Mess the Press: A Matter of Faith

Jordan writes in comments at NMMB:

The Jay Rosen piece keeps getting into his rejection of any possibility of Todd's "naïveté" -- contrasting that idea with Rosen's famous "Church of Savvy" (the brilliant Rosen idea that what's valued amongst Washington journalists isn't insight, or wisdom, or accuracy, or righteousness, but "savvy" -- the ability to speak from a bored, cynical, apolitical, anti-idealistic position that indicates one's membership in the inner sanctum of the Beltway, a vantage point from which one can relate what's "really" going on) -- but I wonder about this; I think it's just semantics.

Because, whether you want to call it naïveté or not, I think it's fairly obvious that Chuck Todd believes in what he's doing; he thinks he's accomplishing something by bringing Republicans and Democrats onto a television show to ask them "fair," "penetrating" questions; he accepts the same symmetrically-balanced paradigm that his audience presumably believes in -- and the built-in favoritism towards conservative ideas and elected officials, vs. the automatic, disdainful suspicion of Democrats and progressives, is just a manifestation of a basic systemic bias that Todd is utterly unaware of -- he can enact it so guilelessly because he can't see it.

I won't disagree with much of that. I was put off by the way Rosen insisted that "it's not naïveté" several times, which seemed awfully facile (and by the strangely self-serving way he suggests Todd ought to be reading Press Think, when he says "Todd did not care to listen" and then quotes himself, as if the blogpost had been addressed to Todd).

One of the things Rosen sees but doesn't understand is wonderfully encapsulated in the term "Church of the Savvy": that it really is a church, with articles of faith, and the members believe in it, but that doesn't exclude guile. A priesthood doesn't doubt the truth of the doctrine but its members jockey for status in cynical ways and blindside those who aren't initiated all the same. When you watch video of Trump's "spiritual adviser" Paula White prancing the stage frenetically during the service, you know she's worked into a genuine trance state and having an absolutely real spiritual experience, which doesn't stop her from being manipulative and corrupt.

Mess the Press

Meet the Press with its original host, Martha Rountree, via Eyes of a Generation.

Happy Boxing Day!

A lot of talk going on about the belated discovery of Chuck Todd, political director of NBC News and current host of Sunday morning's ancient Meet the Press, that the Trump campaign and administration are untruthful sometimes and may be doing it on purpose, as reported the other day in Rolling Stone. Chuck Todd is shocked—shocked!

It looks as if this unexpected insight arose from an earlier incident, also reported in Rolling Stone, when Todd was interviewing Senator Cruz on his show:

And Then the Critics

Image via The Clyde Fitch Report.

The way I received it, listening to the Judiciary hearing on the radio (unlike Chuck Todd, I don't get to criticize the "optics", and I didn't listen to the Intelligence hearing at all, though I've got the transcript in an open tab and I'm working on it), Mueller had a pedagogical task I thought he was living up to pretty well, with the intense cooperation of the Democrats on the committee. Namely, he wasn't going to read us the Report ("Hey kids, it's story time!"). He was going to make us read it, or the committee members on our behalf, because that's what you need to do in this class: if the professor spoonfeeds you the material, you're not going to get it, you have to master it for yourself.

And Mueller really wants us to read the Report. "The Report speaks for itself," he keeps saying, like Dorothy insisting she just wants to go back to Kansas. He's aware, I think, that nobody has read it, but he's put so much into it that he doesn't have much left for himself.

So he wouldn't give them a lecture, he gave them a "recitation", or what's called a tutorial in UK, in which the congresscritters read it to him, and he signaled to what extent he thought they were getting it right:

Take a look at your optimism!

Verdon and Fosse, April 2018, screengrab from NBC via.

The Todd-Trump conversation broke down irretrievably over Todd's attempt to ask a pretty interesting question on a passage from the Mueller Report (I:117), as to whether Junior, who "declined to be voluntarily interviewed" by the Mueller team, might have involuntarily testified to the grand jury, as an immediately following redaction hints, maybe:

TODD: So did you not read the Mueller report?

TRUMP: Let me tell you, I read much of it.

TODD: The unredacted version or no?

TRUMP [unable to risk revealing that he doesn't know what the correct answer is supposed to be]: I read -- No I didn't.

TODD: Ok.

Ground Chuck

I'm not sure either candidate can feel like they made progress tonight. Clinton was on the defensive and Trump lacked a lot of substance

— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) September 8, 2016

Is this peak Chuck?

Clinton was certainly "on the defensive" as she submitted gamely to sustained machine-gun fire from all sides (left, right, and unlabeled) and the constant interruptions of the host, who had far too many questions, from the audience and his own, mostly about those pesky emails. She wasn't defensive in the sense of self-justifying and special pleading, at all, but the defense was the side she was placed on, and she played it as well as she could.

(There was only one question, I think, that she didn't answer—sadly, it was the hippie one, asking her how we could be sure she wouldn't be too belligerent, and I don't think she understood it at all. Her answer was not too reassuring, though she piously said force is always the last resort; on the Iran question, though, she finally convinced me that she has some appreciation of the value of the agreement.)

Trump, in contrast, simply didn't attract many questions—I think when we see a transcript that will be borne out—and didn't see any reason to attempt answering any of them, preferring to change the subject and talk about how great he is in a general sense, and how terrible the president and the Democratic candidate are. Lauer interrupted him only once, at the very beginning, to clarify that he would like it if Trump would lay off the personal insults, but Trump didn't listen to that either.

That's a funny expression, that Trump "lacked a lot of substance", as if you could weigh and measure how much substance he didn't have and it was a really big pile of the stuff. "There was so much substance in the event, and he lacked almost all of it!"

Bleaker Speaker

Fujiwara Michinaga (966-1027). Michinaga was so powerful that he never even needed to assume the highest positions in the government hierarchy. As the head of the Fujiwara clan, it was simply understood that he was the most powerful person in the government. Michinaga first came to power in 995, thanks to the efforts of his sister, the retired empress Akiko, who was perhaps the most powerful women in the Heian era, able to force the emperor to appoint her brother to a position of power. (Via Pennsylvania State University)

So the Congresscritters are trooping back into Washington, no doubt refreshed by their Indigenous Peoples Day holiday and the delightful crispness of the autumn weather and Senator Ted Cruz appearing on the Mr. Chuck Todd Show to inform the public that he declines to say whether Representative Ryan is a True Scotsman Conservative or not:

CHUCK TODD:

Alright. I wanna do two more things about this Washington. Is Paul Ryan a true conservative?

SEN. TED CRUZ:

Oh, listen. I-- I-- I like Paul Ryan. He's a friend of mine. This is obviously a question that is wrapped up in the Speaker of the House-- deliberations. I have said consistently I'm gonna stay outta that....

So at a rally in Iowa last week (flanked by Charles Grassley and Steve King) Senator Cruz consistently demonstrated his intention of staying out of that by naming his own preferred candidate:

Monday Cheap Shots

Via Democratic Underground.

And the Wolf Blitzer award for making the blindingly obvious sound even less interesting than it is goes to...

Another way to understand Clinton v Sanders. Their political pitches are essentially idealism vs pragmatism.

— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) August 15, 2015

Wait, what was the first way? That he has funnier hair?

Cheap shots and wonk Chucks

Carlson in Snuggie. Image by Politico.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested over the weekend that laws regulating military-style semiautomatic rifles did not make sense .... "We should be clear for our viewers, assault weapon is a made up term," Carlson replied. "And there really is no such thing as an assault weapon." (Crooks & Liars)

The thing is, as a number of people were quick to point out, all terms are made-up terms. The question is whether it finds something coherent to apply itself to. For example, as the ngram below shows, "assault weapon" has been pretty successful since it was introduced in 1917, while "sniveling weasel", first showing up in 1989, has been somewhat iffy: