I haven’t had a chance to watch the Nightline interview with John Edwards yet, but I did read his statement after penning a letter to him. (FWIW, I’m inclined to say that I found his statement to be relatively redeeming.) As Slate pointed out, this kind of story is only a story when hypocrisy is involved (Again, see: Larry Craig.), as it was with Jesse Jackson. But even Jackson was able to maintain a public image. (Kind of.) And sure, mainstream media’s reluctance to cover the story is worth mentioning as well.
But I found Alessandra Stanley's article, True or False: Everyone Looks 10 Pounds Guiltier on TV, to be just a wash of anti-Edwards rhetoric. Stanley writes: “Even if he acted to pre-empt another wave of reports, Mr. Edwards didn’t need to put himself in front of a camera. Silence, or a written statement followed by a tactical retreat from public life, would have sufficed. But apparently Mr. Edwards is not ready to leave the stage; he just wanted to have more control over the script.”
Really? Because if he hadn’t gone in front of the cameras, what would the media have said then? And honestly, what’s wrong with controlling the script? Stanley does no more than piss and moan about smart politicking. In her world, Edwards was damned because he did, but by someone else’s standards, he was damned if he didn’t.
If Alessandra Stanley was really looking for an example of someone looking 10 pounds guiltier on TV, maybe she should have watched the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremonies on Friday night instead. Because as Iraq’s four athletes entered the stadium, George W. Bush’s face contorted into an uncomfortable smirk that was worth several thousand lives worth of guilt. Or when Thailand entered the stadium, Bush exemplified all the enthusiasm for his country that one might expect from a president so disliked, as he disinterestedly slapped his thigh with the American flag and stared blankly into space.
At the very least Edwards apologizes for his behavior.
Monday, August 11, 2008
What does 10 pounds of guilt really look like?
Friday, August 8, 2008
My Dear John Letter
Dear John,
I really hoped against hope that the National Enquirer was pulling a Bat Boy on you. Even last night, as I watched The Birdcage and National Enquirer reporters trailed Gene Hackman’s senatorial character down to South Beach for a scandal, I thought of you and my stomach clenched up with fear. What if the tabloids were right? I took another bite of Black Diamond Cheddar to calm myself. No, I repeated. This politician who seemed like America’s son—the Bobby Kennedy of my generation—would not so scandalize himself or undermine his party.
And now, I discover, I’m the one who was wrong.
I’m a big girl, and I know that people aren’t perfect. Even Bobby had more than his fair share of fish in the sea. But in today’s cable news age—the Golden Era of Exaggerated and Reiterated News—wrong-footing like that spells career disasters, right? (See: Larry Craig.) But, look. That foot is neither here nor there, and the real issue is that I believed in you, your ideals and your policies, I stood up for you when Obamaniacs put you down as some big-time, overprivileged lawyer, and the whole time, you were lying to me, everybody else, and dare I say—yourself?
Do you remember the first time we met, John? It was 2005, I was only 20, it was a drizzly fall Sunday afternoon at Northwestern University, and you made a quick stop to talk with us College Democrats. After your speech, you spoke to a handful of us about what you’d been up to in the last year since the loss of the 2004 election. You were more than charismatic—your energy and enthusiasm enchanted me. You spoke of domestic issues like education and health care in such lyrical terms that you were more bard than politician. I was smitten, won over, and already invested in you, who I saw as a bright light in that dark time still shrouded in the residue of 9/11, an endless war, a lost election, and, most freshly, Katrina. When you and your aides left that day, I was spellbound and sung your praises to my friends. And so I did, until recently.
I’m only 23, so I’m young and that means a couple things.
First, I don’t know a whole ton about what it’s like to bear the burden of America’s troubles as you run for office and your wife struggles with cancer. I’m sure that must be hard. But I also know the simple truth that when you fight to represent a country you love, you want to practice the morals that you preach.
Second, I think I’m too young to become jaded by politics and politicians, but I’m beginning to feel like I’m well on my way. For a while, I too considered a life in politics, but after enough involvement in college politics to recognize it wasn’t for me, I left it up to people like you to do what’s right.
But finally, and thankfully, I haven’t given up yet. I am disappointed in you, I’m hugely disappointed in this election, and I’m infinitely disappointed (and flabbergasted) by a country that could elect Bush twice. Despite whatever mistakes you’ve made, I still want to believe in you, and I hope that whatever you have to say gives me a reason to believe and your actions from here on out give me justification in that belief.
Thanks for listening,
Caitlin
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Bowling 1, Health Care 0
"News is different from other programming on television or other content in print. It is essential to an informed electorate. And an informed electorate is essential to freedom itself. But as long as corporations to which news gathering is not the primary source of income or expertise get to decide what information about the candidates “sells,” we are not functioning as well as we could if we had the engaged, skeptical press we deserve."
By Elizabeth Edwards, via NYT
FOR the last month, news media attention was focused on Pennsylvania and its Democratic primary. Given the gargantuan effort, what did we learn?
Well, the rancor of the campaign was covered. The amount of money spent was covered. But in Pennsylvania, as in the rest of the country this political season, the information about the candidates’ priorities, policies and principles — information that voters will need to choose the next president — too often did not make the cut. After having spent more than a year on the campaign trail with my husband, John Edwards, I’m not surprised.
Why? Here’s my guess: The vigorous press that was deemed an essential part of democracy at our country’s inception is now consigned to smaller venues, to the Internet and, in the mainstream media, to occasional articles. I am not suggesting that every journalist for a mainstream media outlet is neglecting his or her duties to the public. And I know that serious newspapers and magazines run analytical articles, and public television broadcasts longer, more probing segments.
But I am saying that every analysis that is shortened, every corner that is cut, moves us further away from the truth until what is left is the Cliffs Notes of the news, or what I call strobe-light journalism, in which the outlines are accurate enough but we cannot really see the whole picture.
It is not a new phenomenon. In 1954, the Army-McCarthy hearings — an important if painful part of our history — were televised, but by only one network, ABC. NBC and CBS covered a few minutes, snippets on the evening news, but continued to broadcast soap operas in order, I suspect, not to invite complaints from those whose days centered on the drama of “The Guiding Light.”
The problem today unfortunately is that voters who take their responsibility to be informed seriously enough to search out information about the candidates are finding it harder and harder to do so, particularly if they do not have access to the Internet.
Did you, for example, ever know a single fact about Joe Biden’s health care plan? Anything at all? But let me guess, you know Barack Obama’s bowling score. We are choosing a president, the next leader of the free world. We are not buying soap, and we are not choosing a court clerk with primarily administrative duties.
What’s more, the news media cut candidates like Joe Biden out of the process even before they got started. Just to be clear: I’m not talking about my husband. I’m referring to other worthy Democratic contenders. Few people even had the chance to find out about Joe Biden’s health care plan before he was literally forced from the race by the news blackout that depressed his poll numbers, which in turn depressed his fund-raising.
And it’s not as if people didn’t want this information. In focus groups that I attended or followed after debates, Joe Biden would regularly be the object of praise and interest: “I want to know more about Senator Biden,” participants would say.
But it was not to be. Indeed, the Biden campaign was covered more for its missteps than anything else. Chris Dodd, also a serious candidate with a distinguished record, received much the same treatment. I suspect that there was more coverage of the burglary at his campaign office in Hartford than of any other single event during his run other than his entering and leaving the campaign.
Who is responsible for the veil of silence over Senator Biden? Or Senator Dodd? Or Gov. Tom Vilsack? Or Senator Sam Brownback on the Republican side?
The decision was probably made by the same people who decided that Fred Thompson was a serious candidate. Articles purporting to be news spent thousands upon thousands of words contemplating whether he would enter the race, to the point that before he even entered, he was running second in the national polls for the Republican nomination. Second place! And he had not done or said anything that would allow anyone to conclude he was a serious candidate. A major weekly news magazine put Mr. Thompson on its cover, asking — honestly! — whether the absence of a serious campaign and commitment to raising money or getting his policies out was itself a strategy.
I’m not the only one who noticed this shallow news coverage. A report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy found that during the early months of the 2008 presidential campaign, 63 percent of the campaign stories focused on political strategy while only 15 percent discussed the candidates’ ideas and proposals.
Watching the campaign unfold, I saw how the press gravitated toward a narrative template for the campaign, searching out characters as if for a novel: on one side, a self-described 9/11 hero with a colorful personal life, a former senator who had played a president in the movies, a genuine war hero with a stunning wife and an intriguing temperament, and a handsome governor with a beautiful family and a high school sweetheart as his bride. And on the other side, a senator who had been first lady, a young African-American senator with an Ivy League diploma, a Hispanic governor with a self-deprecating sense of humor and even a former senator from the South standing loyally beside his ill wife. Issues that could make a difference in the lives of Americans didn’t fit into the narrative template and, therefore, took a back seat to these superficialities.
News is different from other programming on television or other content in print. It is essential to an informed electorate. And an informed electorate is essential to freedom itself. But as long as corporations to which news gathering is not the primary source of income or expertise get to decide what information about the candidates “sells,” we are not functioning as well as we could if we had the engaged, skeptical press we deserve.
And the future of news is not bright. Indeed, we’ve heard that CBS may cut its news division, and media consolidation is leading to one-size-fits-all journalism. The state of political campaigning is no better: without a press to push them, candidates whose proposals are not workable avoid the tough questions. All of this leaves voters uncertain about what approach makes the most sense for them. Worse still, it gives us permission to ignore issues and concentrate on things that don’t matter. (Look, the press doesn’t even think there is a difference!)
I was lucky enough for a time to have a front-row seat in this campaign — to see all this, to get my information firsthand. But most Americans are not so lucky. As we move the contest to my home state, North Carolina, I want my neighbors to know as much as they possibly can about what these men and this woman would do as president.
If voters want a vibrant, vigorous press, apparently we will have to demand it. Not by screaming out our windows as in the movie “Network” but by talking calmly, repeatedly, constantly in the ears of those in whom we have entrusted this enormous responsibility. Do your job, so we can — as voters — do ours.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Ohio Primary
I've tried to think of a way to express how anxious I am about this primary. I didn't really come up with anything more eloquent than: I'm really anxious about this primary and get physically sick when I think about these campaigns.
It's no secret, if you know me, that I was very supportive of John Edwards. My choice since he left the race has been up in the air, and I finally made a decision on Saturday and Express Mailed my ballot to Warren County.
All I can do now is wait and watch the results come in tonight--except not on MSNBC. Fuck Tim Russert.
