Politics and Press

The interaction of the press and politics; public diplomacy, and daily absurdities.

Jeff

Oh Afghanistan

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A. J. Liebling wrote about Afghanistan as the place the press wrote about when they had space to fill, no news to fill it, and a subject to write about that absolutely no one gave a shit about. So again time changes and we not so suddenly have to worry about Afghanistan, a place few of us has visited and even fewer of us really wish to visit.

President Obama has now presented his plan for our continued involvement in that country and it was a pretty slick presentation. The press is beating its collective something or other about it but basically he said it is over. We will send 30,000 troops there to fill in for the Bush-Cheney failure and then start to get all of them out of what has turned out to be a monster mess. The focus of the press after the speech has been on the selling of whatever he is doing to all the political players. John McCain, a man wrong about every major issue he has discussed is uneasy – that is a good sign for the Obama decision. Some Republicans think he should never had indicated we might actually be smart enough to leave in good time – I guess better to believe we are a bunch of morons.

But it was a refreshing speech that did not talk down to us, did not bullshit us through false patriotism from neocon chicken hawks and – for a change – did not lie to us about our safety and the strength of our enemies. The battle against terrorists remains in play but there is new evidence that we have leadership that is smart, sophisticated and unwilling to pander to the underbelly of American society.

Church and State: Together At Last?

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When John Kennedy ran for president in 1960, he had to go to Houston, Texas to explain that his Catholic faith would not influence his decisions, but that they would be made in the best interest of all Americans. Well, times have changed and in recent weeks Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin of Rhode Island has been guilty of attempting extortion of Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy. The good Bishop basically tried to cram his theology down every American’s throat by threatening Kennedy with the loss of his rights to communion unless he ignored U.S. law AND voted to deny all Americans a reformed healthcare insurance program if it included coverage for abortions. The fact that many if not most Americans support a woman’s right to choose and that it is the law of the land had no impact on the Bishop who apparently believes that the church has the right to coerce politicians into turning the water of Catholic beliefs into the wine of U.S. law. Shame on the church for meddling in the world of Caesar, shame on politicians for caving in, bur kudos to Rep. Kennedy for upholding the family tradition of respect for the separation of church and state.

I would refer those who believe the church has the right to meddle in this way to what the church is doing to ban birth control in the Philippines as well as its apparent belief that banning the use of condoms in Africa is preferable to saving lives of potential AIDS victims. In fact the Pope seems to believe that use of condoms is responsible for increased deaths. For a description of the Church’s efforts in the Philippines see this article in the NY Times. For Pope Benedict’s comments on condoms and AIDS victims, see this NY Times editorial. Additional information on both situations is readily available in many serious news venues.

Finally, it is reported in the NY Times today that Senator Ensign (R-Nevada), under fire for having bribed the husband of his mistress by setting him up with lucrative government contracts, is resisting resigning his Senate seat because doing so would help Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada) keep his seat. Ensign is relevant to this discussion as part of the group of Senators and Congressmen that live at the so-called “C St. Church”, an apartment that the group had identified as a Church to avoid taxes – an arrangement recently ended by the IRS. But the C St. apartment remains a bastion of right-wing religiosity where Republican politicians go to confess their sins, receive forgiveness, and plot the Christian takeover of not just the state, but also apparently the world. An entertaining piece on this “church” appeared on this issue of Salon. Its author, Jeff Sharlet has written a well-reviewed book on the C St. church, called “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power”. Makes the good Bishop and his Pope look like a couple of pikers.

Thanksgiving Press/Media Turkey Wrap-Up

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The past week has offered the press  several grand stories giving them the opportunity to downplay or avoid much of substance, and they have not disappointed.

First was the spectacle of the press falling all over itself to provide attention to a polo-playing, self-promoting couple from Virginia who managed to crash the White House state dinner held for the Prime Minister of India. Lost in the obsession with that banal, stupid escapade was the relative importance of much that is at stake with the U.S.-India relationship. The reasons for the importance of that relationship will be lost on most Americans as they hear non-stop about a couple of weird narcissists.

Following that story was the tale of a professional golfer driving into a tree at – gasp! – 2:30 a.m. – the morning after Thanksgiving. The press has been having a field day with this tale, wondering why he was out driving at that time of night? And could there be some domestic abuse involved? and, is he having an affair? And what will happen to his “brand”? And then covering their collective ass by going on ad nauseum as to whether the press was entitled to knowing everything there is to know about the golfer’s private life – having already speculated on that life without any real facts.

And of course there has been the mind-crushing coverage of Sarah Palin’s book which apparently will be bought by millions of Americans and perhaps even read by some of them, although one can hope the books mostly become doorstops. In any case the publishing event of the fall gave the press an opportunity to rehash some of the former VP candidate’s nutty comments and in its own way to help whip up interest in the book. So it goes.

Taxes, Healthcare and the American Way

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Living in Europe provided a particular view of the relationship between taxes and quality of life, both of which are higher in most European countries than they are in the United States. While Americans are always attracted to lower taxes they do not always seem to understand the relationship between what they pay in taxes and what they get – or don’t get – in services. The trade-offs became obvious to me during three years in Munich in which I paid higher taxes than I would have in the U.S. and enjoyed benefits mostly unknown in the U.S.

The healthcare reform debate currently deadening many American’s brains is a case in point. Talk to almost anyone in Germany about their healthcare and they wonder what the hell is going on in America. The figures are well known – we pay TWICE as much, per capita, for slightly worse outcomes when measured in terms of life expectancy, infant mortality, percent of those covered, etc. And, in Germany you would never worry about having your insurance cancelled for any reason. The payment for health insurance – which is mandatory and therefore covers everyone – is through a combination of taxation based on salary and employer contributions. Health insurance is viewed as a social contract among the German people unlike the U.S. where someone can opt out even though they fully expect expensive care when they need it – a kind of anti-social contract.

Taxes in Germany also pay for an excellent education system, roads and bridge maintenance that is unknown in the U.S., welfare nets that eliminate the worst consequences of poverty, and a healthy life style that includes six week vacations for most workers, generous medical leave policies, trains that run fast AND on time, airports that treat people as though they were human, and a food supply network that ensures healthy and fresh food.

While it may be hard for many Americans to understand just how bad they have it, what is worse is their unwillingness to consider alternatives; their belief that America is best in everything. Many Americans who complain about taxes focus on Reagan’s largely mythological welfare mothers or the current Republicans’ concern over costs of possible health care reform. In addition to the huge costs resulting from our lack of focus on preventive medical measures, Americans also typically ignore the overwhelming costs of our care and feeding of our military and military contractors, and the cost of misadventures like the Iraq War, both of which become exercises in jingoism which we willingly fund while much of American society seems to be crumbling.

The American press is of course part of the problem but at the end of the day the blame is ours for being too lazy to pursue the ramifications of our knee-jerk negative reaction to any suggestion that our taxes be raised..

Democracy is Coming to the U.S.A.

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From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Leonard Cohen

Three weeks on the road was a welcome break from the silliness of American politics but back home in the U. S. of A. and time to begin to catch up.

Good to see our old friend Joe “LOOK AT ME!” Lieberman once again finding a way to suck himself onto the national stage. While it is difficult to imagine his doing more damage than his unbridled support of the unnecessary and ultimately failed war in Iraq, his fighting to deny health care insurance to 36 million Americans is a pretty good start. Coming from the state that is home to 72 insurance headquarters, with three times the U.S. average of insurance jobs as a percent of total state employment I suppose it should not be surprising. Nor should we be surprised by his pompous, pontifical commitment to self-interest.

Also good to see the state of Maine – population 1.3 million (or ca. .004% of U. S. population) finding itself one of the chief arbiters of  health care reform through its Senator Olympia Snow. Having watered down the stimulus package to satisfy Maine’s other Senator, Susan Collins, Senate Democrats seem to be doing all they can to emasculate the health care bill to satisfy Senator Snow. All in the name of a kind of faux bipartisanship.

Then there is the Catholic Church hierarchy and its willingness to threaten the fires of hell on any Catholic senator ignoring its health care reform abortion edicts. This from the church that discriminates against women, forces celibacy on its priests, facilitated thousands of pedophiliac rapes, seems to believe that condoms increase the risk of HIV infection, and actually still believes birth control to be a sin.

One highlight of our recent travels: sitting in a Munich apartment watching CNN’s Wolf Blitzer spend an entire hour interviewing the balloon boy and his family about the great fabricated adventure that managed to suck Wolf into a kind of parallel universe where truth is irrelevant and a family’s bizarre hope for attention is satisfied by a lazy, gullible press, willing to track an empty balloon for hours on end only to learn that they were the victims of a fraud. This turned out to be perhaps the funniest TV show of the year. Can’t wait for the Emmys.

2009: The Summer of Hate

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Autumn has not come soon enough. The summer of 2009 was characterized by some of the ugliest and most stupid political nonsense that the country has ever had to put up with. Birthers question Obama’s citizenship and search for evidence of his secret African, Muslim birth certificate; Obama’s efforts to reshape a disastrously expensive and inadequate healthcare program has turned into accusations that he wishes to organize death panels to move the country toward forced government-run euthanasia; dumbbell radio has initiated rumors that Obama is plotting to put conservative, white voters in prisons, etc. ad nauseum.  Republican senators and congressmen are making careers out of outright lies and there are enough people looking for reasons to hate Obama that those lies find fertile ground. Former Governor Palin continues to shock us with her vapid stupidity and ugly posturing, Senator Grassley suggests that death panels might actually be in the wind, South Carolina gives us a Congressional mediocrity who shouts “you lie” at Obama and thousands of less than ordinary people march in Washington shouting stupidities and lies into the TV microphones. “Town Hall” meetings to discuss healthcare reform frequently included the sideshow of idiots with guns, roaring their disapproval of healthcare reform while screaming their rights to carry assault rifles to political rallies. What do we do with people who rant they want no government role in healthcare and in the next breath rave about keeping government’s hands off their Medicare? What can be said to people who in one breath call Obama  “Hitler” and in the next, “Stalin”? What can we make of Fox cable commentators that promote the lie that Obama  wants America to be a “socialist” country – or even a communist country? Or that Obama “hates white people”?

American politics has always had its nutcases but mostly they have been on the fringe and political parties have tolerated them while trying to maintain at least a moderately high road of discussion and dissent. This is no longer the case with Republican politicians milking the cow of hatred and fear to further their meager agendas and much of the press reporting their lies and fabrications as if they deserve equal time. The current healthcare debate is the focus of much of the ugliness and it seems increasingly likely that we will get a watered down mess of a bill that will fail to reduce costs and improve quality largely because of the stupidity of a small portion of the country, the cowardice and venality of politicians on both sides of the aisle, and the pathetic performance of a mainstream press that focused on process issues and largely avoided calling out the liars.

A more general question is why such ugliness? Has any president in memory been insulted, lied about, and threatened the way Obama has? There has always been a robust political discourse in America but the current atmosphere is different – and I join Maureen Dowd who in today’s NY Times calls it by its hidden name: racism.

Press Clips: The Professor, the Policeman, the President and the Press

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In case anyone was on Mars and missed it, the big story the past week was the arrest of African-American Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. for “Disorderly Conduct” (that is defined as “whatever the police think it is”) when caught living in his own home. But that story only became the REALLY BIG one when President Obama opined in response to a press questioner that it appeared to him that the “police acted stupidly”. This has led to the press bombarding us with critiques of the president’s choice of words and lengthy displays of support for the country’s brave policemen. Only later did some of the press consider the realities of black men’s history with the police in this country and the press largely missed the point by focusing initially on the “acted stupidly” comment and then on the race issue – but with no real depth of understanding. Perhaps the most sensible comments were from Christopher Hitchens in the online journal, Slate, in which he reminded readers of the constitutional guarantee of a “man’s home as his castle”, that there is “no legal requirement to be polite in the defense of this right”, that police are not always drawn from the best and brightest (my paraphrase of his comments), and that “Gates should have taken his stand on the Bill of Rights and not on his epidermis or that of the arresting officer”

Read Hitchens’ full piece at this link.

Walter Cronkite and Intelligent TV Journalism, RIP

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On hearing that Cronkite had died almost my first thought was that we will never have another like him – honest, a real journalist, modest, – a guy who simply and effectively reported the actual news. Hard to know what he would have made of Sarah Palin, the Senate hearings on Judge Sotomayor, the death of Michael Jackson, or the meanderings of Governor Sanford. My hope and belief is that he would have nailed Palin as a fraud, spent 2 minutes on Michael Jackson, largely ignored the sins of Governor Sanford and castigated the old, white, Southern male Senators who embarrassed us throughout the Sotomayor hearings.

Obama and the Politics of Disappointment

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As the Obama presidency approaches the six-month mark the record is decidedly mixed. Our friends, the brothers Mackenzie, have indicated their disappointment in a recent posting critical of the “Buy American” element of the stimulus package and lays the blame on the “Obama regime”. While American presidents do not normally have the luxury of leading a “regime”, Bob and Doug point out the need for a more vigorous political stance by the president.

“Buy American” represents a gut response from politicians unwilling to provide leadership to the electorate, and unable to resist foisting easy answers onto a population whose inability to accept the reality of the decline of America leads them into a mythical America Uber Alles. A Buy American campaign fails to recognize that foreign companies hire many Americans and it begs for retaliation by other nations, leading to even greater trade imbalances and reduced employment in the future. Globalization is here to stay and politicians need to recognize that and deal with it honestly and realistically.

While the Republicans in Congress continue on an obstructionist journey to oblivion, Democrats in Congress share the blame for Buy American sentiments as well as for more serious failures looming on the horizon. Solidarity is not a keystone of the Democratic Party so while the Republican Senate and House of Representatives could support just about anything George W. Bush dreamed up, Democratic Senators and Representatives lack the kind of party discipline needed for a Democratic president to move the country toward major change – change perceived by some as threatening to lobbyists and major campaign contributors. Obama’s apparent commitment to  “pragmatism” in working with Congress in developing policy leads inevitably to disappointment.

While disappointments are there, more are sure to come. Prisoners remain in Guantanamo while members of Congress from both parties cower in fear over the possibility that any of them might be housed in prisons in their states; the stimulus package is far from successful and may very well end up an economic fiasco; a variety of security programs of questionable legality initiated by the Bush administration remain in place; the war in Afghanistan is beginning to look like a project of questionable value to the national interest; the health care debate seems headed toward the continuing of private insurance programs with no public alternative; the Congress  is unlikely to allow the Department of Defense to shake off the influence of the military industrial complex and  many major  public welfare initiatives are likely to fall victim to the economic  recession.

The current Congress lacks the statesmanship, ethics and intelligence necessary to deal effectively with domestic policy that has been built on a long history of private gain at public cost. There is an argument that capitalism has been the great strength of the United States but as we become increasingly committed to bailing out inefficient and even crooked industries, capitalism as we’ve known it begins to look more like the problem than the solution. If Obama is to have success it appears that it may have to be in foreign affairs, where presidents have more power and less need to coddle members of congress.

Iran and Mucho Macho Americano

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Whenever I forget how pitiful the American press has become I turn to PBS’s Lehrer Report knowing that Judy Woodruff is likely to remind me. While I largely avoided cable TV and network news talk shows during the Iran election fallout I had noted in the NY Times and Washington Post the comments of various Republican politicians to the effect that the president had not been “forceful” enough in his comments on the Iranian elections. (Much like foreign leaders had not been forceful enough in discussing the U.S. presidential election of 2000 when our Supreme Court handed the presidency to G. W. Bush, rather than bother to count the votes in Florida.) Comments came from the usual suspects, Senators McCain and Graham, Representatives Boehner and Kantor, Newt Gingrich, right-wing neocon columnists like George Will and Charles Krauthammer, and of course the usual blowhard media types on Fox TV and dumbbell radio.

Obama’s point – that it was strategically essential to avoid making the U.S. the outside force to be blamed for the demonstrations – was lost on these political hacks and we were treated to the predictable displays of American artificial testosterone. Virtually every credible Iran analyst supported Obama’s approach and assessed it as correct, as did Indiana Republican Senator Lugar – one of a diminishing number of Republican Senators with foreign policy bonafides.

Understanding a difficult, complex situation in Iran requires more effort than most Americans will give to it and unfortunately more effort than most of the American press will put into it. The attraction for simple-minded blowhards to spout meaningless slogans is too strong for a country that long ago decided to see all events through a strictly American prism. This is just the time for PBS to step up and provide the kind of background and intelligence needed to sort through the complexities. Lehrer and Woodruff gave us what they too often fall back on – an interview of two politicians (Senators Graham and Kerry) on opposite sides to argue about things that more often than not avoid any prospect of actually educating the viewer about anything other than where the two stand on whatever is defined as the issue. Woodruff’s interview served to carry the GOP’s water, asking in two or three different ways just why Obama did not speak out more strongly. Senator Graham was all over that while Senator Kerry did as well as could be expected to educate the viewers on some of the realities of the situation.

It is perhaps unfair to pick on Woodruff when so many of her colleagues in the press bow to the same gods of vacuity and simplicity (anyone who watched the Obama’s press conference can attest to that), but we used to expect more from PBS than mind-numbing, self-serving debates by politicians.

For anyone seeking an intelligent, instructional and nuanced view of the Iranian situation and Obama’s response to it, I recommend Terry Gross’s interview yesterday of Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Listen to it here.