Establishment media discovers establishment critics are really DFHs after all

Stop the presses!

I swear if I read one more thing about spoiled Baby Boomers not understanding the gloriousness of The Greatest Generation I'm going to move from dissent to resistance.

Also, 1968 was 42 years ago, so anybody much under 60 wasn't really around for "the Sixties." Listening to Disraeli Gears in your dorm room in 1982 doesn't actually count, as I know from first-hand experience.

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How Narratives Work

Essentially, the only remaining interest in the "revelations" about John Edwards at this point is that they provide a good example of how narratives are put together by political journalists when in their theater critic mode. Once someone has been established as one of History's Greatest Monsters, not only their unique transgressions but utterly banal characteristics shared by most similarly situated individuals ("He has lackeys run personal errands!" "He uses obscenities around his campaign staff!") become evidence that the candidate was a horrible person who was always doomed to fail. I think you can see this in most reports about the new gossipy books about the campaign.

Tina Brown's summary, while it has some of this, presents a couple new points to consider. First, there's the revisionism about how the media treated Edwards during the campaign. It's absolutely fair game to criticize the media for not finding evidence of Edwards's affair. But it's not true that nobody raised other questions about Edwards in general and his "authenticity" in particular; there were in fact many stories about his haircuts and house, and people who considered Edwards a phony have never been hard to find. (And while progressives certainly have no reason to stick up for Edwards, they have very good reason to resist media judgments about "authenticity," particularly since in practice they tend to mean that only Republicans can ever be "authentic.")

Even better, however, is this throwaway, which tells you most of what you need to know about how these narratives work and how much useful information they actually convey:

It should be collectively blush-making for the press to remember the newsmagazine covers, the fawning TV sitdowns, the op-ed boostings Edwards garnered in the course of his years as a crowd-pleasing, “Kennedyesque” candidate who supposedly cared for the underdog and coined the “Two Americas” catchphrase.

The media spent years calling John Edwards "Kennedyesque."* But then it turned out that he was rich and unfaithful to his wife. Wait, what was my point again?

*I don't recall this and can't find any evidence for it, but anyway, I still find the point funny...

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Now, I'm as Critical of Rabid Angry Uncivil Wingnuts as the Next Guy . . .

at least until Michael White goes moderately Over The Top in his latest rambling, expansive Guardian piece on Friday. While LGM readers know that I am highly critical of the Wingnut approach to democracy and debate, and I don't consider it healthy at all, I'm not about to start drawing comparisons to Ft. Sumter in 1861.

While White may largely be correct here:

It is the scale of the irrational, emotional and, dare I add, ignorant, reaction his presidency has unleashed on the American right, some of it understandable in a fast-changing and confusing world, much of it ugly and increasingly violent in tone.

But a latecomer here:

Friends keep saying: "It's changed since you lived there, Mike."

White lived in the US from 1984 to 1988, so, um, duh, of course it's changed. That's a generation. I'm willing to bet that Britain has changed since 1988 as well.

I interpret the present reaction of the right not all that differently from that unleashed by Bill Clinton. Since Reagan, the right views the White House specifically, and governance in general, as a birthright. They're the only true Americans. Fortunately for the rest of us, most of them live in Real America. Therefore the current tone and tenor of debate from the right doesn't surprise me in the least -- if anything they're more scared, because whereas Bill Clinton won with only 43% of the vote, Obama did significantly better. And, Obama's a Muslim Fascist-Communist as we all know, born, where was it? Kenya? Indonesia? That must scare the right as well.

To reiterate, unlike White I do not perceive this wave of wingnut lunacy any differently than the Clinton administration. This isn't new. (Of course, dare I say it, we know how that ended up). Furthermore, while the faults of the United States are legion, this is true of every democracy on the planet -- and hey, we didn't give the world, and the European Parliament, Nick Griffin, who somehow weaseled his way into representing the entire EUP at the Copenhagen climate change conference. His views on climate change are reassuringly similar to his views on race relations.

But perhaps I should have more time for White and his viewpoint: not only was he punched by Alastair Campbell, but he punched him back.

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Balloon Boy: America's Got Morons

Yes it's shameful to give this story another scintilla of bandwith. So sue me.

Seriously, as a resident of Colorado (the damned thing practically landed in my backyard), I'm going to be mighty aggravated if Celebrity-Crazed Dad and his Zombie Cult Wife aren't arrested for filing a false police report -- a felony in our fair state. I do sort of admire the guy though for the planning he put into it.

(1) He waited until a weekday morning when the kids didn't have school (much better for news ratings than weekend coverage).

(2) He chose a completely clear day, when the prevailing winds were out of the north, so that the balloon would be pushed towards Denver, rather than as would be typical out toward the great and empty plains.

(3) He launched it early enough in the day so there would be enough time for him and his brave little Falcon to do the evening news shows, but not so early that folks wouldn't be able to follow it because they were commuting to (West Coast) or from (East Coast) work.

(4) He created a hiding place in the garage ceiling for the kid, so as to have a plausible explanation for not being able to find him.

(5) He waited a good 30 minutes before calling a TV station, and maybe an hour before calling the cops, thus allowing the balloon plenty of time to drift toward the media-rich Denver metro area.

However he really dropped the ball on the cardboard box attached to the balloon stuff. That was obviously made up after the fact in a moment of panic, when he forget he had videotaped the launch.

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