aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Could a new media day really be dawning?

As we wait to see if the results are persuasive enough to move Hillary to pull out, let’s look back at some of last week’s media on the medias crush on Obama.

In October of 2006, On The Media talked with National Journal columnist Bill Powers about Obamamania, and he said then that the candidate would go through seven defined media milestones, as every candidate does, and that the press’s passion for Obama would eventually peter out. They had him back last week because it hasn’t:

WILLIAM POWERS: There has been no flop. I laid out the stages five or six years ago. I think I said in the piece, actually, that they tend to happen quickly. And Obama is really the exception to that. He has had a very long, fertile period with the press without a major flop.

He’s had a lot of quasi-flops, mini-flops, you might call them, but he has an amazing ability to bounce back from those, to deflect bad press and sort of move on. I think he’s got the best Teflon we’ve seen since maybe Ronald Reagan. [...]

I know the Kennedy comparisons have been flying fast and furious for a long time, but it is something that we haven’t seen the like of since John Kennedy in terms of being up there on the spot. How are you going to respond to X, Y, Z? And he just slips out of it like a gazelle. I mean, it is incredible, the lightness of foot. He really makes Hillary look like a piker. And that’s something.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So let’s say, let’s just say that next week we find out that Obama is going to be the Democratic nominee. Does that mean the flop is inevitable and it occurs during the general election?

WILLIAM POWERS: I hate to say “inevitable” because that’s a dangerous word for a media critic. I mean, this could be the first time someone doesn’t have a flop, let’s say, between now and November.

But I think it is highly likely, because once he’s got the nomination this storyline of Obama’s rise is over. And reporters will be looking for the next storyline. You basically have to do a correction. Like a sailor, you have to tack in the other direction if you’re a political journalist on a campaign.

Then they talked to New York Magazine’s John Heilemann, who covers Hillary:

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Don’t we assume that when Obama says something he is both sincere and tactical and yet we in the media never put the emphasis on the tactical?

JOHN HEILEMANN: He has managed, I think, very successfully over the course of the last year to portray himself as a man of sincerity and a man of authenticity and a man of conviction. And so when we hear him say something that is tactical, we sort of say, well, it’s a necessary evil. He’s being a politician because he kind of has to right now.

[...]

And so there is, yes, there’s a huge amount of subtext and supra-text that has served them incredibly, incredibly well throughout the campaign whereas she, Hillary, that is, came into this campaign with a reputation for being calculating and a reputation for being manipulative.

And so everything we see that she does that is actually kind of standard political fare, we all kind of nod sagely and say, ah, there she goes again, just being the manipulative, calculating Hillary Clinton.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So when are the media going to look themselves in the mirror and say, this isn’t fair – in fact, it isn’t even serving the public?

JOHN HEILEMANN: Well, gosh, I don’t know when that’s going to happen.

[LAUGHTER]

That’s, you know, in Never-Never Land that’s going to happen.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: [LAUGHS] Fair enough.

JOHN HEILEMANN: But if you mean when do I think the media’s going to turn on Obama, I think it’s the day that she’s gone.

And, of course, that day could be tomorrow. But so long as we’re talking Never-Never Land, let’s close with a wonderful thought given voice by one of Slate’s cultural critics, Stephen Metcalf.

In their new feature the Cultural Gabfest while speaking of the late night fake news shows’ stock in trade—poking fun at elected officials—Metcalf wonders if it’s not possible that a new day is dawning [Feb. 28 @ 16:23 min]:

Is it possible that because we’ve become so acclimated to ninnies in public office and officialdom as being home to double-dealing morons that our habits of cynicism are so highly developed that we’re going to train them on this person who doesn’t deserve them and maybe we should accept our good luck. We have a public figure that we should be proud of… We’ve developed these highly-honed, sophisticated, wonderful and entirely necessary habits of cynicism, the vehicle for which is humor, and we may just suddenly enter an era of public life in America where they’re obsolete.

Of course I wonder if there haven’t been—no, I’m quite confident there have been—other elected officials who have not deserved the kind of media pounding and scrutiny our market-driven system demands.