I went through a long stage of disliking David Broder for being an establishment dispenser of Beltway conventional wisdom. Why he couldn’t he be smarter and more fact-based, like, say, Paul Krugman?
Then I realized that was the wrong comparison. There is not much place for smart, fact- based argument in our system. Broder should be praised for having been smarter and more diligent than Cokie Roberts and Richard Cohen.
Bob Loblaw
What would this blog be like if y’all would stop paying so much attention to people whose opinions you don’t respect intellectually or think are offered in good faith?
It’s a good thing you’re all such masochists or you’d never have anything to say. But let’s see what Sully thinks first before we’re sure…
soonergrunt
Broder should be noted for being less wet than water, and less dirtier than dirt.
It’s BECAUSE of David Broder and the low standards he set that we have Cokie Roberts and Richard Cohen.
Broder was only the vanguard of useless people in the Washington press corps. Roberts and Cohen are parts of the main body. If it wasn’t for Broder, Roberts would’ve been stuck on the Society pages, and only would’ve gotten that thanks to who her father was, and Cohen would never have risen above puff pieces about new book stores in Arlington and panda births at the National Zoo with the occasional review of a new exhibit at the Smithsonian for the weekend magazine.
4tehlulz
Still is.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
I’m not that forgiving. David Broder can burn in hell.
General Stuck
Luckily, we have Douthat to follow in Broder’s footsteps bringing the enlightenment of the new generation
stuckinred
@Bob Loblaw: No shit, and this Mc Megan horseshit day after day. With enemies like this they don’t need friends.
PeakVT
I’m afraid to see who will be anointed “Dean” next.
4tehlulz
@PeakVT: GWill
scarshapedstar
Well, obviously, they’ve gotta pick someone else named David B.
Oh no…
MikeJ
@Bob Loblaw:
You’d be banned?
Sentient Puddle
Jesus, way to set the bar low.
Zifnab
@soonergrunt:
This.
David Broder left the door open. Cokie and Cohen (and Donaldson and Will and Blitzer and on and on) just barreled on through after him.
A better set of journalists would have called their peers out on meandering bullshit. Broder, the so-called “Dean”, turned a blind eye when he wasn’t blowing the same hot air. Now we have to put up with News Anchors like Megyn (with a ‘Y’!) Kelly, like these are serious people.
Culture of Truth
If I may quote, again, “I learned it by watching you… learned it by watching you!!”
beltane
@General Stuck: Aren’t we lucky that no one in the new generation will care what Ross Douthat has to say? Douthat and the rest of them are anachronisms with not much more life in them than Broder himself. I don’t know what this brave new world will bring except that these courtiers, these self-styled serious people will not hold as much sway over our children as they did over our parents.
Alex S.
He appears in Nixonland a few times trashing the Muskie campaign for its affiliation with the working class. Broder was a member of the big money party for more than 40 years. Watergate doesn’t contradict that because Nixon himself could be quite liberal if it got him votes.
gypsy howell
Why NOT hate the player, when the player helped define the game? Seriously, why not?
eemom
Good work, Doug Hill. You righteously and decently set out to Speak Well of the Dead, and given what you had to work with, you did the very best you could.
kth
To be precise, Broder was neither as vapid as Roberts, nor as creepy as Cohen. High praise indeed!
soonergrunt
@Zifnab:
they’re like some band of loser reindeer–they just go where they’re led without any real thought at all of what’s at the end of the ride or what they’ll do if something bad happens.
eemom
So, what did he die of? I hope he didn’t wander out the nursing home door into Beltway traffic, like I always said he should.
Alex S.
@PeakVT:
My money is on Howard Kurtz.
If David Broder wrote his own obituary..
Many observers say that David Broder is dead, but some insiders have questioned this assessment. They point to evidence that his columns are still running in the newspapers and wonder if the announcement of his death isn’t a trial balloon from the Broder camp designed to gauge the public’s reaction to a new plan under which Broder will die later this spring.
PeakVT
@4tehlulz: Mr. Bowtie was the first person I thought of, too.
300baud
@gypsy howell:
Personally, I’m perfectly comfortable hating the player and the game. Without players, there is no game.
Hunter Gathers
That is, quite possibly. the biggest insult I’ve ever read in my life. I’d rather be called Hitler than be compared to those two fuckwits.
Sentient Puddle
@eemom: This made me think…if we have to Speak Well of the Dead, we are so fucked when Cohen bites it.
General Stuck
@beltane:
We could fix most of these problems by legalizing marijuana and bringing back the draft
soonergrunt
The FBI has arrested a suspect in the Spokane MLK parade bombing attempt.
@eemom: he probably died of boredom.
Amir_Khalid
@eemom: Per the WaPo obit, complications from diabetes.
nestor
The Avenue of Totebags was always thick with hookers.
On a typical Friday night it took us forever to get out of there.
JCT
@eemom: You’re off the hook — “diabetic complications” while in the hospital. Whatever the hell that really means.
And I’m with soonergrunt on this. Broder was the gateway drug to journalism’s short bus.
Scott
Glad he’s dead. Sorry it didn’t happen decades ago.
I’m at least pleased that he’ll be almost entirely unmourned. The wingnuts hate him because he worked in the media. The non-wingnuts hate him because he robotically supported everything that was bad for America.
Oooh, I get a Sullivan award now, don’t I?
hilts
@soonergrunt:
Don’t forget Joe Klein
soonergrunt
@Sentient Puddle: Richard Cohen died today. He wasn’t as deadly as anthrax.
Easily done.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
At his worst, he was an advocate, and at his best (least bad) an apologist, for everything that has gone wrong in this country for the last fifteen years that I’ve been closely following politics. Eric Alterman, who has done the research, puts that time frame at about forty-five years, from Vietnam and Nixon to Iraq, torture and the various obscenities of the Bush/Cheney/McCain/Palin Republican party.
JPL
Broder could have retired years ago before he became a cranky old man and he opened himself to ridicule.
piratedan
@Bob Loblaw: I dunno Bob, perhaps if there was some mediot with the bravery to call out the conservatives/republicans/tehadists/Libertarians from a national platform and begin discussions/discourse on how to fix the ills of our country instead of fellating the corporate interests out there, then there wouldn’t be a need for a blog like this giving you an outlet for your concern troll addictions.
soonergrunt
@hilts: True enough. The list of useless people in the national news and the Washington press corps in particular is long and ‘distinguished.’ And David Broder set the standards for mealy-mouthed half-assed ‘pox-on-both-your-houses’ false equivalency that they’ve all lived down to.
hilts
Doug, there are people out there, but they have been marginalized to a great degree (you won’t find them on cable or on the Sunday morning shows). Check out Chris Hedges, Robert Scheer, Joe Conason, Michael Tomasky, Norman Solomon, Bob Herbert, Naomi Klein, Laura Flanders, Amy Goodman, Thomas Frank, and Errol Lewis.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@soonergrunt:
also, if he didn’t originate the “look forward, not back” idiocy that allows the people who brought us Watergate, Iran/Contra, Impeachement, the Iraq War, et cetera, he certainly sanctified it. If I were making the decisions, he and Russert would spend eternity among the dead of Iraq, listening to the screams of the dying and the tortured
Gus
@If David Broder wrote his own obituary..: We have a winner!
JoyousMN
Apparently it’s “Don’t speak ill of the dead” day here at balloon juice.
either that or it’s “damn them with faint praise” day.
I couldn’t tell.
BombIranForChrist
The game doesn’t exist unless it has players willing to play it. And Broder played it to the hilt.
He was a racist who believed that a bunch of white guys at diners in Iowa were the “real America”, as opposed, I suppose, to the Negroes in the city.
And he was a sycophant to power.
It’s probably distasteful to piss on someone’s grave, but this is just a warm-up for when Cheney et al. start passing. I don’t think death excuses a life dedicated to fucking people over for personal aggrandizement. And that is what Broder did with his willfully false arguments as he helped drive debate that led to actual human suffering.
Fuck ’em.
Southern Beale
Yes, don’t hate the player, hate the game. A commenter at First Draft, my other home when I’m not wasting time here, made this observation:
The national media is largely useless, especially when covering local events and issues, which is increasingly what matters to people.
Sentient Puddle
@soonergrunt: Well done, sir. Well done.
I suppose I could also go with Hitler.
agrippa
Broder was OK in my book. I frequently thought that he was naive; but, I do not think that was mean or excessively partisan.
Corner Stone
@beltane:
I swear to you, I read this and and my first thought was “Is she talking about the Salam-Douthat stratification?”
Corner Stone
@agrippa: Then you’re an idiot.
Chris
I wouldn’t be as charitable as you are, Doug. If “I was just following orders” isn’t a good legal defense, then “I was just filling a niche in the political/media ecosystem” isn’t a good moral defense.
Just because the system rewards center-right assholes doesn’t mean we should let them skate without opprobrium.
4tehlulz
@Sentient Puddle: When you ride with Richard Cohen, you ride with Hitler.
hilts
@Corner Stone:
Agrippa’s comments were mild compared to what Chris Matthews and Charlie Rose will say tonight. Matthews and Rose will deliver the most cloying, nauseating tributes to Broder portraying him as someone who walked on water.
beltane
@Corner Stone: No, no, no. I am not that banned user. But it is true that the NYT/WaPo editorial pages will no longer have quite the same power to shape opinion that they once had. But maybe Jon Stewart will be the new David Broder which brings us all back to square one.
Corner Stone
We won’t really know very much about Broder until we see the letter he wrote his grandkids after Obama was elected.
For that is the true measure of a man.
beltane
@hilts: It gets worse. Charlie Rose will assemble a panel of David Brooks, George Will, Howie Kurtz and Bill Kristol to circle jerk over Broder’s corpse.
hilts
@beltane:
This is the journalistic equivalent of waterboarding. Stop this roundtable, I confess!
nestor
@Bob Loblaw:
Francis Fukuyama is looking for you.
He’s pissed off, and I don’t blame him.
hilts
The tributes are pouring in
from Politico article with the headline
“David S. Broder, dean of political writers, dies at 81”
Suffern ACE
I am too polite too say something so soon, but I hope that he is remembered as the monster who wrote a column last October “advising” Obama to bring the nation together and fix the economy by fomenting a war with Iran. In his last years, he represented the true insanity of the pseudo centrists. He was a symbol of the barely civilized veneer that barely covers craven death fantasies.
gypsy howell
I second that. No one gets a pass just because they died. Especially if they had the good fortune to die at home in bed at a ripe old age, after applauding and sagely approving the death and torture of so many others.
Joe Bauers
@If David Broder wrote his own obituary..: The truth, as is always the case, lies in the middle. Mr. Broder is half-dead. Whether he will write half as many columns or the same number as before but half as long remains to be seen. Either way, Republicans say, it’s good news for Republicans.
El Tiburon
Let’s play:
Snooki should be praised for being classier than Amy Whinehouse and Michelle “Bombshell” McGee.
Andy Dick should be praised for being more in control than Charlie Sheen and Chris Farley.
Sarah Palin should be praise for being less batshit crazy than Michelle Bachman and Louie Gohmert.
Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta)
I always used to confuse “David Broder” and “David Brooks”, to the point where when I try to recall either’s face, I get the same general fuzzy image.
Now, when I see/read one of them, I can just remind myself “Broder’s the dead one, so this must be the other one!”
Elizabelle
@JCT:
Epitaph material. I salute you.
Carl Nyberg
The thing that’s so ingenious about using Cokie Roberts to dispense Beltway CW is that she’s got credibility with older, educated otherwise liberal women.
Broder may have spoke to insiders, but I never got the sense he had much influence outside people who wanted to believe in the DC establishment already.
Jamey: Bike Commuter of the Gods
@Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta):
Fixed.
Bex
@hilts: OMG now Washington Week will have to get a “new” panelist and you can bet it WON’T be Hedges, Sheer, Conason, Tomasky, Solomon, Herbert, Klein, Flanders, Goodman, Frank or Lewis.
Tony J
“He came in and wrecked the place, and it wasn’t his to wreck.”
Stolen from elsewhere, but that about sums him up, no?
hilts
@Bex:
America is completely fucked up beyond repair. Game, set match.
@beltane:
No “maybe” is necessary, Stewart IS the new David Broder.
Brachiator
Ouch. A hit, a very palpable hit.
I still recall one of Krugman’s early appearances on the ABC Sunday show. Cokie, clearly exasperated at having to think about economics, couldn’t respond to Krugman and instead blubbed dismissively that the politicians on the Hill would just vote what they wanted without really understanding anything about deficits and their impact on GDP.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Broder’s dead?
If judging by his columns, he actually died 20 years ago give or take.
somethingblue
It may seem perverse to suggest that, at the very moment his demise is being savored by anyone with a halfway-functional brain in his or her head, David Broder is poised for a comeback. But don’t be astonished if that is the case.
True, Broder has gone through a period of wrenching adjustment to his reduced status. But he now shows signs of renewed energy and is regaining the initiative on several fronts …
Mark S.
@Suffern ACE:
I forgot about that Iran column.
Just like we were made safer by the Iraq invasion and Bush is regarded as one of the most successful presidents in history. It will be different this time, because Iran is three times bigger than Iraq and will greet us with flowers.
agorabum
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I had wondered if he was an eternal hack, only really just went downhill after hitting 65 or so.
I’d hoped he’d done something worthwhile; that he did provide something useful to the world.
Sounds like that’s not the case.
agrippa
@Corner Stone:
Thank you, corner stone.
I guess that I do not have an enemies list; or, I am far too tolerant.
HyperIon
This post is about as insightful as Broder, Cohen, and Roberts are on their best days.
Does that make DougJ proud?
EthylEster
When did the meat ads start reappearing?
JoyousMN
@somethingblue: WIN!WIN!WIN!
rapier
The timing may in hindsight seem portentous. For it is my belief that his comfortable world, run and managed by very serious people out of Washington DC is breaking down.
The panic of 08 was the first crack and while the ‘recovery’ seems to have reinforced the wisdom of the wise men in fact the recovery is false. An illusion, the last one, built upon inertia and hubris.
Of course I could be wrong but before the end of June the cracks in the political economy are going to become fissures nobody can pretend to ignore.
alwhite
HEY! I understand syphilis is not as bad as chlamydia and can be cured unlike herpes – still I have nothing nice to say about it.
My mom always said if you can’t say something nice about a man say nothing at all. So here is what I will say about “the dean”
.
.
.
Ozymandias, King of Ants
@Suffern ACE:
I, however, am not, so:
Fuck David Broder.
I’m glad he’s dead.
May he rot in hell for all eternity.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
The world is a better place with out Broder.
BGinCHI
I can’t wait till Jesus or Satan tell Broder:
“No, both sides don’t do it.
Way to waste your life, genius.”
EthylEster
@agrippa wrote:
He was neither IMO. In fact I think he genuinely hated meanness and excessive partisanship.
He was, however, another powerful journalist who seemed to get left behind by the modern world. He was CLUELESS about the venality of the some of the folks he covered. And in his later years, totally lacking in the desire to comprehend WTF was happening. He kept applying his old analysis even when it was obviously out-moded.
Josh
But even in his thirties he was “left behind by the modern world”: look at his writing on Vietnam.
Corner Stone
@agrippa: I would suggest just not very perceptive.
Broder did more to damage our “civil” discourse than any right wing nutjob pundit ever could.
Broder mainstreamed the false equivalence of civility for one side while the other side called us traitors, threatened us with eliminationist rhetoric, and otherwise took a battleaxe to our agenda.
This latest NPR flapdoodle is just more of his godsdamned legacy.
Mike Kay (Ding-Dong-Broder's Dead)
In Memorandum.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHJoj9IqeKg
Mike Kay (Ding-Dong-Broder's Dead)
Kind of fitting that the Great Satan died of Diabetes considering everything he did to impede government research, including blocking stem cell research.
Live by the wingnut, die by the wingnut.
Mike Kay (Ding-Dong-Broder's Dead)
I haven’t been this happy since traitor Bob Novak checked out.
Triassic Sands
I think this latest move by Broder is probably the beginning of a big turnaround in his fortunes. I expect to see his poll numbers rise dramatically in the near future as this latest comeback gains momentum.
max hats
In regards to David Broder’s death, I think we need to step back from partisan politics and look at this issue from an informed, moderate perspective.
JWL
Hill: Well done. “If you can’t say anything nice about someone, damn them with faint praise”.
Ronc99
I am glad the SOB is dead — his corporatist BS was carried locally in my small liberal city. He has done immense damage with his lies all over this nation. He was the spreader of myths for Wall Street and the military industrial complex.
I pity him ZERO and it is the height of false equivalency that he’s better than those two other morons, Cokie or Cohen.
Ajay
I dont hate him or think of him any stronger terms except that he was woefully incompetent. The fact that he is dead, doesnt change it. There are many replacements waiting to be the next Broder.
Doug Wieboldt
We are so much better off without his (dubious) wisdom. RIP dipshit.
Church Lady
You people are truly unlikeable. Every time someone dies that you don’t think was a cheerleader for your team you can’t wait to figuratively spit on their grave. Karma’s a bitch and someday it will come back to bite you on the ass.
Brandon
This column from FAIR about David Broder is from 1994! It reads like a broken record of his various crimes over the past 10 years. I guess the best I could say about the man is that at least he has been consistent. But not entirely, it seems that the ‘Dean’ was rather quick to figure out which side of the bread is buttered with the rise of our Galtian overlords.
Read the rest.
Your liberal media. Right there folks.
General Stuck
sometimes i’m late on the uptake, especially with post titles, but kudos to you DougJ, don’t hate the player, especially the now dead ones. I just can’t hate on newly dead folks, It may well be a weakness somehow on my part.
mclaren
One small step into the grave for a man, one giant leap forward for journalism.