporting that Romney had a $300 makeup bill. Who the hell cares?! They go on TV. They’re going to spend before major appearances. Even if they spend a lot on how they look, it’s NOT IMPORTANT!
Glenn Greenwald has a good rundown and makes two excellent points. First:
One of the reasons why vapid petty-personality “journalism” of this sort has so disadvantaged liberals and so advantaged right-wing fanatics is because the latter are not only willing, but droolingly eager, to exploit these sorts of themes, while liberals in general are highly reluctant, almost embarrassed, to do so. Thus, even after months of John Edwards being mauled in every media venue as a result of the Pulitzer-worthy haircut “scoop” by The Politico’s Ben Smith, these are representative reactions by liberals to the Romney “story”:
Kevin Drum, Washington Monthly:
MAKE IT STOP….From the front page of The Politico on Monday: . . . Seriously. Can we just stop this stuff? Does anyone really think that the problem with presidential campaign coverage is that it isn’t vapid and half-witted enough already? Jeebus.
Melissa McEwan, Shakespeare’s Sister:
OMG — Who GIVES a Shit?!
I swear to the fates, if there’s ever a museum of internet journalism, celebrating the best the web has to offer, The Politico would best be represented by a turd in the unfinished basement bathroom.
The only remotely non-critical reference I can find to the Romney story is this seven-word statement from Oliver Willis, which seems more satirical than anything else.
Absolutely right. I’m not playing for a team, I’m just upset that this stuff is on the news at all.
Greenwald’s also points out that as of right now, because of the relentless media pursuit of the Edwards’s haircut story, more people know about Edwards’s haircut story than knew that Saddam was not connected to 9/11 at the start of the war. Think about that. It almost makes me cry, I’m so angry at that. Read the rest of his post, it’s worth it.
The other story I’d like to put along side this is the continuing inability of our press, including the wire services (AP, Reuters), to use the word filibuster in their reporting of the Republicans’ tactics in the Senate. It’s ridiculous. This lack of information will have more impact in the 2008 elections than anything else because you can bet on the fact that Republicans will call the Democrats as do-nothings. Already, you can see the story line shaping up in articles like this one from the Economist. They go through the entire article without mentioning the procedural delays being introduced by Republicans for every bill.
As Trent Lott said, The strategy of being obstructionist can work or fail … and so far it’s working for us.” It’s not working for the American people, though, who continue to suffer with a Congress that won’t pass anything because Republicans are obstructionist losers. And the strategy will work as long as it doesn’t get reported.
Put those two stories together and you see what our political media has become, a farce, a useless appendage instead of a meaningful fourth estate.
