Letters to the Editor
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Okay, but what about Clinton?
I take your point that the media love a winner, and love to be seen as savvy, but then what explains their hostility to Bill Clinton? He was a lifelong winner. He was the comeback kid. But the media turned on him at the first chance and hounded until his presidency was severely diminished.
I take your, and Jay Rosen's, point that the media worships savviness above all, but then how do they blindly continue to follow the Bush line? They look ridiculous. It's certainly not an aversion to flipflopping; they've shown they can do that all day without batting an eyelid. The longer they stay with this sinking ship, the less savvy they appear.
So, it has to be something more than simply desire for access and an admiration for savviness because they didn't take the same attitude with Clinton or Carville who most certainly played the same leaking / access game, no?
What's the difference?
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It's not just a lack of journalistic integrity
I don't believe anyone who has been paying the least bit of attention the last several years can be that stupid. The simple truth is that these people are putting out what their corporate masters are telling them to say. When five major corporations control most of what hits the air, and corporate America controls congress, it has all come together as one. What they want you to hear is what you end up hearing. If they want you to believe Rove is God, then they will tell you the things they have to to get you to believe that. IMO.
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Rove: Please don't throw me in that briar patch
The pundit class insists that Rove was brilliant. Yes, Rove is one of the most talented propagandists and Machiavellian political operatives of his generation. So were Goering and Goebbels. So was Lenin. So was Mao. So what?
I will continue to differ with you regarding the primary forces behind the words that come out of the pundits mouths. I really believe that each MSM organization reflects the interests and values of its owners. The primary interest is in money. And what creates the greatest return on investment is that perennial killer app: greed plus fear. We have to trust bust the MSM before we see any substantial changes in their support for anything that doesn't lead in the general direction of monopoly corporatism and fascism.
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Because Clinton Wasn't For The Corporations..
Yeah, the press was far more hostile to Clinton, but that was because there's no such thing as a free press any more; it's all corporate owned. Shrub is the corporations' boy and he gave the wealthy more tax breaks, so of course, the press worships him. Clinton raised taxes on the rich and tried more corporate regulation, so the press sought every way possible to bring him down.
Fortunately, the American people (and the world at large) are smarter than the press gives us credit for; that's why Shrub's ratings are sucking sewer water no matter how many fawning articles the press writes for him.
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Steve W.
I don't believe anyone who has been paying the least bit of attention the last several years can be that stupid. The simple truth is that these people are putting out what their corporate masters are telling them to say.
These corporations employs thousands of people. Isn't it weird that none of them -- not a single one - -has ever revealed the Great Corporate Plot whereby corporate heads tell the pundits and reporters what to say? You would think at least one of them would spill the beans on the conspiracy.
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Buffalonian:
I take your point that the media love a winner, and love to be seen as savvy, but then what explains their hostility to Bill Clinton? He was a lifelong winner. He was the comeback kid. But the media turned on him at the first chance and hounded until his presidency was severely diminished.
These things can't be reduced to simple explanations. Part of it was cultural -- as compared to the artistocratic Bush with his Washington poilitical lineage, Clinton was a Washington outsider.
Part of it was the perception that Clinton WAS a loser and the right-wing was in ascedency. Recall that early in Clinton's presidency, with the gays in the military controversy and the take over by the GOP of Congress in 1994, the storyline was that conservatives were taking over Washington.
And the extent to which the media was "hard" on Clinton is somewhat overstated, or at least distorted. It isn't as though there was great investigative reporting going on concerning issues that mattered. What they covered endlessly was a SEX SCANDAL - because that generates ratings, is easy to understand, is titillating, etc. You see that now with the Larry Craig controversy - playing those tapes over and over. Sex sells.
I don't see the overarching ideological explanation. Clinton was hardly some liberal radical. He presided over a great economy, corporations were perfectly happy with him, etc. The difference was more cultural and attributable to other factors.
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HOW CAN SHE STAND HIS SULPHUROUS STENCH?
Glenn Greenwald has once again hit the target DEAD CENTER with his incisive scalpel-like analysis of ANAL-RETENTIVE "Sheep People" of the MSM like Gloria Borger, who I have seen SPOUT HER INANE PRATTLE on programs like WASHINGTON WEEK with such DELUDED OLD FOGIES like David Broder. Both Borger and Broder's NONSENSICAL ADMIRATION and PRAISE for a DETESTABLE and VILE CREEP like Rove REALLY MAKE ME SICK, TURNS MY STOMACH and MAKES ME QUESTION THEIR SANITY and I must agree with Glenn Greenwald that the MSM is ENAMORED of such UNDERHANDED, DASTARDLY MACHINATIONS that are the HALLMARK of Rove's DESPICABLE handbook of POLITICAL CHICANERY and HOCUS-POCUS...Rove should be REVILED and his name MUD, Rove should be OSTRACIZED and made into the PARIAH he is in FACT, and the sooner FATUOUS FOOLS like Gloria Borger and David Broder REALIZE THIS FACT, the better off THEY will be and will STOP LOOKING LIKE the FAWNING SYCOPHANTS, i.e., "self-seeking, servile flatterers and fawning parasites" THEY and 99% of the MSM like Chris Matthews, ARE!!!!!
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Obsequious
"what explains their hostility to Clinton"? Is the class interests were selected to serve. It's not that they like "all winners" they are allowed to continue authoring because they say what their owners approve of. It is evolution of commentators in the face of selection pressures by owners. Survival of the "obsequiest". Praise Bush political economic outcomes not Clinton outcomes or perish though the lizards that own the media can/will/always have lived with reformers but they stress them more. It's not all winners it's only the "right" winners.