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 Recent commentary from National Journal: Social Studies: Bush Didn't Squander the World's Sympathy. He Spent It. (May 13, 2003) Bush is no sophisticate, but he has the great virtue of knowing a dead policy when he sees one. By Jonathan Rauch. Legal Affairs: Three Judges, Four Opinions, 1,638 Pages, and One Good Idea (May 13, 2003) The judges' ruling on soft money might curb influence-peddling without harming the two parties. By Stuart Taylor Jr. Political Pulse: A Delicate Balance in the Middle East (May 13, 2003) If Bush pushes too hard, he could pay a political price. By William Schneider. Media: The Social X-Ray (May 6, 2003) The flap over over Rick Santorum's remarks about homosexuality shouldn't be lamented, but welcomed. By William Powers. Opening Argument: Santorum on Sex: Where the Slippery Slope Leads (May 6, 2003) Santorum's remarks are more plausible as legal analysis than most critics have acknowledged. By Stuart Taylor Jr. Political Pulse: The Turbo-Charged Challenger (May 6, 2003) In attacking Bush's tax cuts, Gephardt is betting the economy will remain the nation's top concern. By William Schneider. Wealth of Nations: A Struggling Economy? It Depends on Your Perspective (May 6, 2003) Most nations would be only too grateful to have America's current set of economic problems. By Clive Crook. More from National Journal. |
Media 
The Call of the SkunkIt's time for journalists to get back in touch with their nasty, scandal-loving selves by William Powers ..... The 2004 campaign barely sputtered to life this week, but the media class was all over it with a kind of desperate zeal. For journalists, the White House race is never just a story; it's a sport and a pastime. But these days, it's also something else: a welcome distraction from the shockingly barren landscape of postwar news. You know things are bad when Dick Gephardt suddenly seems bold and fascinating. It was funny and a little sad to watch the news business try to sell the debate, and the microscopic handicapping of the Dems, as compelling content. The Economist magazine went so far as to offer a chart in which each candidate's war views were graded on a scale that employed cute little pictures of hawks, doves, and waffles. Joe Lieberman rated seven hawks, while John Kerry got three hawks, a dove, and two waffles. Ain't we got fun. The problem, and the essential challenge for the news business right now, is that we are living through a moment that's inhospitable to our deepest talents and inclinations. The best journalists are troublemakers, pot-stirrers, naysayers, dirt-eaters. When the whole culture is saying "Yes, yes, yes" to some sparkly idea or popular leader, we love nothing better than to be the ones who rush in screaming "No, no, no," brandishing the ugly evidence. To the noble hack, there is no smell sweeter than the skunk spray of a major political scandal. Which is exactly what nobody wants right now. The perfume of patriotism is wafting from every direction, including the media itself, and the whole culture is high on it and weirdly checked out. After all those long months of anxiety and worry, it's clear that the public wants a break from all things troubling and downbeat. Iraq is liberated, and the president is a flying ace. Let's forget our worries and have a nice long party. Maybe the economy will even come back and foot the bill. It's high time for journalists to start making trouble again—and blithe waggery on the relative merits of Kucinich and Moseley Braun doesn't qualify as trouble. Maybe this administration is as lily-white and heroic as it makes itself out to be. But the point is, we shouldn't take their word for it. It's our job not to take their word for it. Extreme popularity demands extreme skepticism, and a willingness to start looking under the rocks that nobody else wants to touch. Oh, some are trying. After Bush pulled off his carrier stunt before an awestruck cable universe, Maureen Dowd dipped her fingernails in the old acid and banged out a memorable squib questioning the Top Gun's swagger: "Your ego's writing checks your body can't cash.... Every time you cut taxes and raise deficits while you're roaring ahead with a pre-emptive military policy, you're unsafe. National unemployment goes up to 6 percent, and you just hammer Congress to pass your tax cut. The only guys sure about their jobs these days are defense contractors connected to Republicans and the Carlyle Group, which owns half of the defense plant you visited here. You're dangerous." The other morning, the leftist radio show Democracy Now! offered a couple of intriguing interviews with journalists pushing dangerous buttons. One was Dan Briody, author of a new book called The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group. (Hmmm. Notice a little pattern here?) He argued that this administration's ties to that mysterious Washington defense contractor—where insiders practice the ultimate Beltway alchemy, turning global connections into gold—are suspicious and need a closer look, especially now that it's cash-in time for all defense companies with Mideast ties. This called to mind a New Yorker article of a few months ago, a profile of Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar in which author Elsa Walsh laid bare the stunning, nearly familial intimacy that exists between the Saudi royals and the Bush clan. The other guest on the show was Newsweek magazine investigative reporter Michael Isikoff, who had just co-authored an online piece about the congressional report on September 11, and the parts of it the administration is trying to keep classified. "One portion deals extensively with the stream of U.S. intelligence-agency reports in the summer of 2001 suggesting that Al Qaeda was planning an upcoming attack against the United States—and implicitly raises questions about how Bush and his top aides responded," the Newsweek piece said. A few days ago, Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn quixotically suggested that the media should try to revive the corpse of a Bush story that died years ago. This is the one about that foggy period in the early 1970s when young George W. Bush allegedly went AWOL from his duties with the Texas Air National Guard. Zorn connected the story to last week's carrier images, and came up indignant about the news business: "The president all but wore a 'Kick Me!' sticker on the back of his flight suit when he decided to land on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in the co-pilot's seat of an S-3B Viking jet.... But for Bush in flyboy attire, a discreet silence." Maybe none of these stories are as solid as their promoters suggest. Maybe it's all a bunch of thinly disguised partisan trash. But then, some of the best stories have intensely partisan origins. The point is, we seem to have lost our appetite for this stuff, at exactly the moment when we should be indulging it. When flags are waving everywhere, it's time for journalists to get back in touch with their nasty, scandal-loving inner selves. It's the most patriotic thing we could possibly do.
What do you think? Discuss this article in the Politics & Society conference of Post & Riposte. More from National Journal. More on politics and society in Atlantic Unbound and The Atlantic Monthly. William Powers is media columnist for National Journal. He recently spent three months in Japan as a Japan Society Fellow, studying the role of reading in Japanese life. This column appears every week in National Journal, a weekly magazine covering politics and government published in Washington, D.C. For information on National Journal Group publications, see NationalJournal.com. Copyright © 2003 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved. | [an error occurred while processing this directive] | ||
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