Believe it or not, there was a time before blogging existed. It was called the 1990’s and Bill Clinton was our president. In that era, the mainstream press debated whether or not Bill Clinton had one of his closest friends whacked and whether or not Bill Clinton was a rapist. They also debated whether he was a crook because of some land deal in Arkansas that happened back in an even darker era.
It took me a long time to understand that there was absolutely no merit to any of these allegations because I naively thought that the media was somewhat responsible. If the New York Times said there was something fishy about Whitewater, I assumed that there was something fishy. After all, wasn’t The Times a left-leaning paper? Silly me.
The scales fell from my eyes at a rather momentous moment in history. It was the day that Kenneth Starr gave his report to the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment panel. From the November 20, 1998 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Lexis):
In a 58-page opening statement delivered to committee members Wednesday night — a copy of which was obtained by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette — Starr offers not only a recap of the grounds for impeachment outlined in his referral to Congress but also provides an overview of his wide-ranging, four-year Whitewater investigation.
Included in the comments he plans to present during today’s nationally televised hearings are new details about some of the old subjects he has been investigating that strike back to the heart of the failed Marion County, Ark., land deal.
For the first time, Starr will acknowledge that his investigation has failed to turn up enough evidence to accuse the president of criminal wrongdoing in Whitewater, the firing of the White House travel office staff or the handling of FBI files by White House officials.
It was all, all of it, a load of crap. This was, for me, the first real indication that there is something desperately wrong with the mainstream media. It prepared me for the later repeat performance over Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.
As Digby and Greenwald make pains to explain, the Beltway Insider Punditocracy (aka, the cocktail frankfurter set) has a different sensibility from the rest of the country, and their Dean, David Broder, is certainly no ‘voice of the people’. But it is actually worse than that.
What are we to make of a media that can totally freak out over extramarital fellatio, and pursue groundless claims of rape, murder, and crookedness against a Democratic president, but get grumpy when a special prosecutor pursues the Iran-Contra affair, Gary Webb pursues allegations of Contra cocaine trafficking, Patrick Fitzgerald prosecutes perjury and obstruction of justice, or congressional Democrats do basic oversight?
How can lying about a blow job compare to the snow-job that Colin Powell presented to the United Nations over Iraq’s WMD programs? There’s a reason people say, ‘When Clinton lied, no one died.’ It’s because it is an important distinction. Most of the country understands the distinction, but the cocktail frankfurter set does not.
And, moving away from the media to the social milieu in which they live, what are we to make of the following comment that was captured in Sally Quinn’s now infamous November 2, 1998 column, In Washington, That Let Down Feeling? Is there no sense of irony within the Beltway?
“People felt a reverent attitude toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” says Tish Baldrige, who once worked there as Jacqueline Kennedy’s social secretary and has been a frequent visitor since. “Now it’s gone, now it’s sleaze and dirt. We all feel terribly let down. It’s very emotional. We want there to be standards. We’re used to standards. When you think back to other presidents, they all had a lot of class. That’s nonexistent now. It’s sad for people in the White House. . . . I’ve never seen such bad morale in my life. They’re not proud of their chief.”
Did Tish Baldrige forget that JFK was cheating on Jacqueline Kennedy all throughout their marriage, including during his time in the Oval Office? Did she not realize that the main reason JFK was considered classy while Clinton was considered trashy is that the media declined to make an issue out of Kennedy’s roving eye? I can’t quite picture Walter Cronkite doing an interview with Kathleen Willey or Juanita Broderick.
Inside Washington DC, it is okay to lie your way into a war, even if you get caught, and its okay to cheat on the first lady…but not if you get caught. Go figure. And somehow these people are supposed to share the values of the American people.
The people of Washington DC are rarely popular outside the confines of the Beltway. But we are in different times. The Establishment has let us down. The media shares the blame. The New York Times let us down by allowing Judith Miller and William Safire to help the vice-president lie us into a disastrous war. The Washington Post editorialized for the war. Time and Newsweek columnists dropped the ball. The cable news pundits were cheerleaders. They didn’t reflect the will of the American people, they helped shape the consent of the American people by spreading fear and lies.
And if you want to understand the growth of the blogosphere, you have to understand it within this context. A lot of people knew better. A lot of people were skeptical…even cynical, about what the media was saying. And those people turned out to be right. And those people were just average everyday Americans that are much more reflective of the ‘voice of the people’ than David Broder will ever be. This explains something that is confusing Jonathan Alter:
There’s one dimension of the blogosphere that never ceases to amaze me: Some people disbelieve nearly everything they read in the “mainstream media” — and believe nearly everything they read online.
People are somewhat credulous by nature, but the simple explanation for this is that bloggers have a better record of being right than the mainstream media has had going back to Whitewater days.
Well Jonathan Alter, I’ve ceased being amazed at how stupid, lying and elitist sounding the MSM are and if he thinks I believe everything I read on line he’s even more cluelessly stupid than he sounds. Maybe deep down in all their little blackened souls they know they are all sellouts to the powers that be…and instead of blaming themselves of course they will try to denigrate the new wave of journalism that is coming from the Internet and the people who do get their news here.
a serendipitous post, Boo.
glenn greenwald has a great post up today at Salon…day pass/reg required:
as always, recommended reading
lTMF’sA
You write:
What are we to make of this?
Well I will tell you one thing for sure.
We had damned sure better continue to try to make some changes.
Looka here, Boo.
First off …this was not ABOUT Dems and Ratpubs. Not in the minds of the public it wasn’t.
It was about what they were told to think.
It was about who controlled the hypnomedia.
And about the fact that said hypnomedia had no opposition.
Just as the fighters in the Middle East are effectively opposing the military arm of the PermGov despite staggering odds, the left blogs are serving the same function in the information war.
Outnumbered, outgunned, but nevertheless winning in the righteous name of truth.
I mean that.
I am no particular fan of religious whack job fundamentalists no matter what denomination they may represent, but the fact of the matter is…just as in left blogtopia…the Islamicists are more correct than are their enemies. We too have our share of whack jobs on this level, and our share of bullshit pols as well…replace the words “bullshit pols” with “Kosstone Kops” in that last phrase…but in the end, I do believe in the essential truth of the following phrase.
Will we ever again have even a semblance of a free press on the MSM level?
I do not know.
Will the blogs (and indeed the free dissemination of ideas across the board) prove so threatening to the Borg Rulers that they will essentially close the web down in spite of its commercial success…in fact, make that financial necessity…in the current economic system as it presently stands?
Could be.
But if that happens, then yet ANOTHER unpredicted vanguard of freedom will arise in its place.
Bet on it.
So it goes in the history of humanity.
Just as it has always gone.
Just as it has always gone.
Bet on it, and keep flailing away.
David DOES beat Goliath.
And myth IS true.
I don’t really care to be compared with truck bombers.
You do not care to be compared with truck bombers.. And I understand your reluctance.
But you are fighting the same enemy as many of them, Booman.
Should this thing go downhill only a little further here, we will ALL be faced with the decisions with which many of those “truck bombers” were faced in Iraq.
Defending our lives and the lives of our families.
A constitutional crisis…and that appears to me to be the most likely potential bottom line stand of this administration…could very easily degenerate into a sort of civil war.
ESPECIALLY if the infrastructure of the country is effectively attacked at the same time, and no matter who really does the attacking.
What if…
What if they threw an impeachment and no one stepped down?
What then, Boo?
What if the military split in its support of the (ex)President? Like it is split in his support now?
What if there were simultaneously some serious “terrorist” attacks?
What if, BooMan?
It has happened elsewhere.
What?
Do you believe that we are living in some sort of Wonderland? Someplace where REALLY bad things simply do not happen? Just a bunch of silly Humpty Dumps and relatively ineffectual “Off with his head” Queens?
I think not, myself
Will you choose non-violence in opposition to Nazi-like actions in your disapproval of “truck bombers”?
If you do…you are simultaneously a better man than I and quite likely a less free one as well.
If crunch time REALLY comes down…and we are due, Booman, we are truly due…hard decisions will be necessary.
Then what?
AG
Booman, I have to thank you for this post. It gives me the perfect introduction in something I have been involved, and I will be needing some help.
To begin with, it involves a reporter from the LA Times, Roy Rivenburg. For the last several years I have been working to get some info from my fathers WWII service. I was lucky enough to discover that he was a Special Agent of the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC).
I tried to contact former members of the 307th CIC, and found out that there was no message board. So I created one. As I discovered there was another member, Michel Thomas, who also served in the 307th. They were both thee at the same time. As it happens, Thomas was defamed by Rivensburg. The only reason I don’t call Thomas a super hero, is because he cant fly. What that man did is really remarkable.
So, how does al this fit into the MSM diary? Well take a look at Rivensburg here here here here and here.
What I need to do is to check this guy upside down. and I could use some help.
PS: check out the “discussion” (under the post)
Sorry. I checked those links of LA Observed and they are no longer there. I will try to see if I can locate them. In the mean time here is one of Eschaton (Atrios?)
I think by now, most critical thinkers have accepted that the media does not serve their interests, it’s there to put out sanitized news that serves the interests of the people who own the country. It’s not a surprise though, most journalists make signifcantly more that the median wage, they’re closer in status to their bosses than the plebes who consume their news. That’s especially true when you get up to the anchors of the major news networks or the editors of the major papers. I don’t think they feel any particular obligation to serve the interests of anyone but themselves.
And then they’re surprised that millions of people don’t buy the official line on 9/11, the Kennedy assassination, the run-up to war in Iraq, Vietnam, etc.
Boo and arthur G– First the BOO- perfect. Simply Perfect!
Arthur G. — Get your head out of your ass. Given this admins ability to continuously change realities, we are all screwed big time. Unless and until the populace decides that it has had enuf– this place is going down the drain.
POGO- we have seen the enemy and it is us.(or something like that)!
what bugs me now, and it didn’t used to, is that those of us that knew the NYT slung bullshit even in the last century are not at all listened to.
it’s all up to people that couldn’t figure out the Republican game with Reagan, with Nixon.
It had to get THIS BAD, and many are still not sure those previous admins were the same machine… they’re thinking about it.
I don’t mean you in particular booman, but in general when I make a mistake I consider I might make a similar mistake again, but in politics the naive assume that their last mistake was the last one, now they see all clearly, and run back to all the frames that lead them wrong in the first place.
just a small venting, thank you.
I don’t think anyone writing on politics is educated unless they read Manufacturing Consent… seriously, it doesn’t matter what you think of the author(s)… you will not read it to quote it as proof and citation, just to understand the machine built around us, media in a democracy.
then you will realize that Washington Post did not drop the ball, the NYT did not drop the ball, they played a role they are BUILT to play, entrenched.
Harper’s magazine covered Whitewater and came to conclusions (no there there) long before Starr’s investigation did. There have always been alternative media outlets before blogs.
Remember how a couple of days ago we were told that Iran had “blocked” nuclear inspectors?
Well . . .
SOURCE: IAEA denies Iran blocked nuclear site visit
(Reuters 11 May 2007)
Original lie:
Iran blocked UN inspectors on test visit to nuclear site
Agence France-Presse Thu May 10, 3:25 PM
VIENNA (AFP) – Iran blocked UN atomic experts on a first unannounced test inspection of an underground nuclear site where it enriches uranium, despite a pledge to allow such visits, diplomats told AFP Thursday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070510/wl_afp/irannuclearpolitics_070510191719