The New York Times chases Salon: Two weeks back, Harold Meyerson wrote an instructive column in the Washington Post.
In effect, the column praised Zephyr Teachout’s challenge to Andrew Cuomo in New York’s gubernatorial primary. Meyerson also praised liberal voters who walked away from Cuomo.
In effect, Meyerson offered good sound advice to Democratic voters. According to Meyerson, we shouldn’t let politicians buy us off with “social issues” while they pander to plutocrats about everything else:
MEYERSON (9/11/14): That was a notably unimpressive victory that Andrew Cuomo secured in Tuesday's Democratic primary election in New York, receiving his party's nod for a second term as governor. Cuomo defeated Fordham University law professor Zephyr Teachout, a largely unknown and almost totally unfunded political novice, 62 percent to 34 percent—“the strongest challenge to an incumbent governor,” the New York Times noted, since the advent of gubernatorial primaries in the state. Teachout's total, the Times continued, was "a signal of the potent dissatisfaction with Mr. Cuomo in his party's left wing."When we read that column, we thought of the diet of issues we tend to get fed on MSNBC. The millionaire anchors tend to focus on social issues, along with a good solid dose of partisan thrills and enjoyment.
Cuomo's estrangement of Democratic liberals wasn't due to any social conservatism on his part. In his first term as governor, Cuomo pushed through a same-sex marriage bill and tighter gun-control legislation. But his resistance to some key economic imperatives, allowing New York City to set a minimum-wage rate higher than the state's and keeping a heightened tax rate on the income of the state's wealthiest residents (that is, Wall Street bankers), and his unwillingness to campaign for Democratic control of the state Senate, which would boost the prospects for such legislation, angered many of his fellow Democrats. They believed Cuomo was cultivating Wall Street support for a possible presidential bid, an ambition that stood athwart their efforts to mitigate New York's skyscraper-high inequality.
[...]
Cuomo's travails reflect a growing trend in Democratic politics: In blue cities and states, being a social liberal will no longer suffice.
They tend to ignore some basic economic issues which might offend the plutocrats and what Ken Burns calls “the trusts.” In such ways, one might imagine, large salaries paid by corporate owners are perhaps kept alive.
We thought of Meyerson’s column again when we scanned the Sunday Review in yesterday’s New York Times. The issue here isn’t quite the same, but it’s in the ballpark.
Talk about getting fed a diet of excitement about the social issues, especially about exciting matters of sex! We thought yesterday’s selection of pieces was strikingly odd:
On its front page, the Sunday Review featured a 2235-word piece by Charles Blow concerning the history of his sexual preference. (It’s an excerpt from a forthcoming book which may be quite good.)
Inside the section, Maureen Dowd was wasting everyone’s time with a column in which she visits Willie Nelson’s bus and gets herself good and high on ganja—“Mary Jane,” hemp. Or something—the gods of sanity refused to let us reach her thrilling conclusion.
For our money, Nicholas Kristof really completed the hat trick. We thought his column represented the day’s weirdest manifestation.
Kristof began in an unusual way, with a reference to a naked nude photo—a naked nude photo of someone unclothed which was right there on the page, right there next to his column!
Warning! Naked photo of someone unclothed!
KRISTOF (9/21/14): Alicia Keys is a superstar singer who has mostly kept her clothes on and gossip off. So what is she doing in this photo, dressed only in a peace sign?The photo in question was right there, fronting Kristof’s column. As we soon learned, it showed the naked and pregnant Keys engaged in a bit of high-minded introspection:
KRISTOF (continuing directly): Her answer has to do with the purpose of life. Last month, as she was sickened by grim news—from the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., to the toll in Gaza and Syria—a friend of hers lobbed a provocative question about the meaning of our existence: Why are you here?Really? No one had asked her that question before? Do you really believe that?
“Nobody had asked me that question before,” Keys recalled. It got her thinking about her mission in life, her legacy. She is one of the world’s best-known singers, but many of her songs have been about love or heartbreak. She has 35 million fans on Facebook and almost 20 million followers on Twitter, but she wasn’t leveraging that audience for some broader purpose.
So she is now starting a We Are Here movement to channel her music and her fans to social justice causes, from stricter gun laws to criminal justice reform, from gay rights to global girls’ education.
Alicia Keys is 33—in fact, 33 and a half! Do you really believe that statement, except perhaps in some tremendously narrow technical sense?
We can’t say we believe that statement. But for whatever reason, Kristof did! He even ran the naked nude photo, which has no apparent connection to any known attempt to answer such a question, which everyone else wastes time answering when they’re maybe ten.
Or when they get stoned on Nelson’s bus! Which may have happened to Dowd!
We thought yesterday’s Sunday Review was strange. (Most weeks, it’s amazingly dull.) As we perused its unusual offerings, we thought of the way the new Salon made an obvious decision at some point to go heavily tabloid, with lots and lots of sexy-time sex talk for human interest.
Sexuality is a very important subject, of course. It’s also the easiest way to attract the eyeballs of us the rubes.
Yesterday, was the New York Times sincere? Or was the paper chasing eyeballs?
Maybe it’s just our imagination, but this morning, the New York Times almost seems to be keeping it up.
Today’s National section is full of reports about pointless disputes concerning strip clubs, with the trill of a child pornography case—in the military!—added as a chaser.
In the first of the strip club reports, the Times includes a photograph of “a dancer using the name Melody.” How else could the paper help us grasp what its report is about?
Do you believe the Times is sincere in its recent topic selection? Everything is possible, of course. As a general matter, we think such an assumption would be a bad idea.
Back to Meyerson’s somewhat different, somewhat similar point:
Obviously, the “social issues” are very important. But when we watch The One True Channel, we sometimes note the topics which don’t get discussed, as well as the topics which do.
We sometimes wonder if corporate suits are creating our blend of topics for us. Are some topics picked to grab our eyeballs? Are other topics perhaps discarded in thrall to plutocrats?
A final possible look behind the curtain:
Over at the new Salon, Tracy Clark-Flory is one of the most ridiculous floggers of all matters sexual and pseudo-sexual. After this rather pathetic bad-faith presentation, we decided to find out who Tracy Clark-Flory is.
To her credit, she makes no “boners” about it! At Linked In, Clark-Flory tells future employers that she “consistently ranks among Salon’s top traffic drivers.”
We have no doubt that she does! But in politics as in journalism, a question may arise:
Why does Clark-Flory do it? What makes the new Salon run?
Media Matters has been complaining because the march against climate change, attended by 150,000 people this past weekend, received no coverage on the Sunday morning news shows. Hillary Clinton said that climate change will provide the biggest challenges to our nation in coming years. Perhaps it isn't only financial interests that are being neglected in favor of social issues.
ReplyDeleteWe'll see who on MSNBC covers the climate change protest this evening, and how long it will take Somerby to accuse them of working against progressive interests.
DeleteIf they do work against progressive interests, shouldn't someone say so?
Delete"If"
DeleteWhen they do work against progressive interests, shouldn't someone say so? Feel better now?
DeleteThat protest rally against climate change was silly. Years ago, I particpated protest rallies against the Vietnamese War, for free speech, and opposing racism. There were things that could be fixed by changes in government or university policy, and were more-or-less fixed.
DeleteBut, nature doesn't care how many people protest. Rallying to demand that the climate stop warming is like King Canute ordering the tide not to come in.
You are a troll, after all
DeleteI'm sorry now that I said you weren't a troll.
Then don't feed it.
DeleteGee Bob, maybe Clark-Fory being one of the top traffic drivers at Salon tells you something about "why they they do it." If the slop she served wasn't being consumed, do you think she'd stop serving it? Are the people who read her being forced to do it? Would Salon have higher or lower readership if they focused on high-minded topics like poverty and all that stuff?
ReplyDeleteWe have millions of people unemployed, inequality at record levels, and we just had a huge protest rally occur -- the biggest in decades -- over the topic of climate change. Maybe being a "liberal" or "progressive" doesn't mean what you think it means. Maybe you endlessly wag your finger at the wrong targets. Somebody reads and watches these people, somebody wants to hear what they are saying, and those somebodies aren't all that interested in economic issues, or they'd take time out from reading vaguely titillating psuedo-smut to rally for jobs, instead of climate change. Or legalizing pot. Or gay marriage.
Not for the first time, I wonder what the average income of the readers of Salon, or TPM, ot Huffpo, or the viewers of MSNBC, or even the readers of this blog, are. I bet they have a lot more in common, income-wise, with the average Republican voter than with the average working class person. Is it any wonder that thy aren't all that concerned about economic issues, besides occasionally paying lip service to them?
News organizations are supposed to report news, not provide entertainment. Yes, entertainment is more entertaining than news -- duh. News used to be provided as a public service, in exchange for being allowed access to limited resources like airwaves. Now, it is expected to be a profit center and it chases viewers (or readers) just like any other type of publication or show. Unfortunately, we as a society haven't lost the need for objective examination of events and politics.
DeleteIf places like Salon, TPM, Huffpo and MSNBC stopped pretending to offer reporting and analysis and stated that they were entertainment (much as the Daily Show does), they would not be held to the same standards and could pursue the mighty dollar unfettered. That would still leave a gap because voters would have greater difficulty researching issues before voting, participating in our democracy, staying abreast of current events and living as informed, involved citizens of a democracy. Plutocrats would like voters to stop paying attention. Starving voters of news, managing what they hear, pretending that infotainment is really news -- all of this works to support plutocracy and echoes the warnings of books like 1984 and similar dystopian novels. We can head down that path, but it doesn't lead anywhere good, in my opinion.
In a capitalist economy, we need to watch out that everything doesn't become commodified. This is true of news and information. If people want to have fun, why don't they seek out actual entertainment instead of pretending that Maddow is informing them instead of stroking their prejudices and telling jokes at the expense of favorite targets (this used to be called scapegoating).
Yes, the old false "news" vs. "entertainment" dichotomy.
Delete@ 1:50
DeleteTheir existence depends on being able to tell people what they are getting is "news." And it IS news -- of a sort. It's just not news that has value to anyone interested in traditional progressive issues like class. And people consume it, anyway.
Teachout got 34% of the vote. In a Democratic primary. Against a hack like Cuomo. In an era when working class people are suffering more than they have at any time since the Depression. And this, we are told, is a triumph. Time to go back to reading about weird sex fantasies. Liberalism is on the march!
Maddow, and her fascinating interview with Jon Stewart, claims to be a comedian similar to him. She tells him that she sees what they do is not be that much different. When she says this , he answers with a sarcastic joke. He is trying to tell her that of course, what she does is not comedy. And that if it was, she would be doing a horrible job of it he explains she does not approach it from a comedic angle like he does. He spends almost the entire interview criticizing her show and cable news in general in the same way Bob does. At one point he calls it all 'tribal" throughout the entire interview, she is pathetically clueless about the issues he raised. She seems like a cool person but doesn't seem to have thought much about the context of her place in the spectrum of news and entertainment.
DeleteOn the link you provided at 5:28 Stewart says: "My problem is, *it's become tribal* and if you have 24 hour networks ... that focus ... their job is to highlight the conflict between two sides and I don't think that's the main conflict in our society." This is what Bob is trying to tell you.
DeleteIt's facsinating how in her face he gets about what she does while being polite. She's pretty clueless throughout, as you are now. At least you have an excuse, you're not an expert in these matters. He so much smarter about media than she is. She seems like a cool person. I was dumb as her about media when I first got in it.
At 9:25 he says to her: "false equivalence is something that you are doing as well".
At 20:52 she says "A lot of people who watch your show and watch cable news think of what we do as not being that different*, which sucks for me because I used to be the sort of mildly amusing person *using humor to tell the story* of the wasteful F 35 second engine on the fighter jet and now I am the person trying to be Jon Stewart and sucking." He replies "I love that F 35 bit." Can you see what he's trying to tell her? Probably not. That's okay.
There's more at 30:10 where she talks about her process and his process for putting the show together being the same. He also sarcastically makes fun of how wrong she is about that.
What concerns me is the Cecil B. DeMille cast that Somerby seems compelled to throw into his posts.
ReplyDeleteIn this one, by order of appearance, they are:
Harold Meyerson
Zephyr Teachout
Andrew Cuomo
Ken Burns
Charles Blow
Maureen Dowd
Willie Nelson
Nicholas Kristof
Alicia Keys
Melody, the dancer
Tracy Clark-Flory
That is a very troubling list!
DeleteI am thankful though that someone took the time to compile it. Maybe now that this information is in this easy-to-use format, more people will begin to treat this issue with the seriousness it deserves.
Well done, 1:46 Anon; I too am concerned.
So, so concerned.
It does seem to show how Somerby's mind flits from one thought to the next, unencumbered by a central thesis.
DeleteTrolls agreeing with trolls, or one troll agreeing with himself.
DeleteIt's very problematic - the names mentioned.
DeleteYou omitted Mary Jane from your list.
DeleteFrom Buzzflash
ReplyDeleteHow Rich Old White Men Are Taking Lunch Money Away From Inner-City Black Kids
So blogger isn't the only one who cares about black kids,
I'm puzzled by the absence of comment in Bob's posts (unless I've missed it) or anywhere else (unless I've missed it) about Maureen Dowd's recently being cut from two columns a week to only one. I'd like to know the story behind that -- could it be that the Times is finally seeing her as a liability?
ReplyDeleteWho knows? Perhaps Maureen was straining for two columns a week and wanted to cut back.
DeleteI do find it interesting that Somerby has yet to mention this swipe at Dowd that appeared on a Web site that is under sacred oath to never, ever, ever criticize Dowd:
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/26/maureen_dowds_sorkin_esque_mess_whats_behind_her_unreadable_swipe_at_obamas_golf_game/
She too stoned for two.
DeleteInteresting you mention Burns. Harper's, in its latest issue, reports that his No. 1 underwriter is Bank of America. "God bless the Bank of America,” Burns told the journalist.
ReplyDeletehttp://harpers.org/archive/2014/10/pbs-self-destructs/?single=1
Anyone who actually wants to get across the very legitimate picture that MSNBC focuses on social issues and straight partisanship at the expense of more important economic issues will refrain from the personal assaults accusing individual commentators on the network of "clowning" and "snarking" and "sneering."
ReplyDeleteWhy can't both criticisms be raised?
DeleteThe way that he/she/it frames it tells you all you need to know.
DeleteThe boutique lib doesn't respect or care about the working poor. Sadly, too many of them now take after conservatives and the same suck up/kick down attitude.
Delete
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