Organic saffron over the flavor of bullshit

Most of our big media pundits are worse than useless.  They are actively contributing to the decay of America into banana Republicanism.

They are lazy- Reading the commentary from Sullivan and Brooks and Klein and others, aside from being completely wrong, what stood out to me was how simply predictable it was, regurgitating the coalescing villager CW about Ryan: The plan is bold! It is serious! It took courage! It re-frames the debate! The ball is in Obama’s court! Very wonky! It is a game-changer! Did I mention it is serious? The math demands it! We need to have shared sacrifice! This puts us on the right course! It’s serious and bold!

Read any one of their pieces the last couple of days, and it was like conventional wisdom/villager mad libs. Actually reading the bill, realizing it isn’t serious, it isn’t bold, that it won’t set us on the right path because it gives away as much in taxes as it cuts from the needy, realizing the only people sacrificing are the poor while the well-off are lavished with trillions in tax cuts- well, doing that and actually thinking, like Bruce Bartlett, James Fallows, Paul Krugman, Dean Baker, and others managed to do, that would be just way too much work. Better to roll with the conventional wisdom, churn out a load of bullshit, and when confronted by people that you are wrong, have a hissy fit about the hard left, whine about being picked on and someone using four letter words and capital letters, and dig in. Instead of absorbing what people are telling you, link to the National Review and McMegan, and don’t even bother to figure out basic math such as 22-18. There is a word for this behavior- it is lazy. These guys are on autopilot, have their narrative, and they are sticking to it.

Reliquary of a saint

Joe Klein is out of his depth when he attacks Glenn Greenwald. He shouldn't pick a fight with someone who buys pixels by the megaton. Between all the exclusive parties and the exhausting difficulty of maintaining his access to power, Klein doesn't have the stamina for it.

Greenwald's a big boy, though, and doesn't need my puny defense. Nor does aimai. I've noticed that she can handle herself.

Still, my fellow travellers in the left blogosphere annoy me in one way when they back aimai. She's I.F. Stone's granddaughter! they protest. As if that mattered a whit. As if she had touched the hem of his shroud and was therefore gifted with sacred powers to see through the ever-present bullshit of the big media.

I realize that many are using this identification simply to extend her handle. Others, though, imply that she deserves admission to the conversation because of it. Identity is not central to this dust-up at all. Quite the contrary in fact.

Aimai's commentary has always stood as her own, not that of the priestess of a dead saint. I found it trenchant and incisive and insightful enough long before I knew her pedigree. I remembered her handle and knew when I happened upon her commentary that she would be worth reading.

This is an earned reputation, not the fruit of admission to an elite. Aimai didn't get her credibility through Washington nepotism. Unlike Joe Klein, she hasn't relied on obeisant touches of reliquaries. She has done her homework instead.

Don't forget that that's the path to real credibility.

Need a briefing, John?

While CNN is off in the VP weeds, pretending it's breaking news that their reporters are staking out Joe Biden and Evan Bayh, there is still real war and real journalism going on in Iraq (h/t Joe Klein).

John McCain claimed he didn't need a briefing on Russia's invasion of Georgia, and he might have been right. After all, one of Georgia's lobbyists runs his campaign, despite his made-for-media, bullshit purge of a few of his lobbyist buddies.

The renewed civil conflict in Iraq, however, is a return to the Sunni-Shi'ite distinction that McCain still needed Joe Lieberman's help with, despite at this point what surely must have been hundreds of briefings.

Don't Duhbya and the Bushists prove once and for all that we need a leader who will listen and learn? McCain would bring four more years of going with the gut. Voters who want more of the same are choosing the longest self-service colonoscopy on record.

Likability

Joe Klein actually owns up to this voluntarily:

I never much liked John Edwards as a politician...and I guess we now know that he's a heel as a human being, too.

This is the quality of our political press. Who they like is what's important.

Hey, what do we need the pundits for? We can all tell who we like.

Downside of Joe Klein

Of course, there's a downside to match the rare upside of Joe Klein, but for a change he seems merely mistaken, rather than captured by the narrative of the media herd. And that in itself is a silver lining.

The sheer, slimy audacity of the McCain ads has given him a nice midsummer run. The polling numbers haven't changed all that much, but Obama has been on the defensive since he returned from his overseas trip.

Here, Joe misses the timing and the complicity of the media in printing every stinking McCain press release while Obama was overseas. Obama was already on the defensive long before returning home. Minor, of course, but I wish pundits who get paid for watching paid as much attention to the big picture as a part-time blogger reading and writing from his study or office.

The best way to do that is through a major, narrative-changing event.

Here's another head-scratcher: Klein is asking for political theater, not reality. And he completely fails to notice the obvious fact that the Obama trip overseas was exactly "a major, narrative-changing event" that didn't work because the press corps was so obsessed with McCain's slimy audacity (good phrase, Joe!).

Last, Klein's thesis is that Obama should sign up for more debates in the late summer. Here's the obvious reason he won't: He prefers to play a few big hands and win the killer pots instead of penny ante town halls that slide into boring frequency. Who remembers anything from the zillion Democratic primary debates?

Yes, a dozen debates would give Klein and his cohorts more to write gaffe-watch pieces about - and snark about even if there are no gaffes - but they are unlikely to give the voters more useful information about what the two candidates believe and what each would do as President.

Upside of Joe Klein

I have to give Joe Klein credit for his first three paragraphs today:

Over the past month, a foolish narrative has been abroad in the land: that this election is going to be a "referendum" on Barack Obama. ...

Quite often, ... the referendum gambit is a rationale for mudslinging. This year we have John McCain's attempt to paint Obama as aloof, messianic ... a celebrity, like Paris or Britney.

I may be missing something, but snark isn't a quality often associated with the presidency. "It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant," Obama said, laughing at the McCain campaign's crash-and-burn fighter-jock puerility.

There are points to critique, too:

• Klein's careful failure to notice that Republicans always sling more mud than Democrats
• His repetition of McCain's low points, though I suppose that's necessary for readers who just woke up from a 20-year nap or from Alzheimer's

But he's willing to say that the McCain campaign is trying to compensate for the weakness of its candidate, and that's something you don't hear from a mainstream pundit every day, even though it's as plain as the pallor on McCain's face.

Of course, I do critique, not so much compliments, so there's a downside, too, which I'll get into for my next item.

Filler

If you're going to write for the public, shouldn't you at least believe what you write?

Joe Biden? What tactical need would he fill?

He would make Beltway journalists like Joe Klein happy - no new personality to learn.

Of course, after the zillion veep stories from McCain, at least this puts Obama's name into pixels.

Pretty good timetable, uh, horizon

McCain's "straight" talk is predicated on your inability to form new memories. Thursday, leaving Iraq over 16 months was choosing to lose (h/t Joe Klein, credit where due). Yesterday, 16 months sounds like a pretty good date, uh, timetable, uh, horizon, uh, thingumabob. Tomorrow, who the hell knows? McCain shows no sign of knowing what his message is.

What the press likes about McCain: He improvises all the time. Problem for the rest of us is that he doesn't do it well.

Update: Atrios nails it.

McCain press release mashup

If McCain were really a tough guy, he'd promise to wait until he's President (never!) to meet with the Dalai Lama and really piss off the Chinese.

(Is there any doubt at all that the McCain campaign piled up a ton of press releases about mostly inconsequential things to compete with Obama's trip? And, of course, McCNN printed every damn one of them. Hey, an easy day at work!)

Update: Joe Klein, true to form, is oblivious to the obvious fact that Tucker Bounds is playing him.

Always the dark clouds

Joe Klein, true to type, thrusts the RNC propaganda, not the hard edge, no, the soft insinuations. Obama's trip hasn't caused a polling bump, he says, but was that expected? Did McCain's last trip cause a polling bump?

That lack of poll impact couldn't have anything to do with the ferocious McCain campaign attacks on Obama. Could it?

Klein manages to get the conservative whisper of grandiosity into his lead paragraph and then half-heartedly deprecates it. With Beltway pundits of Klein's type, there is no way for a Democrat to win, even when he's winning.