Pop Mannion outside the court of King George

For all the cheap shots I take at Conservatives and all the smug self-congratulation I indulge in over the superiority of my Liberal politics---and as much as I think I am right, if not particularly gracious, when I do either---I really do know better than to believe that I am a fine, wise, or even thoughtful person just because I am a Liberal or that I am a Liberal because I am a fine, wise, or thoughtful person.

For me that would be like boasting about having blue eyes and freckles.

I inherited my politics along with my pigmentation.

The smartest and best man I know is Old Pop Mannion and he's the last of the New Deal Democrats.  I didn't have to accept his politics.  I could have rebelled.  If I'd been a different person.  But both by temperament and because of my position as first born son I've always been inclined to think that what Pop Mannion thinks I should think.

This doesn't mean that I'm his parrot.  I agree with him generally, not specifically, and he can tell you that when I was growing up we had very different opinions on when I should clean my room and what time I had to have the car back in the driveway and how much gas should be in the tank when I pulled up.  We both love baseball and enjoy basketball, but he's a Dodger fan and I'm a Mets fan, he roots for the Knicks and I like the Celtics.  And I'm pretty sure he's never gotten over the fact that I didn't see the point to trigonometry.

We visited the Mannion homestead over Thanksgiving weekend and Saturday night my father and I stayed up late talking politics, which was fun and something we hadn't done together in a while.  We didn't argue, but it did turn out that we have wide differences of opinion on a number of issues and current events.

This wasn't due to my at long last learning to think for myself or old age catching up with Pop Mannion---he's as fiesty and Liberal as he's ever been.

It has everything to do with where we get our news from.

Pop Mannion still puts his faith in Big Media.

To him, the New York Times is still the paper of record.  He watches Nightline regularly.   He isn't as devoted to the Sunday morning talk shows as he was when I was growing up (and when they were actually informative) but he still checks in from time to time and keeps track of what's being discussed.

He watches CNN and sometimes Fox.  He tunes in to see O'Reilly and even listens to Rush, on the principle that it's best to know what tunes the devil is playing.

And he doesn't read blogs.

(I suspect him of only looking at this one when he knows I'm going to be coming for a visit.)

Now, I'm not about to claim that all my blog reading makes me smarter or better informed.  Frankly, I think trusting to the blogs for news and information is just as limiting as relying on FoxNews.  But I do think that thanks to the blogs and my habit of avoiding TV news almost entirely---all I know is what I read in the newspapers---I've been taught a lesson Pop Mannion has yet to learn.

My dad is not as aware of how far the National Media have drifted out of the mainstream.  Over here on the Lefty-ish side of the bandwidth, we're in the habit of saying that the Media have drifted---drifted, hell.  Paddled furiously---to the Right.  That's true, but not as specifically true as saying what Bob Somerby, James Wolcott, and others have been saying for a long time now.  The National Media has become part of the Washington power establishment and the main interest of its high--profile representatives, who are therefore its representatives of loftiest status and those closest to the center of power---has been maintaining their place and status within the establishment.

That the power is in the hands of the Right at the moment is a coincidence.  If Ronald Reagan had never come along it's very likely that Media types like Chris Matthews and Cokie Roberts and other personally liberal fawners over the Conservative majority would be fawners over the Liberal majority, provided that Liberal majority let it fawn, which is debatable.  I think it's a given these days that Republicans are better at the care and feeding and stroking of media types than Democrats, and that's probably because Republicans see themselves as bosses and bosses like fawners and flatterers, bootlickers and brown-nosers, while Democrats come to Washington as professionals, there to do a job, and professionals despise interfering amateurs, even, and maybe especially, ones who fawn and flatter and brown-nose while butting in.

At any rate, the inside the Beltway Media celebrities and celebrity wannabes see their careers as depending on the approval of those in power, whom they envy and emulate and desperately woo.  The Washington Press Corps has, accordingly, become less a loose association of professional journalists and more and more like a royal court.  And like a court, it is self-contained, self-referential, and self-seeking, devoted to maintaining its privileges and status.

Like the courtiers they have become, the insiders are not interested in what's happening as much as they are interested in what other insiders are saying about what's happening, because they need to know how to shape their conversation and behavior accordingly to protect their place at court.   And they don't see their job as informing the rest of us commoners and serfs about what's happening.  They see it as telling us what our betters are thinking and saying about what's happening and making sure we think or say the same things or at least keep our mouths shut, if we know what's good for us.

Thus we get Chris Matthews insisting that most Americans like George W. Bush.  Only a few whack jobs on the left don't like the guy, he says.

MediaMatters has the video.  Thanks to the Green Knight for the link.

For a moment, let's forget the current polls that show, as the Knight says, that the majority of the country now counts as lefty whack-jobs.

No poll, ever, has shown George Bush to be a truly popular President.  The polls taken after 9/11 and in the early days of the invasion of Iraq measured not Bush's personal popularity but the patriotic reflex of most Americans to support their President in a time of crisis.  The highs Bush achieved then didn't last, and each time his peak was followed soon afterward with precipitous declines.   The idea that he was a popular President was the result of a misreading of the polls that was either willful or blockheaded or willfully blockheaded on the part of the Media.

And the idea that George W. Bush was personally likeable was a complete fiction.  The Media just made that one up.  And they did it because they wanted to have someone to compare Al Gore to, to Gore's detriment.  George Bush was declared likeable to prove that Gore wasn't.  In 2004, when Bush came ridiculously close for a "popular" President to being a one-termer, his supposed likeableness was insisted upon again not because he was really that way but to prove that John Kerry wasn't.

The Courtiers declared George Bush likeable as a way to justify their own dislike of his opponents.

I'm guessing that what Matthews was up to, telling us all we should like George Bush if we don't want to be dismissed as left-wing whack-jobs, was looking for a way to go with the flow and yet not have to admit that's what he's doing.  The flow is away from support for the War.  But criticizing the War comes too close to criticizing Bush, who is, despite the polls, still the king and likely going to stay the king until 2009.   The trick for courtiers like Matthews is to get themselves on the side of the in-crowd, which is becoming the anti-war crowd, slowly but surely, while maintaining their place in Court by keeping the King's favor.

This is why Cheney's going down.  It's all Cheney's fault.  That it's always been all Cheney's fault, that he's been the Lord Protector and Regent from the beginning, and everyone inside the Beltway knows this, doesn't matter now.  What matters now is that Cheney is losing power and no Courtier worth his pension sides with the guy out of power.

Telling the President he's still likeable is the courtiers' way of assuring the President that if they start criticizing the war that won't mean they will be criticizing him. 

Pop Mannion doesn't particularly like or trust Chris Matthews.  But he still thinks of Matthews and the types like him as journalists and when a journalist working down in DC reports something as a fact, my dad's inclined to think it is a fact.

Consequently, he thinks that it's inevitable that Hillary will be the Democratic candidate for President in 2008 and he thinks the idea that Al Gore can return from the Wilderness, win the nomination and get himself re-elected President is a sick joke.

Meanwhile, I don't know if Hillary is inevitable, but I do know that the Media Elite are in a hurry to declare her the inevitable nominee, mainly because they want to save themselves the trouble of having to cover a real primary campaign and because they want the fun of watching a furiously negative campaign against her by the Republicans (The Media deplore negative campaigns the way Puritans deplore sex.), and they are looking forward to despising her and picking on her the way they despised and picked on her husband.

And I'm not convinced that Al Gore can, or even will want to, return to the fray, but I do know that when he does the Media Elite will try to treat him as a joke.

So that's how come the other night when we were talking Pop Mannion and I tangled over Hillary and Gore.  We disagree about whether what's reported on the TV news is in fact news.

He thinks it is.  I think it's just more idle court gossip.

I don't know if my dad saw or read about Matthews's statement, but I'm sure if he did it gave him a sick feeling in his gut.

"Just how bad does Bush have to be before anybody notices?" he might very well have thought to himself or said out loud to my mother.  He's asked me that question before and not really believed me when I've answered with the facts, that people have noticed and they don't like what they're noticing.

He won't believe it until it's on the news.

Comments

[Chrys]

Lance, I really enjoyed your post. It brought back wonderful memories of many late-night conversations I had with my father. Thanks for sharing.

[The Viscount]

Funny, I wrote about my Dad today too, before I came here for my daily visit.

Nice post Lance.

[Just a lefty whack-job]

Did you express this opinion to your Dad? And if so, what was his response? Does he think you are cynical? I happen to agree with you -- but, admire your Dad for still having some faith in the integrity of the profession.

My mother-in-law came over last week and said that she only wants to watch the news where the reporter is "objective." And I said, "Are there any?" And she said, "Yes, I now only watch Wolf Blitzer."

(!)

And what is with Chris Matthews? Like he knows Bush *personally.* Like any of us do. He can be thick sometimes.

Good post Mr. Mannion.

[Kevin Wolf]

I agree. An excellent post.

Another side to this is that reflected in polls showing fewer and fewer people believe what they see in the mainstream media - including the NY Times.

Sure, there are the loyalists who watch Fox News and hang on every word because it all reinforces their preconceptions. But the average American - if I can presume to include your Dad, I do - is less likely to believe ANYTHING they see these days. I'm guessing a point will come when he'll feel that himself.

A crisis of confidence? Or a breaking of shackles? A good development or bad?

[Linkmeister]

Maybe the phrase "yesterday's paper is fishwrap" should be updated to read "today's paper is nearly all fishwrap."

My mother and I discuss politics far more than my father and I ever did, for some reason I've never tried to explain to myself. He was just as much a New Deal Democrat as she is, but he wasn't much on talking about it.

[C.J.Colucci]

This "likeable" business has always puzzled me, as has the "regular guy" business. He is so glaringly obviously the condescending, overprivileged frat boy who knows his own place in the world and lets his inferiors know theirs that I've never understood why anyone thinks any different. Only in his mediocre abilities does he have anything in common with the common run of folks, and his sneering attitude toward those lesser mortals who must justify their place in the world by their abilities or accomplishments is the flip side of his towel-snapping brio. Why does anyone buy this?

[Tricia]

you're a METS FAN????

[mac macgillicuddy]

I think this is relevant here:

Yesterday I was listening to my semi-daily five-minute dose of idiot fathead Rush (all I can stand, though I listen for the same reasons as OPM), and was priviledged to hear him say (and I'm paraphrasing here), "In an ideal world, the press would think about being Americans FIRST, and they would cooperate and print what the government wanted them to print for the sake of national security."

Paraphrasing, but not very far from the actual wording.

God bless the Bill of Rights, every one!