No Avoiding a Media Circus
By Brian Lambert
I hope Barack Obama isn't wasting as much of his day with commercial news as I am, but the juvenile compulsions of America's news-for-profit industry has to be on his mind as he finesses his way through demands for special prosecutors and trials of former Bush administrators over what is so clearly torture. You could see him picking his way through the minefield today in his five-minute answer to a question about prosecutions in the Oval Office with the King of Jordan sitting by, like a potted plant.
I tend to believe Obama when he says the big issues he's dealing with really are big and have to be dealt with now and do not need the distraction of a raging hyper-partisan cat fight, which you and I know is exactly what will happen if anyone higher than an obscure second lieutenant in Gitmo is hauled into court. The New York Times wants to impeach the judge who sanctioned the various techniques used by interrogators getting their OK from the Bush White House. But such an impeachment would drop lassos around the necks of every Bush administration official above Judge Bybee's pay grade in hopes of finding some kind of leverage to blunt the disaster.
This predicament was inevitable. Bush and Cheney simply left too much evidence on the table, so to speak, for it to be ignored. My guess was always that Obama would simply say pretty much what he's saying now, namely, "This is a legal matter. I'm busy with other stuff." But all the characters in the media circus know very well that there's no such thing as calculated indifference when it comes to this kind of thing. You're either for it or agin' it. (Hell, there are laws that say you HAVE to prosecute.) If the President doesn't want this to happen, it doesn't happen.
At least that's pretty much the way it has gone down for the previous eight years. But a huge part of Obama's cachet, here and abroad, is his promise to do the right thing no matter how hard it is. Which pretty much puts him in the position of, if not exactly, saying, "Let's go get the bastards," at least doing nothing to impede whatever investigation and prosecution rears its slimey little head. And there could be a LOT of those critters squirming out from under rocks.
But when Obama is finally alone, he has to slump at the thought of the airwaves and front pages lighting up night after night, morning after morning with the usual hellfire of spin and invective from crusading lefties and damage-controlling Republicans, all consumed with who is winning and losing "the game." Obama may be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, but, by and large, the American press, determined to be right where everyone else is all the time, isn't quite as good at multitasking.
I haven't heard anyone yet who doesn't think a special prosecutor or the Senate investigation or anything out of the Attorney General's office wouldn't eventually get to The Big Three—Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and the other guy, Bush. Theirs wasn't the kind of administration where rogue aides did whatever they damned well pleased without one of those top guys pressing his seal into the hot wax. Hence, from Day One of Special Prosecutor, the clock would start ticking toward White House indictments.
Out here in the provinces, with local media consumed with "local, local" crime, corruption, sports, and weather coverage . . . and heart-warming stories of community fellowship . . . the All Torture Trials All the Time action might play a bit lower on the front page. But with most local papers basically reduced to repeater facilities for The New York Times, there'll be no escaping it.
And I say this—big surprise here—as someone who thinks, "It's about friggin' time" when it comes to laying hits on every lawbreaker of the past eight years. (And if they want to roll in what's his name, Jefferson, the Democrat with the $90k in aluminum foil in his freezer, go right ahead. Our moral standing requires fair investigation and prosecution.)
But with literally trillions of dollars on the table, and I bet anything Obama is considering this, the eye has to stay on the ball. The press did a worse than horse-sh*t job of covering the huge investment banks prior to the meltdown and is only marginally better now. But Obama needs every eyeball of what's left of the press to follow the money through TARP and all the other bailouts.
Bankers unfortunately are boring—except when they're throwing lavish balls and birthday parties for themselves, which the "society press" faithfully covers like the fanzines they are—they present too many numbers and acronyms and too little conflict. But a shrieking, long-running Left v. Right variation on the culture war . . . now, while it ain't exactly JonBenet/O .J./Monica Lewinsky, it is still pretty good stuff. Saleable stuff. Promotable stuff. Stuff that every news organization has built into its DNA. The kind of stuff that a paper/broadcaster/cable operator can make some money off of.
When it comes to high crimes, I still say the Romanians had it right with The Trial of the Ceaucescus. But I doubt Obama will consider that course.
© 2008 MSP Communications, Inc. All rights reserved
It's getting good, thorough coverage at the trickle rate right now from the NYT, etc.
As this coverage piles up higher and higher, it'll eventually serve as so many noxious sand bags to provide a political dike from which the AG can bring some prosecutions against the Bush officials people who contrived the legal cover for the use of torture and those who gave them the assignment.
FOX continuing to give Cheney a forum can only help further innoculate the Obama administration from contrived jowel flapping dudgeon from the right.
LAMBERT: Obama needs a focus -- not just his own, but in the culture -- on the, uh, "paradigm shifts" he and a lot of lefties want. Personally, I'll trade the sight of Dick Cheney in leg irons for universal health care.
Posted by: Jim Leinfelder on April 22, 2009 at 2:37 PM
Don't forget Don "I stand eight hours a day, what's the big deal" Rumsfeld.
LAMBERT: You stand. Stuff happens.
Posted by: Maureen Meyer on April 22, 2009 at 3:42 PM
The networks won't like it, but the best solution would be, after a few more reports come in smelling like fried skunk, to put Pat Fitzgerald on the case. He's impartial, he's hard working, he's meticulous, and he can keep a grand jury out of the press. In a year or two, indictments backed by careful legal reasoning and abundant evidence will be made. Obama can say that those who have a problem with indictments can argue with Fitzgerald, and good luck with that.
The networks will be stupid about that but they're always stupid about something. There's the intellectual laziness of herd journalism, but then there's the corruption. The Pulitzers just came out, and since they're about journalism, the networks are unlikely to cover them, particularly they're unlikely to cover the NY Times Pulitzer showing that the network military analysts were on the pay roll of various defense contractors, and the networks either didn't bother to ask or didn't bother to mention the facts to the audience.
Still, the worst is the larger corruption. If, in watching the evening news, I paid as much attention to the ads as the stories, I would conclude that the major medical problems facing the U.S. are incontinence and erectile dysfunction. I don't know what the networks' business plans are, but I suspect biting the hand that feeds them doesn't occur. So, although the health care crisis turns up pretty high on every poll of the American people, the chances of getting critical stories on the health care system are about zero, at least if they attack the big pharma and the health industry. PBS can do it on Frontline, but not the networks. For example, last fall the UN came out with a report on world wide infant mortality, and the U.S. finished 17th. Infant mortality is one of the garden variety measures, along with things like longevity and maternal mortality, of the quality of a health care system. I don't recall the networks even mentioning the fact, though they did find time to snicker over the alleged fidelity gene in voles.
LAMBERT: I made a point of watching every nightly newscast the night the Pulitzers were announced. Zero. Nothing at all. Barstow's story on the bought-and-paid for generals was a given to win, yet the silence from the Gibsons, Williams, etc. is pretty deafening. Dare I say this is another reason that the public needs the blogosphere -- at least the part that is paying attention to this stuff -- more than ever? There are only a few upsides to the lack of monetization on the internet, indifference to sponsorship is one of them.
Posted by: john sherman on April 22, 2009 at 7:18 PM
We were lashed by the last administration, who chastised us with statements like 'we are a land of laws', but the next effect was simply to rub the salt in the wounds as we learned about cooked intelligence that got us into the quagmire of Iraq and cooked legal opinions that justified torture; both slaps in the face of the justice and moral standing that was formed from treaties and rulings coming from the UN and Nuremburg, et al. The USA lost the moral high ground and proved not to be law-abiding at the highest levels. And as we see, the justice is more than blind here, it is elusive.
Fed up with that? So how about fantasy justice. We can run it like Fantasy Baseball or Football, then dramatize it and show it on MSM like American Idol, or even merely part of the infotainment news?
Investigations? Primetime them! But first, let's be efficient, no one wants to watch boring court TV, so think outside the box--
--let's combine two into one--to test the effectiveness of torture for all the world to see--by waterboarding the torture memo writers and recipients. If torture is effective in getting results, then the world wants to see these results now, sponsors should be easy to find for these shows, eh?
Let's make it even more efficient by starting at the top of the chain of command (Cheney and Rove) instead of at the bottom (Bybee and Gonzalez).
I don't have a TV, but for this I would buy one, so just think of how this would stimulate the world's economy!
Investigation two, of course, would be Wall Street, but why let the lawyers have all the fun...here's my plan--
--We liquidate the banks--everyone in the USA and the UK (why UK? Because America never was more a colony than in these past 10 years, but a colony of the investment BANKERS of the UK), BUT (here is the critical part) everyone has to receive all their money in single dollar or pound paper notes, why?
It might be obvious by now...because it makes it easier for the mobs of pitchforks and torches to find the right houses and to provide fuel for the upcoming fires!
Film at 11...for months to come I think.
I think its both efficient and reasonable, and likely cathartic and entertaining as a bonus.
LAMBERT: I'm laughing. But "fantasy justice" is pretty good. Or at least the equivalent of a "dead pool", with bets on who goes down on indictment, who skates, and why ... and just for the hell of it whether Norm Coleman can stall until Labor Day.
Posted by: The Other Mike on April 23, 2009 at 3:37 PM
Well, if I can't get Fantasy Justice on the air, I'll follow Will's lead instead--
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/will-bunch/torture-is-not-about-winn_b_191719.html
It's pretty level-headed and logical, it will probably not get the sponsorship FJ would get, but if it works to shine the light on these abuses, I'm in.
LAMBERT: And check out the menu for much ballyhooed satellite and ask yourself how unique and interesting 90% of that stuff sounds.
Posted by: The Other Mike on April 28, 2009 at 8:38 PM