DAZE OF OUR TIMES: Also channeling Collins!

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2011

Part 4—Something else this way creeps: All the way back in 1992, Katherine Boo complained about the fatuous culture she described as “creeping Dowdism.” (See THE DAILY HOWLER, 11/30/11.)

By now, the Dowdism has burrowed and surged; it suffuses the work of our “press corps.” Last night, the analysts wept and cried when Chris Matthews, one of Maureen Dowd’s dumbest friends, zeroed in on a troubling act by Mitt Romney.

It wasn’t Romney’s budget plan that had the loud silly man so upset. It wasn’t his stance on immigration; it was something more pressing. With the help of two well-scripted friends, Matthews examined the way Candidate Romney had crossed his legs during an interview with the Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier:

MATTHEWS (11/30/11): I’m beginning to see right now, thanks to Bret Baier, who’s done a very good interview here for Fox. I see Mitt Romney starting to get tagged as he’s never been tagged before, and he’s starting to sweat a little.

Watch his leg crossing, which he never does. It’s an odd bit of secondary characteristic. But this guy never moves when he's being interviewed. Here he is, readjusting his presentation in the middle of an interview. Mitt Romney was pretty much—avoided so far one-on-one interviews this political election, but perhaps now we know why.

Take a look at some of the more awkward moments, as I said, in this interview on Fox with Bret Baier. It’s yesterday. Let`s watch:

(VIDEOTAPE OF INTERVIEW SEGMENT)

MATTHEWS: Well, David [Corn], it looks like he flip-flopped with his legs there, because—

(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS: —finally, the guy who is a human statue finally actually crossed his legs, like, “Give me a break here.”

CORN: Yes! Yes!

MATTHEWS: I don’t know what the body language people are saying about that particular gesture...

The crying analysts remembered the day when Matthews wondered what sort of sexual signal Candidate Gore was trying to send to women voters with his three-button suits. In those days, Gore was “the human statue” on this sub-human program, and many things which were much worse. (Matthews was drawing his million-dollar pay from the other team at that time.)

At any rate, this is what “journalistic” culture became as the Dowdism crept, then surged.

The Dowdism crept from the New York Times all through the upper-end “press corps.” Last Saturday, though, we realized that something else has started to creep from the Times to these precincts. A very strong air of Collinism suffused the latest piece by Alexandra Petri, the Washington Post’s “Ashley Parker type.” (Click here, then click once again.)

She didn’t mention Romney’s dog, strapped to the roof of that car for all time. But as she started, Petri—just 23 years old!—was channeling Collins rather deftly. She had her Gail Collins down cold:

PETRI (11/26/11): “Hey, did I miss anything?” people often ask, dashing in late on a night when their favorite show is airing.

The answer, for this week’s CNN National Security Debate, was “No.”

This was an uninspired mid-season episode that was probably necessary to advance the plot. But there were no real cliffhangers, except at the very end, when Rick Santorum began to say something about militant socialists and radical Islamists in South America bonding together to destroy our way of life. But no one pays attention to his subplot, anyway.

This debate was like watching a figure skater fail to qualify for medals. It was perfectly fine. Nobody fell. No one exploded in flames.

Some of you will naturally say, “But wasn’t she doing Lewis Lapham?” And yes, she was also channeling Lapham’s long-standing hook, in which all political activity is compared to a TV sitcom. But as she continued, Petri captured the essence of High Collinism:

The debates are so boring—and there are so many! Why do we have to watch them?

This has been Collins’ low-IQ hook for years. (Also: There are too many candidates! There are too many issues! They make too many speeches!) On Saturday, the precocious child amazed the elders, capturing the high lady’s tone:

PETRI: The camera kept cutting to Ron Paul for no apparent reason. This was especially exciting because people often began their sentences with “I agree with Ron Paul,” and he sometimes got a terrified, harried look as they began industriously shoveling words into his mouth, the look a hedgehog gets when it is crossing the road and catches sight of an approaching steamroller.

Other than that, the episode was very routine and somewhat dry. If this debate walked into a bar with the other debates, it would have to work pretty hard to induce anyone to take it home. It’s a six, at best, and some of these things have been eights. Even Herman Cain’s referring to moderator Wolf Blitzer as “Blitz” wasn’t enough to redeem the evening.

[...]

Mitt Romney continued to inspire aggressive indifference in everyone around him, except Perry, who seemed to notice for the first time that Mitt has been repeating a line about magnets and immigration at every debate. As a result, he appeared momentarily terrified that he was stuck in some horrifying recurrent nightmare in which he shows up at a Republican debate for which he is unprepared.

But even he wasn’t so bad. Pity. Train wrecks are fun to watch. This was no train wreck.

All in all, it was the sort of episode where they announce that no one is going home, and you shrug and admit that that probably makes sense. Cut to commercial.

I, for one, am starting to be impatient for the finale.

Poor Petri! Just 23, and already so bored! But skilled beyond her tender years in adopting the tone of Collinism, which has also started to creep.

For the record, we fact-checked one of this silly child’s claims; for our finding, see below. But as this culture seeps out from the Times, your nation keeps spiraling downward.

Parker and Petri? The new generation! Do they inspire hope for the future? As for Columnist Collins herself, her effort today is, as always, a fount of crucial political knowledge. This is the way her piece ends:

“On immigration, we could all agree to let Romney rant about amnesty now if he will concede that he didn’t give a fig about the whole question back when his lawn was being clipped by undocumented workers in 2006.

“And maybe we could get over his driving to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car if he’d just admit it was because he was too cheap to hire a dog-sitter. Maybe.”

That lawn-care hook is so stupid it squeaks. Meanwhile, did Romney strap his dog to the roof of his car? Now, where in the world have we heard that before? We’ll have to do a fact-check some time.

For this, we sent her to Harvard? Poor Petri! Bored to tears, she was forced to watch the GOP hopefuls debating national security. It wasn’t exciting, the pundit complained. It was dry. It wasn’t fun.

At one point, though, Petri did attempt to make a factual claim. According to Petri, Candidate Perry “seemed to notice for the first time that Mitt has been repeating a line about magnets and immigration at every debate.”

Effortlessly, we fact-checked the young Harvard grad, entering the appropriate terms into the whirring Nexis search engines. Our finding:

According to Nexis, the term “magnet” had last been used at the October 18 debate, the debate where Anderson Cooper made such a fool of himself. According to Nexis—maybe they’re lying!—this is the way it came up:

COOPER (10/18/11): Governor Perry, in the last debate, Governor Romney pointed out that Texas has one of the highest rates of uninsured children in the country, over one million kids. You did not get an opportunity to respond to that. What do you say? How do you explain that?

PERRY: Well, we've got one of the finest health care systems in the world in Texas. As a matter of fact, the Houston, Texas, Medical Center, there's more doctors and nurses that go to work there every morning than any other place in America. But the idea that you can't have access to health care, some of the finest health care in the world—but we have a 1,200-mile border with Mexico, and the fact is we have a huge number of illegals that are coming into this country.

And they're coming into this country because the federal government has failed to secure that border. But they're coming here because there is a magnet. And the magnet is called jobs. And those people that hire illegals ought to be penalized.

And Mitt, you lose all of your standing, from my perspective, because you hired illegals in your home and you knew about it for a year. And the idea that you stand here before us and talk about that you're strong on immigration is on its face the height of hypocrisy.

Perry, who’s almost as dumb as Collins, killed time with the lawn care talking-point too. But as you can see, Petri was just impressively wrong when she tried to advance a real fact.

Oops.

Full disclosure—we didn’t know what we would find when we fact-checked Petri’s snark. But after all these years, we can’t say we were surprised to see that the Washington Post’s Next Big Thing didn’t know what she was talking about—and hadn’t bothered to check.

For this, we sent her to Harvard? But then, in a press corps defined by Rampaging Dowdism, only tone and narrative matter. Petri had rolled her eyes in approved directions. Dearest darlings, thanks to the creep, the facts no longer count!