We’re devoting a lot of good energy these days to exploring the failings of the media and how we may best affect that media from our vantage point here in the blogosphere. Recently we’ve seen an excellent effort led by Jane Hamsher at FDL to take down the ratings at Amazon for the odious Kate O’Bierne’s latest piece of excresence titled “Women Who Make The World Worse”. We’ve seen several paid off opinion writers resign or be fired after their financial dealings withoutside groups have been revealed.
Now we have the latest raft of insulting and tasteless bullshit from Chris Matthews, a prominent pundit on a steep ethical decline, and we wonder what we can do to effect significant pressure on him and his corporate enablers. I don’t have any specific answers for this beyond all that’s being said by everyone already; write letters to MSNBC, to Hardball, to sponsors, etc. But I do want to explore some of the other dynamics involved in the failure of the media in general and what, if anything, we can do about it directly. And I don’t want to dwell on the money/profit angle too much because that is self-evident anyway. suffice it to say that if viewership goes down ratings go down and if ratings go down ad revenue goes down and if ad revenue goes down shows do, eventually, get bumped off. I’m not sure if this is still true but Matthews’ show’s ratings were on a pretty solid trajectory downward for a while. Olbermann’s show consistently outranks Hardball in viewers and I’m sure this rankles the hell out of Tweety. The reporter David Gregory usually makes Matthews look prety lame by comparison too, and I expect Gregory is remaining alert to the potential of sabotage against his career by Tweety and “pumpkin head” Russert. But Tweety himself is headed for the pre-emptive demise of his own show as long as his current behavior continues.
Even though Matthews has been “off the rails” (as far as responsible news handling goes) for a long time now, I still used to watch his show with some focus just to pick up the nuances that might lead to a fuller understanding of what the wingnuts’ next moves were going to be. and I found that despite the terrible factual negligence and arrogant laziness of Matthews personally, I still managed to extract some relevant info from his show.
But no longer. Matthews is now a major contender for most irrelevant pundit on TV. (I don’t include any of the Fox hacks in this contest because they are all shitbirds and constitute a league of their own). Admittedly he has a way to go; I think Russert is still way out ahead, but in Matthews case, his failings, IMHO, do more damage to the public mind than most of the others simply because he was at one time more trusted to be a balanced commentator.
I don’t regard Matthews as stupid by any stretch of the imagination, nor do I think he’s been co-opted by material rewards from the regime wingnuts. I think his primary failing, the proximate cause of his inability to do his job well and be responsible for conveying the facts and rational analysis to the public, is simply that, like so many others, he’s become his own biggest fan.
Many years ago a friend of mine launched into a fascinating discourse about how the greatest threat to a guru was the temptation to be corrupted by the power inherent in both the knowledge he posesses and his position as the disseminator of that knowledge. Expanding on this basic theme, my friend went on to describe how so many spiritual “teachers” end up tricking themselves into believeing they are the source of wisdom, rather than the messengers of it; how so many, especially in the realm of religion, come to believe that it is they themselves that are deserving of worship from their acolytes, rather than the deity to which they supposedly pay homage.
Matthews has this problem in spades. Of course most of the rest of the millionaire media mannequins have the same affliction too, and sadly for us all, given that the media is now fundamentally an entertainment industry rather than a responsible information disseminator, there is precious little emphasis on reining in these tendencies one they start to appear in their star pundits and news readers.
Whether Matthews makes an apology to Michael Moore or to anyone else by itself is not very important. If he were to see the error of his ways and make an honest and sincere apology, now that would be something, but I suspect the odds of such a thing occuring are zero. Short of a powerful personal epiphany of some sort, I just don’t think he is capable of any such honest self-examination.
For me, virtually every single newsperson who’s ever attributed any sort of innate intelligence or awareness or courage or understanding to George Bush owes all of us an apology for suggesting that this blazing numbskull is anything but a complete imbecile on every level. If there does come a time when such apologies are tendered I will be very surprised. I’ve frequently wondered whether, once Bush is out of office, the prominent news people will feel emboldened to speak out more honestly as to their own real opinions of him as being a fool. I do find it hard to imagine that so many otherwise thoughtful and intelligent people could truly believe Bush has a functioning and aware mind that is anywhere even close to being adequate for the task of being chief executive of anything, let alone president. Time will tell whether such honest appraisals by the press will emerge, but I will certainly not be holding my breath.
In the meantime, Matthews show is, for me, no longer a barometer by which I can measure anything of substance, so I basically ignore it. It’s true I’ll have it on in the background sometimes, on the off chance I hear the voice of someone who’s ability to be relevant and truthful I respect, but, alas, on Matthews’ show this happens less and less often, just as it occurs less and less across the entire bandwidth of cable news media.
I ignore a vast number of people in the news business now, simply for the reason that there’s so much going on, and so much misinformation, deliberate disinformation and outright bullshit being spread about that the sheer volume of such crap has it’s own tactical effect in that when we try to pay attention to all of it it just burns up the clock on us.
We wind up spending so much time expressing outrage at creeps like O’Reilly or Coulter or Hannity, so much time refuting the falsities of lazy journalists that we spend far less time devoted to exploring in depth what we belive we need to do to effectively deal with the urgent problems we are faced with.
I recognize that we need to monitor the crazies, and to at least note the insanity of the prominent ones like Malkin, Limbaugh, etc. But I hope we’ll spend less time discussing the minutia of their idiotic and hateful crap, and just treat them with a sort of “there they go again” disdain that puts their remarks on the record as being noted without allowing ourselves to be drawn into such deep discussion. and besides, these crazies thrive on the attention they get from us; they celebrate the outrage they manage to incite, and for me it seems a shame that we so often respond to them in a way that gives them exactly whast they want. Ridicule and pity are more appropriate for these loonies, and for Matthews and his ilk, ridicule and disdain are likewise likely to affect them much more than outrage. After all, no one who’s his own biggest fan, no one in love with himself, ever likes being ridiculed or held in contempt. Less attention rather than more attention; this is what gets to them.
Very well put! I could not agree with you more! Thank you so much. I am recommending this.
transfer or copy all my rantings in the Maniacs thread to here.
Great diary sbj!
Good points sbj, looks like we should have a place for some diaries such as this to get a 2nd chance.
I’m glad this diary was bought back. You make a lot of sense sbj.
.
Ad campaign?
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
I hadn’t written that reply to DTF with the idea of self-promoting, but rather because DTF had previously encourahged me to write a diary and I wanted to let him know I did.
Needless to say, if this ittle coment in that other thread resurrected this diary from oblivion I’m happy.
And thank you for coming here to read it.
I love the word, “excrescence,” which if it is an old word, somehow I missed in my long life.
Your final point is well taken. Dennis Miller, was the first entertainer I liked that I felt betrayed the American people with his blind worship and public endorsement of Bush. My response to him was to write him nasty letters ridiculing everything from his clothing to his class origins. I tried to get as personal and insulting as I could because he insulted and imperilled not just the country but me personally.
Speaking of class origins, and as an old “social worker,” I tend to see things thru a veil of those markers that social workers often use, such as demographics like age and economic class, etc. It is my theory that men like Matthews and Russert, reveal their lower class origins in times like these, when a tough intellectually baggage free weltenshaung is required. Remember the “Peter Principle” ( http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/PETERPR.html ) that says that in evolution systems tend to develop up to the limit of their adaptive competence. Matthews and Russert.
Like you Keone I was stunned that a guy as insightfully funny as Dennis miller could actually be a supporter of an imbecile like Bush and the entire wingnut psychosis that drives the regime. I just couldn’t reconcile his ability to be funny with that sort of perspective, as though it was some sort of cosmic cheating going on that violated the fundamental laws of nature.
I don’t know as I agree with your analysis about class being a defining part of the conditional deterioration of integrity displayed by Matthews or Russert. For me, my sense is that while it’s certainly true that sometimes people from humble beginnings are very adversely affected by a rise in their status in society, (many, for instance, come to shun those from the “class” from which they themselves have “risen above”, so to speak, as a mark of their new “superiority”), I think in the case of Matthews and Russert, and indeed most of the millionaire media club to which they belong, it is the power they imagine they are the masters of that has corrtupted them, just as it corrupts others from all classes wealthy or not, educated or not.
The sort of self-absorbed arrogance exhibited by Matthews and Russert is no different from that exhibited by the many bluebloods in the media world, the people of priviledge who own these news organizations and who operate them with a similar arrogance and self-absorbtion.
One thing is certtain regarding the class thing. Now that Russert and Matthews are firmly entrenched amongst the “{haves” ofthis world, they’re far les inclined to remain cognizant or respectful of those things that are of fundamental importance to the “have-nots”, whether or not they themselves were once “have-not’s”. In this aspect, their newfound class status is a detrimental factor.
I lived in Hawaii for quite a while on two separate occassions, the last time in St.Louis Heights way up above Waialae Ave in Honolulu.
Aloha
sense. Today, class in US is about money.
But I remember a lady telling me that when she was a child, she asked her grandmother what it meant, and the grandmother told her, “low class means people who treat the pope and the garbage man differently.”
I like the grandmother lesson, though I guess according to her I’d be low class because I do have respect for garbage men willing to do that job and I have no respect for either this pope or his predecessor, both of whom I regard as criminals against humanity, along with the soon-to-be phony saint, the abominable M. Teresa.
As to the broader point about class, I agree, though I have to say it is the class one finds onesself aspiring to that tends to be the source of most of the problems, (like the illusions of superiority, entitlement and exceptionalism that accompany one’s position in an affluent powertful political or economic class), more often than the class one might have come out of.
So creatures like Sulzberger, (owner of the NYTimes), may behave exactly as always because of the insular nature of their class and the fact they haven’t moved out of it, while people like Russert and Matthews may have lost depth of character and integrity, not because of where they’ve come from, but of how much they’ve invested emotionally and egoistically, into where they’ve arrived at.
Great diary, and one of the best descriptions of the phenomenon – “millionaire media mannequins.”
Much better than the old “talking heads.”
for writing a diary. I knew you would be great at it.
Thank you BooMan for your direct encouragement.
You have a range of media types, within narrrow limits. None of them ever stray from the corporate/governance viewpoint, not for very long.
They know their plug would be pulled. So you have Brian Williams lamenting on the still desolate neighborhoods of New Orleans, while not placing the blame for the lack of work going on there, where it needs to lie: squarely with those who believe the “free market” system is adequate to rebuild neighborhoods in New Orleans.
This leaped out at me: “they celebrate the outrage they manage to incite.”
They also make enormous amounts of money from the outrage. I learned about this in a journalism class after asking about a columnist who wrote a truly nasty column about the Cardinals team that won the World Series in 1982. That was a long time ago, but creating outrage has been a path to success for journalists for some time.
Sick.
the outrage of those who disagree with them. I went on at length about this in the raving maniac diary, and I do agree with sbj that they do get a kick out of it, and no doubt play to it to an extent, but the reason they get the millions, and shows on the crusadenets, is because, as sbj points out, they are on message with every bleat that comes out of Mr. Danger’s mouth, out of the mouths and off the presses of all the warlords and their henchmen, and the majority of the American public believes it.
Even among those who consider themselves to be opposed to the policies believe it! They use the same memes, the same catch phrases, and anyone who dares not to is immediately cast as a “terrorist sympathizer,” an “extremist,” the wearer of a “tin foil hat.”
Within this cultural context, it would not, even if what the US has instead of a left ignored them completely, jeopardize their stardom, their popularity, or their jobs.
the lies and memes in ways too numerous to mention. And, yes, they do the things you say.
The point I meant to make is that Matthews’s rage-pandering is not an isolated incident in history. Some people like to have their outrage up. For the last couple of hundred years, there have been people who make money by creating outrage. It sells.
Maybe think of Matthews following Limbaugh’s socioeconomic path?
The “love to hate him” is a time-tested marketing strategy – but it has limits – and those limits are set by the mainstream audience, adherent to the prevailing culture, and of course, the sponsors.
Which corporations do you suppose would agree to sponsor “The Belafonte Factor?”
😉
For the vast majority of those people who, as you say, “…like to have their outrage up…”, they like this because it’s the only way they can manage to “feel important emotionally”. For a huge number of people, the truth is not always particularly important if for no other reason than that curiosity is sometimes too much work and often leads to having to assume responsibility for things we’d rather ignore. So ignorance becomes a refuge, denial becomes a prime mechanism for protecting ignorance, and anger, outrage, intolerance and hate become the mechanisms for defending that ignorance and keeping personal responsibility at bay.
This is why creatures like Coulter and Limbaugh and O’Reilly and that ilk achieve influence. They appeal to this selfish, fearful, and generally lazy tendency so many have to want to feel important through the device of putting others down. Whenever there are enough people who can only elevate their own self-image by disparaging others, creatures like these media gasbag pontificators appear to exploit them.
In addition to all of the other opinions here that I agree with, the Mockingbird factor has to be considered. I didn’t pay much attention to it before. Maybe it’s because we had better people running the show behind the scenes and it was more credible, in general.
Are you talking about the OSS/CIA “Operation Mockingbird” propaganda machine or are you perhaps talking about mockery as a (low) form of public discourse?
The agency’s program is what I had in mind but it’s not limited to that.
It also incorporates several of the other elements already mentioned here. Matthews is an example of television programming and not one of journalism. He has the appearance of a kid who tries a little too hard to be accepted as one of the gang and overcompensates in pleasing the cool kid’s leader. He seems to have a personality open to manipulation for this and would have been easily drawn in a long time ago. A guest recently mentioned the US covert support and origins of groups in Afghanistan, ObL in particular, and CM kept denying this was possible. He repeated certain phrases asserting ‘morally supported’ the mujahedeen against the Soviets and his facial expressions were that of a kid facing reprimand if he said the wrong things. I’m not saying he answers to any agency in particular but he obviously follows guidelines of what is permissable to talk about.
As often as he can work it in, he mentions his Peace Corps time when he was young and it’s often during interviews when Vietnam – service/dodge era topics are involved. The way he drops it in makes it sound like there is an inside story behind it and that brings in the other elements previously mentioned as seperation, class, ‘bubble thinking’ and an attitude of pushing ideals counter-intuitive. When it’s become so obvious that the powers of the offices/agencies have been corrupted with stability threatened then the journalistic instinct and ethics rise to the challenge. It’s a mix of positive/negative disinformation in the normal modes and genuine pissed disbelief when the institutions of govt are challenged.
Russert is more conflicted but in the same basic similar ways. He’s also a journalist first where Matthews is a TV personality. While CM is the hyper puppy nipping at the ankles of the big guys to be included Russert throws the stick for the puppy to chase. It’s serves a usefull purpose and keeps him out of the way for a while.
I’ve been looking differently at the concept of Mockingbird lately. Not just that but the telecoms and other inductries with a public responsibility. How easy would it be, especially in the beginning stages when verification of claims is nearly impossible, to say no if the govt approaches and says ‘we need your help to assist in protecting national security’? I can’t speak for others but I’m guessing that I couldn’t say no. Then, I doubt it would be easy to get back out.
To Kill a Mockingbird factor? me confused too.
It’s Wednesday night, and I’ve had a fairly disjointed last couple of days. I think I wrote this diary last Friday, and sort of lost track of it when nothing spectacular happenned for several days.
Just now I noticed it in the recommended list. Imagine my surprise. I thought it was pretty much a goner after so long a time, but, as someone mentioned above, it seems to have gotten a second chance. (Ironically, I myself am someone who’s gotten a second chance at life as, literally speaking, I’m back from the dead after having a fatal heart attack in early 2004).
In any case I’m very happy all you folks found this thing and have an appreciation for the sentiments expressed herein. I’m almost embarrassed that I lost cognizance of my own post the way I did, and I hope no one feels strange about the fact I’ve not participated in the comment thread. I will do that now.