I agree that the press is partying like it’s 1999/2000:
Ms Dowd’s involvement is fitting, as this may be the sorriest spectacle of content-free public hyperventilation since Al Gore’s earth tones. The difference is that in this case the issue is deadly serious; it’s the public discourse that is puerile. There is plenty of room for substantive critique of the flaws in governance and policy uncovered by the Deepwater Horizon blowout. You could talk about regulatory failure. You could talk about corporate impunity. You could talk about blithely ignoring the tail-end risk of going ahead with deepwater drilling without any capacity to cope with catastrophic blowouts. Precisely none of these subjects are evident in the arguments our pundit class is having. Instead we have empty-headed squawking over what the catastrophe is doing to Barack Obama’s image.
Who’s raising concrete critiques of administration policy? Chiefly Mr Obama. Last Thursday he laid out a series of mistakes he felt he had made. Chief among them was taking oil companies at their word when they claimed to have the capability to cope with worst-case deep-sea drilling catastrophes. Now, if we feel that the president has failed to act aggressively enough on this issue, both before and since the accident, then what course of action should we now be calling on him to take? One logical step might be for the government to immediately shut down every offshore drilling rig in proximity to America’s coasts, pending the development of redundant, fail-safe capacity for capping and remediating catastrophic blowouts. Is this a good idea? I don’t know. But if you wanted to argue concretely that the administration had not been acting aggressively enough in this crisis, then this is the sort of more-aggressive action you might be calling for.
All that’s well and good, but actually doing something is nowhere near as important as emoting and pounding your good.
Update. Although there are those that say Bob Somerby is nuts, this epic piece on the origins of the earth tones story and other related matters is a must read.
Comrade Jake
We may need an Emobama tag.
BR
I’d say it was deadly serious the first time around with Bush v. Gore, as the The Onion knew.
joe from Lowell
I still say Obama has to suspend his campaign, or else McCain’s going to clobber him in November.
Tonal Crow
I agree with your take on Obama’s response to the blowout — except for one tiny thing. A climate catastrophe is rounding the bend, and this crisis could be used to leverage real action (read: carbon tax) to avoid it. A crisis is a terrible thing to waste, but, so far, Obama has been letting this one trickle through his fingers.
Bill E Pilgrim
What a reasonable article. Of course, at least one of the commenters had this to say:
Yes, it would be exactly like that. If what you spilled was so toxic that somehow you couldn’t figure out a way to clean it up even after decades and it made your kitchen unsuitable for habitation and killed most of the food you ever put in it so that you couldn’t use any of it. So you decided not against ever cooking again, but not to cook with whatever that particular toxic poison was.
Oh and if your kitchen were thousands and thousands of square miles wide and fed an entire region of the country.
I think comment sections are the oil spills of the Internet. Yes, sometimes including this one.
Davis X. Machina
Generalizing here a theory where there’s some sort of hierarchy down which press coverage of public events cascades, to the lowest level possible. Each rung requires less understanding, and less expenditure of effort, on the part of those producing, and those consuming.
Reduction in turn of a current complex reality to:
History (Black Jimmy Carter!)
Ideology (Socia1ism!)
Tribalism/team sports (This is good news! For John McCain!)
Personality (Emobama!)
I think we’re up against the Second Law of Thermondynamics — in other words, we’re screwed. The smart Vegas money never bets against entropy.
Bill H
Bob Somerby has delusions of grandeur and is stuck in 2000, but that does not prevent him from raising a valid point from time to time, and even expounding upon it with some semblance of reason.
Keith G
Most unfortunately, this is the era of the “Narrative”. Journalists can not just report the 5 W’s. The public may get bored.
There must be a story arc that has elements of conflict and emotion. Obama reporting follows near schizophrenic track. Hes is either on top of the world as Master and Commander or Spock has screwed the pooch and he is in deep trouble.
Look how the reporting has been since Nov. 08. Or easier to remember, since Dec 09:
HCR in a jam, what can he do. HCR passed, Obama forever. POTUS not bi-partisan on Finance reform, it will not pass. Finance reform passes, Obama is brilliant……
I got dizzy from the reporting and the columns a long time ago. My only solace is that the long game that my Obama plays, seems to work.
Uloborus
@Tonal Crow:
Sure, but that moment won’t be right now. I’m guessing it’ll be after the election. I believe the political goal he has picked for this one is that in late October the well will be long since plugged, Obama will have come out with a regulatory overhaul, and the Republicans will be fighting it tooth and claw in the legislature. Which will just look *fabulous* with an election staring them in the face. And leading their charge will be Dick Cheney (or as I like to call him, Two Percent Approval Man).
malraux
@Bill H:
It’s like that old saying: History repeats itself, first as tragedy, the second as even more tragedy.
Somerby might be stuck in 2000, but it seems like the press corps itself is stuck in the exact same mode. Though I’ve just started Nixonland, and it seems like these patterns are going to continually repeat themselves ad infinitum.
Tonal Crow
@Uloborus: I share your hope, but lack your faith. It’s time for me to make some calls.
Keith G
@Tonal Crow: Since it’s Spring….
We are only in the early innings of this crisis. We have not seen the worst. The coming months will be packed with with “swing for the fences” teachable moments. I doubt this crisis will be wasted.
demkat620
God help us all if we ever get the president MoDo wants.
meepmeep09
These days, Somerby does appear to be nuts, but his archives are a treasure – especially since history seems to want to repeat itself in certain arenas (bomb-bomb-bombing Iran, calls for ObamEMOting over the oil spill, for two examples fully discussed at this site).
I can’t bring myself to go read Mr. Howler much these days – too much pain for little gain – but his current madness should not be allowed to detract from acknowledgment of his past service, even when factoring in writing skills which have sucked for as long as I can remember.
And, to MWO, if you’re reading, and not blogging under a different ID – you are always welcome back. I hope you weren’t threatened out of blogging by forces who outed your RL identity, but I’ll always wonder.
Uloborus
@Tonal Crow:
I can understand that. We’ve had 8 years of the entire Democratic Party going ‘Yes, master!’ every time Bush – I mean, BUSH – gave them a stern look.
I think we’re past that. More to the point, I think Obama has been scary good at looking like he’s doing absolutely nothing, then getting legislation really active presidents couldn’t achieve passed. The guy is slow and incremental and unrelenting.
But you’ve got a long and hideously painful history of Democratic spinelessness to look back on, and part of Obama’s style is that he’s quiet and moderate, so… if you want to worry the ball will be dropped here, I can’t tell you you’re being irrational!
Tonal Crow
@demkat620:
I’m pretty sure we already did. He was named George W. Bush.
Brandon
Seeing as how I only get my pundit updates vicariously through Balloon Juice, I live a much happier man. As I sit here in my protective fortress of solitude from these gasbags, it gives me a nice perspective.
As someone who does not read these people and seeing that Americans generally aren’t reading these people either (newspaper readership continues to drop), no one cares or is paying attention to what our idiocracy write.
As someone that does not watch the Sunday shows and considering that Americans generally aren’t watching the Sunday shows either (ratings are dropping for all of them AFAIK – MTP the most), no one cares or is paying attention to what our idiocracy say.
As someone that does not watch the news channels and considering that ratings are generally pretty bad and getting worse for all the network newscasts and either dropping or just holding pat for the 24-hour networks (particularly Ed Henry’s CNN), no one cares or is paying attention to what our idiocracy report.
These morons can go on and on and on with their garbage, however I just don’t think people are paying attention. Like me, we have our jobs to do (with long and tedious hours), we have our kids to take care of after work (with extreme exhaustion and diminishing time to do) and we have our lives to live (Memorial Day bbq’s to have, summer vacations to plan, and activities to research for our kids).
So in summary, these folks can have their 1999 all over again, it is just that I and probably most of the American people won’t be paying attention or even give a shit. This oil spill sucks, we have to trust that a bunch of ‘smart’ people are working on solutions and eventually it will get fixed.
Shit, it’s summer after all. People got other things to do and the idea that the press is going to capture people’s attention with their hyperventilating (which is probably why they are hyperventilating) is just not going to work. If this thing ain’t out by labor day, then we’ve got problems. As Green Day once sang, ‘wake me up when September ends’.
Martin
@Keith G: I agree – it’s too early.
The time to tie this event to the climate bill is after the leak is capped. That’s when Obama can stand back and ask the nation: How much better off would we have been if that $10B had been spent on wind/solar instead?
Before that, and it’ll just come off as opportunistic. And even though optics shouldn’t be the concern, I think that it’ll give the GOP something to dig into and seriously undermine Obama’s opportunity.
BombIranForChrist
For Kevin, Doug, and Cole, who have been implying or outright suggesting that Obama couldn’t possibly have done anything, please note that Obama himself is accepting responsibility for mistakes he has made.
The screechiness about Obama’s lack of emotions is wrong, but Kevin Drum et al.’s tut tut’ing about how “Obama couldn’t do anything!” is just as wrong.
All this contrariness around here, it’s starting to feel like Slate ..
srv
OT as always, but Clarke & Dawe of “The Front Fell Off!” fame explain the Euro conundrum.
So refreshing, this foreign media.
kay
@BombIranForChrist:
He did. That’s true. He nearly always does, which seems to drive people like Maureen Dowd crazy.
There’s just no excuse for some of this disengeniousness, however.
James Carville called yesterday for Obama to seat a grand jury for criminal charges.
It’s been widely reported that the DOJ are down there, and have been there for three weeks.
WTF is Carville talking about? Is it that CNN needs a conflict story, and Carville works for CNN?
This paid-pundit -news stuff is actually getting in the way of facts getting out.
It’s now gone beyond political spin, or setting a narrative, beyond laziness. It’s affirmative misinformation.
Jody
“shutting down every offshore drilling rig in proximity to America’s coasts” is EXACTLY the kind of more aggressive action I’m looking for.
cleek
@BombIranForChrist:
splitter
Some Guy
This piece encapsulates what I was saying to my partner this morning. I am open to hearing legitimate critiques of what the feds have or have not done. But that involves an understanding of what BP actually has done and what the government has done and I see precious little of that information in the news. The feds cannot do this, they need to support and pressure BP with industry help to do it, So given it is a joint private-public effort with industry being out front, criticism needs to be focused on the responsibilities and capacities that are real. I have yet to see a clear tick tock of what has been done, why, and who has what authorities. An email sent to TPM from someone int the oil industry is the best description I haave seen of who is involved and there are a lot of people. Where is the coverage? Perhaps a class of people who investigated these things, even when institutions were unwilling of able to provide the information, could be developed – then that information could be shared on a daily basis. They would not be called journalists as that breed has been overbred and they no longer are able to ask useful questions without a lot of help.
Pamela F
Doug, I read your link to “The Economist” and I must say: I feel vindicated, as I made the point a couple days ago that our “liberal” pundits were going the Al Gore/earth tones route. It seems, regardless of the evidence and the consequences, our “liberals” in the MSM haven’t mastered the learning curve: while there are legitimate criticisms, the “liberal” pundits don’t seem to make them–instead opting to join their fellow members of the cocktail party circuit to miss the big picture.
Frankly, I expect all the hyperbolic nonsense from the right, but when our (supposed) side joins in the melee, reinforcing superficial tripe…well it’s hard not to despair.
Between the Naderism on the left and the superficiality of most of the liberal pundits, it’s easy to succumb to mojitos +3.
Allison W.
@19: When people say there is nothing Obama could do, they are talking about stopping the leak. Those who are saying that he’s doing nothing, are referring to missed political opportunities.
And as Kay pointed out, a lot of what he has done has gone unreported. Also, a post from FDL about what Obama should do was posted here and some readers commented that some things on the list were already in motion.
fucen tarmal
the somersby link was way too inside baseball for me to follow entirely. i agree with brandon to a degree, you can know what is happening without following these sources. however, when there is a news story that is important, and you want to look at the double helix of why its covered the way its covered, you will see the genome of these sorts of opinions, encoded in the overall make up of the press corps /lame analogy
that is, if these aren’t the specific ass-hats they go to for the as it happens analysis without facts, that the world seems glued to. the world belongs to the low-info voter, and the low info voter makes their minds up in moments, its framing those moments, that makes the news relevant…this crap is digested by the people who frame the news, it makes them relevant.
Sheila
Who would have ever thought Spiro Agnew’s inane little phrase “nattering nabobs of negativity” would have been prescient? There is nowhere near enough substantive content to fill a 24-hour-a-day news cycle; what else can we expect but a plethora of sputum?
eemom
Somerby is a lunatic-savant, or whatever they call such people these days. Though he lost me big time when he jumped on the bash Elena Kagan bandwagon.
Mnemosyne
Somerby didn’t start off insane, but he certainly was driven insane by the Bush years. There’s only so long that you can stare into the abyss that is our media before your brain goes all fritzy on you and Somerby was able to do it longer than most.
Bill E Pilgrim
@fucen tarmal: The pertinent part of the Somersby piece, summarized:
Dick Morris said something like “Who knows, maybe Naomi Wolfe advised Gore about wearing earth tones”, and Dowd wrote “According to an article, Al Gore is being advised by Naomi Wolfe about earth tones” and everyone else started referring to it also as fact so pretty soon “Wolfe advised Gore about wearing earth tones” was indisputable fact that everyone knew actually happened because everyone is saying so.
Rather than, you know, some bullshit Dick Morris made up.
The rest is good too but that’s the earth tones part.
Mnemosyne
@Allison W.:
Exactly. That’s why all of this talking at cross-purposes has been happening. One group is looking at the actual crisis and the practical response to it, and the other is looking at the political crisis and the media response to it. They are not the same thing. At all.
I’m in the group that says there’s very little that Obama can do politically until the leak stops. There are practical responses that he can (and has) made, like shutting down production at all offshore drilling platforms so they can be inspected, but not a whole lot of political options. For the most part, those are going to have to wait until the full scope of the disaster is visible, and that’s not going to happen until the oil is shut off.
ricky
God help us all if we ever get the president MoDo wants.
God help God if we get the Pope she wants.
Or would “God be damned” work better?
Nancy
@Uloborus:
Exactly!!!! I can’t tell you how many times in the last couple of years watching Obama has reminded me of the old Aesop fable about the tortoise and the hare.
MagicPanda
I am kind of dense sometimes, but for the past few days, I’ve been confused by the intensity of snark that BJ has directed at articles in the press that portray Obama as “not showing enough emotion” or whatever.
I just didn’t get why various folk on BJ were so upset by these articles, but I think I get it now.
This is probably obvious to everyone, but I tend to see the president’s job as having both political and policy responsibilities.
Politics isn’t just about winning elections. Part of the president’s job is to bring people over to his view of the world, which is, by nature, a political act.
Change just isn’t possible without politics. The political support behind DADT repeal, for example, has been building for years, and change would not be possible without it.
Right now, the president’s administration is spending, say, 80% of their energy on policy and 20% on politics. That’s probably the right mix.
The GOP is spending 100% of their energy on politics and 0% on policy. That’s obviously insane.
Meanwhile, the press is spending 99% of their energy reporting on politics and 1% on policy. This is a huge problem for our democracy.
I guess I am just used to the press reporting on politics instead of policy. So when I saw those articles about how Obama wasn’t connecting with people on the oil spill, those articles rang true to me. In my mind, I was thinking “well, people seem to think Obama isn’t doing enough on the oil spill, and that seems like a big political problem that will come back to haunt Obama in various ways. He should fix that.”
Now that I think about it again, I think “why is the press reporting on the politics of the oil spill instead of informing the public?”
Like I said, I am kind of dense sometimes.
Tonal Crow
@Sheila:
This is just incorrect. The public needs to know exebytes-worth (I was going to say “libraries-worth”, but that would be dating myself) of stuff that the media simply never get around to publishing.
For a few examples, everyone of ordinary intelligence should understand — in an intuitive (but not quantitative) way — the basic physics underlying climate change. Everyone should know how a water-treatment plant works, and where their water comes from. Everyone should know how their food is produced, and how it gets from the producers to the processors and wholesale markets, and thence to their grocery. And so on. This knowledge (or the lack thereof) informs (or disinforms) everything we do.
This stuff isn’t “news” you say? Since many people don’t know it, it’s news to them, and it should be on “the news” every single day. *That* would be a “public service”. Bloviating blabberers of bullshit, not so much.
Martin
@BombIranForChrist:
I think people oversimplify this.
A lot of the things being called for were effectively impossible to do a month ago – they were certainly politically impossible. Yes, they still should have been done, but that’s not just a mistake by Obama but one by the nation as well.
Fuck, BP wouldn’t even exist if the voters of this country weren’t perfectly content with the US overthrowing foreign governments for the existential right to cheap gas. They’d rather fight wars, piss off the world, and cede our manufacturing and economic fate to other nations than have to pay 50% more to fly from LA to NY, or have to decide to take the Prius on that drive across country rather than the Suburban.
There’s no political will to do any of the things that should have happened. We still have Democrats chanting drill-baby-drill. We still have a public that wants to do *anything* but change.
So what people are eager to call a mistake by Obama is just as equally a mistake by the nation as a whole. Obama’s not our king and he can’t act like one. What is the country willing to do here? Anything?
Davis X. Machina
@Nancy: My thoughts run to Lincoln’s glacial movement on publicly embracing Emancipation.
ricky
@Mnemosyne:
I believe it origins can be found in teaching middle school.
ricky
@Davis X. Machina:
He would probably still be dithering on DADT were it not for that dreadful decision to attend the theater.
MagicPanda
@Mnemosyne: I agree with your overall post, but I don’t know if there was absolutely nothing to be done in terms of politics. One of the things that “smart people” say about effective crisis management is that during times of crisis, it’s important to overcommunicate.
Let’s say that the administration knew from day one that the leak might take months to solve. Even though it’s not good news, it’s probably a good idea to get in front of the cameras and say that. And then you give daily reports with tons of information about what steps you are taking, etc., until people realize that you are on top of it.
It might be too late to go into that mode now, of course.
Martin
@MagicPanda:
Exactly. The press has a massive amount of bandwidth – more than they could ever have dreamed of 2 decades ago and they waste every bit that they’ve gained.
What I liked so much about Bill Moyers during the campaign was how when the whole Rev. Wright situation was blowing up, he had scholars on to explain the nature of where Wright was coming from. It wasn’t a defense of Wright or Obama. I’m not sure politics was even discussed, but it was a good lesson in ‘here’s a group of people that had a very different experience than the rest of you and here’s how they see the world differently’. Moyers added something with his bit of bandwidth. Almost nobody outside of PBS seems to, however.
MagicPanda
@Tonal Crow: I think the issue is that policy programming is not as profitable. Political bloviating doesn’t involve research, and generates tons of sportscaster-like conflict which makes for exciting TV.
Unfortunately, I don’t see a solution to the basic underlying problem that for-profit news programming is going to cater to whatever sells ads.
Joey Maloney
Like a milliner who develops neurological problems from mercury vapors, poor Somerby’s been driven insane by too many years of too close contact with the toxic productions of US “journalists”.
…or, what Mnemosyne said.
cleek
@MagicPanda:
you and me both.
i think it’s because our press sucks and would rather talk political gossip because that’s more entertaining to their partisan viewers. as David Gregory said, they can go elsewhere for facts. that doesn’t mean they aren’t right about the politics of this, though.
whether our snarky hosts like it or not, politics is a political business, where emotions, biases, and persuasion count for a lot.
Tonal Crow
@MagicPanda: Sure. But saying that the media won’t inform us because it’s more profitable to fill bandwidth with wankery is quite different from saying that the media have so much bandwidth that they can’t find real information to fill it.
Quaker in a Basement
Although there are those that say Bob Somerby is nuts
Somerby isn’t nuts. A bit obsessive and depthlessly cranky, sure, but an excellent writer gifted with exacting reason and a surgical eye for flawed logic.
The column you link is just one of dozens Somerby has produced that tell important stories that absolutely no one else will discuss.
Brian J
@Pamela F:
It sounds like you are suggesting that we need a class of liberal journalists/commentators with the same sort of unrelenting focus that you’d see for conservatism on The Wall Street Journal editorial page, only with a focus on the facts as they are and not as we’d like to see them. If that’s the case, I agree.
I suspect part of the problem is that conservatives tend to be more steadfast in their beliefs and less open to qualifying them as they age. For better or worse, liberals, myself included, tend to second guess their beliefs on a consistent basis.
licensed to kill time
__
Who’ll put the tag on the emobamabam?
who’ll put the same on the emoRahmderahm?
who is that man?
I’d like to shake his hand
if he makes my ‘Bama fall in tears for me
/dip de dip de dip
MagicPanda
@Tonal Crow: Yup. I think we’re in 100% agreement.
Tonal Crow
@licensed to kill time:
Shouldn’t that go “who’ll put the Rahm in the Rahm-a-lamma-ding-dong?”
Davis X. Machina
You keep good company: “The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.” — Bertrand Russell
licensed to kill time
@Tonal Crow: yep. typing on the fly and hit submit too soon. premature submission is a bitch.
Ailuridae
@Brian J:
I suspect part of the problem is that conservatives tend to be more steadfast in their beliefs and less open to qualifying them as they age. For better or worse, liberals, myself included, tend to second guess their beliefs on a consistent basis.
I think that’s an impolitely worded view of the liberal mind but not necessarily an inaccurate one. Basically (American) conservatives are dominated by ideology to the degree that no evidence can ever sway them to a different position. Supply-side economics for instance has been shown to largely be phooey yet its a fundamental precept of any Republican candidate that “tax cuts work” in some Laffer curve sense.
Part of the progressive tradition, OTOH, is looking at new evidence as it becomes available and re-evaluate. In 2007 I though a public option was a smart political ploy to create a large class of consumers into a new public plan that doctors would be have to work with because of its sheer size. It turns out that when the compromises were proposed to get the Corporate Dems on board and one of them was a Medicare expansion at cost to the near elderly I thought it was political suicide. I hadn’t realized that people love and treasure Medicare as much as they do. Simply, I had grossly misunderstood the public’s perception of Medicare.
So now I advocate for opening up Medicare at cost to those over 50 and above cost (but often times cheaper than available private insurance) to those under 50. Its a simple plan, people understand and like Medicare, it strengthens Medicare and weakens the medical cabal and politically it won’t be an impossible haul. So I can comfortably say that I got in wrong in 2007 and that Democrats should have been pushing a “Medicare for all” type plan of the above sort rather than a confusing and milquetoast public plan.
Tonal Crow
@licensed to kill time: If you check your spam folder, you can get help for that.
Ailuridae
@Davis X. Machina:
That Russell quote is gold.
JMY
@kay:
Why are people even talking to James Carville? Is it b/c he’s from the region?
licensed to kill time
@Tonal Crow ever so kind of you, sir or madam. :::shuffles off to check spam::::
ruemara
@JMY:
It’s because he’ll pop-up where ever an open mic and a camera appear, like the snails in my garden when I put in tender, juciy marigolds. & he does just the same amount of good too.
BC
One thing that does not get any coverage in the twisting-hankies-pearl-clutching phase is that if the federal government directs BP in how to clean up the oil spill and it does not work out, then the federal government has taken liability for the damage to the economy and ecosystem from that point on. So Obama and his administration are walking the tightrope, telling BP it is up to them to stop the leak and clean up the Gulf without getting into the particulars in how it is to be done, protecting the taxpayers from bailing out BP in this case. The worse thing Obama and crew can do is let BP off the hook in any way. They have $5K/hour lawyers watching government instructions very closely, I’ll wager.
DougJ
@Pamela F:
Amen.
frosty
@Tonal Crow: ‘zactly. Here’s some news for BJ’ers. Every calorie of food produced in the USA requires 10 calories of fossil fuel to produce, deliver, and cook.
Shorter: We’re eating oil.
Now go plant your garden.
frosty
@MagicPanda: Don’t forget that political bloviating costs almost nothing to produce: just one fake news set and 3 or 4 overpaid talking heads. No offices in cities nationwide and worldwide staffed by people trying to get answers to difficult questions.
So to summarize:
Lotsa sports-like conflict and banter: High revenues.
Simple reality-show production: Low costs.
What’s not to like?
Platonicspoof
On a personal, but newsworthy note, I am at present wearing dirt-black 15″ LaCrosse rubber boots (no steel toes – for the kinder, gentler appeal).
(Psssst! Ms. Dowd. Thats. All. I’m. Wearing.)