Suffering fools less than gladly

Here's my question.

Why have the Democrats agreed to hold so many debates (and by so many I mean "even one") with Village Media Poobahs as the moderators?  Apparently, Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos behaved the other night like clowns who think they're the reason people come to the circus and the acrobats, lion tamers, bareback riders, and trapeeze artists are annoying distractions, which is to say that they acted like what they are, members of our elite punditocracy.

If they came off worse than than the likes of Tim Russert and Brian Williams it's probably because they were doing bad imitations of Russert and Williams.  It's hard enough to watch a pompous and talentless ham do Shakespeare.  It's excrutiating to have sit through a performance by the understudy who thinks the talentless ham is a genius and slavishly imitates the ham's hamminess.

Obama is right to be ticked.  But there's probably not much good going to come of it.  The Insiders are already dismissing all criticism as sour grapes.  In fact, Gibson and Stephanopoulos are congratulating themselves on a job well done, knowing that their job was to make Obama squirm not to help voters gague which candidate will make the better President.

The Insiders think that McCain and Clinton and Obama are running for the job of National Best Drinking Buddy and they've already decided McCain's the right man for that job, emphasis on man because who wants to drink with a woman you can't go to bed with or tell your troubles to?  Oh sure, Hillary will listen to you tell her your troubles, but then she'll have suggestions about what to do about those troubles.  When the Insiders complain that Hillary reminds them of their first wives or of a schoolteacher or of whatever other gynophobic stereotype bubbles up out of the parts of their distressed psyches where their castration complexes lurk, they are putting their finger right on her problem as they see it.   She doesn't want to hear how misunderstood you think you are, she wants you to take out the trash right now, thanks, she wants you to buckle down and do your homework.

This is the source of their contempt for all Democrats and it will be there in their trashing of Obama all through the campaign and throughout his Presidency if he wins.

Obama is furious that it took Gibson and Stephanopoulos forty-five minutes to get around to asking their first substantive question about policy, about what Clinton and Obama would actually do if they get to the White House.  But Gibson and Stephanopoulos probably resent the fact that they had to bring up policy at all.

The Insiders hate the Democrats because the Democrats actually plan to do things.  And they want to talk about the things they want to do and how they plan to do them.  So in order to cover a Democrat, journalists have to be able to keep up with discussions of policy and the intricacies of government, and most of our Journalistic Elite can't do this.

They are too lazy or too dumb or too drunk or too full of themselves to enjoy paying someone else the respect of listening to their ideas and taking them seriously.

And this is where Democrats keep making their bloomer.

They keep expecting the likes of Gibson and Stephanopoulos to take things like the future of the country seriously.  They keep expecting them to pay attention.  They keep expecting them to have done their homework.  And when it turns out that the Insiders are content to be lazy and dumb and vain and foolish, they can't hide their disgust and their disdain.

The Insiders know that Al Gore and John Kerry and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama know they are clowns.  It is very difficult to suffer fools gladly.  Gore and Obama aren't good at that all.  Kerry and Clinton are only marginally better.

Bill Clinton used to do a good job of treating the press corps as if they weren't what they are, but as a result he made the mistake of boring them with his late night two hour lectures on history and politics.  Besides, like all such pompous fools the Insiders have an instinct for figuring out who's on to them.  They knew that someone as smart and accomplished as Bill Clinton couldn't possibly have any real respect for self-made idiots like them.

But the Democrats compound their mistake in another way that makes them like first wives and schoolteachers.  Being Democrats they can't get over their fundamental belief that people can improve.

They believe everybody can learn.  They believe everybody wants to learn.  They believe that if we all just put our minds to it and our backs into it, each of us as individuals, and we as a people, can make our lives and the nation better.

Republicans might object that it is in fact they not the Democrats who believe in that kind of hard work and self-reliance but those Republicans are kidding themselves or trying to kid us.  Republicans believe that most people are lazy, stupid, venal, and generally useless except to the degree they will do the work necessary to make Republicans rich, without complaint and for very little money.  They preach a gospel of hard work and self-reliance as an excuse not to give a good goddamn about anybody who isn't already rich, and they make excellent use of that excuse and don't give a good goddamn about anybody but themselves and their kind.

They don't give a good goddamn about the members of our National Press Corps.  If they give them any thought, they despise them.  They certainly don't expect them to understand or care about issues and policies.  They rely on them not understanding or caring, in fact.  They welcome the laziness and stupidity and vanity of the Insiders because that makes them easy to manipulate and distract.

But, if anything, they hold them in more profound contempt than the angriest, most intellectually elitist Democrat.

George W. Bush treated the reporters following his first campaign like pledges at his fraternity because that was the easiest way for him to brush them off and keep them brushed off.

Ronald Reagan mastered the art of permanent congeniality.  He had a gift for seeming to be enjoying himself in any and every sort of company.  Totally wrapped up inside himself, he had no interest in what the journalists around him thought and had no particular need to care, they were already hard at work on their own initiative at fostering and promoting his myth.  So it was easy for him to go along to get along with them.  He would wave them all off dismissively with that oh so charming hand to the ear as he pretended not to be able to hear their questions but they weren't insulted or enraged because they didn't get it.  They were too focused on the amiable grin.  He smiled and smiled and but they didn't see him all the while playing the villain.  They thought the smile meant he liked them.

John McCain's a slightly different story.

The Maverick and Commander is one of the vainest human beings to run for President in my lifetime.  One of the vainest that I have ever read about.  He is pathologically obsessed with his image as the straight-shooter, the most honest man in Washington, the only one of the whole lot who is his own person and calls his own shots, the only one who speaks his mind and damns the consequences.  It's all a lie and he probably knows it, but that only makes him more desperate to see himself as what he pretends to be.  He is Snow White's step-mother going three or four times a day to her magic mirror to ask the same question and hear the same answer, and fortunately for him the Insider Journalists are happy to act the part of the magic mirror.

"Journalists, journalists, on my bus, who is the most straight-talkingest of all?"

"Thou, oh St John McCain, are the straight-talkingest of all!  May we bring you another box of donuts?"

The Maverick and Commander loves the boys and girls on the bus as long as they are content to be nothing but his reflection.   But whenever one of them starts acting like a real journalist and asks a tough question that strikes at St John's vanity, he reacts as angrily as the Queen when the answer to her question comes back, Snow White.

Most of the boys and girls on the Straight-Talk Express appear to believe when the Maverick and Commander smiles at his own reflection he is in fact smiling at them.  Too many of the rest are afraid that if they ever come even close to saying the words Snow White he will smash them and grind the remaining shards to powder under his heel.

So this is the way it's going to go, and I don't know what's to be done about it.  What's the Democrats' choice, to mimic Reagan and learn to suffer the fools gladly, which means to stop expecting them to care about important things, or to mimic Nixon and work at enlisting the whole country into a general outrage at the Media?

Obama tried the Nixon route last night.  How well is that playing?
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MediaBloodhound has gotten hold of an official ABC transcript of an untelevised portion of Wednesday night's debate.  It's strong stuff and proves that when it comes to the job of doing real journalmalism Gibson and Stephanopoulos were on the ball that night, although I would never have suspected that Gibson was such a Beetles fan or that Stephanopoulus knew how to handle a gun.

Comments

[Ken Muldrew]

Obama tried the Nixon route last night.

Checkers?

[Linkmeister]

Well, if 17,000+ comments at ABCNews.com are any indication, the public cares. Gibson and Snuffleupagaus are so far claiming their hearts are pure and their heads in the right place (see Greg Sargent's interview with Steph. at TPM Election Central).

[Batocchio]

The Insiders are already dismissing all criticism as sour grapes.

ABC's also gotten a huge number of calls and e-mails in addition to the comments Linkmeister notes. There would be more if ABC hadn't disabled commenting (I don't know if it's back up). Even the AP noted that negative reactions have outweighed the positives by eight to one. ABC is doing the usual journo ego-fluffing, but that's a pretty clear sign you just suck.

But aside from that, Lance, this is one of the better explanations of Beltway media BS I've seen, articulating themes and dynamics that Digby, Somerby and many other liberal bloggers have tried to tackle. Ive always been struck in particular by the special loathing for Democrats among the so-called liberal media. There's a horrible contempt for policies and their effect on average Americans.

The one good debate I've heard to date was on NPR. for the most part, they haven't been true debates, just joint press conferences, but the people paid millions to ask the question have done far worse than most liberal bloggers or the League of Women Voters would do.

[diav]

Another great post. I have often wondered why Clinton and Obama keep subjecting themselves to this nonsense. Why not move the debate to the internet? Have real people, or perhaps someone like Bill Moyers or even Lance Mannion or Digby, ask the questions.