By Steve Rhodes
Really, there’s so much madness among our pundits I could do this every day and not stay caught up. It’s exhausting, as reading lazy journalism often is, and I can’t get to nearly all of what I intended. But I promised a third installment so here it is.
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Jim O’Donnell: Wow, Watergate was spoon-fed to the Washington Post! Yeah, it really wasn’t a tough story to crack.
Eric Zorn: “Critics snorted at and mocked the line in President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech in which he alluded to increasing public skepticism about health care reform legislation and said, ‘I take my share of the blame for not explaining it more clearly to the American people,'” Zorn wrote recently.
“Well, here are a few news flashes for [Center for a Just Society Chairman Ken] Connor and scores of other indignant commentators who think that support for these bills has fallen below 50 percent because the public has studied and rejected them.
“A Kaiser Family Foundation poll released last month found that 58 percent of respondents either didn’t know or were unaware that the bills now in Congress would prohibit insurance companies from setting lifetime caps on coverage.”
Here’s a news flash for Zorn: The critics snorted and mocked Obama’s line because even up until then – and since with his pretend “summit” – he kept scheduling TV time and speeches and media appearances to explain his plan one more time, only this time clearly in a way that the American people would finally understand.
Of course, Obama only a week or so ago actually released his own plan, so we spent the last year debating something whose existence was ephemeral. And even really smart people, you know, like Zorn, disagree about what’s in the legislation and/or how it would work.
Beyond that, the American people never have a solid grasp of the issues they are polled on.
“As we’ve noted here for years, the American public is almost always stunningly misinformed, on almost every major issue,” Bob Somerby wrote last fall – just as he has before and since.
You know what, though? Even those who do know the particulars hate the bill.
Neil Steinberg: In a column about Rod Blagojevich’s request to make public 500 hours of wiretaps, Steinberg writes:
“Not, I hasten to add, that I am confident a crime was actually committed by Blagojevich. United States District Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said he had to act quickly in arresting Blago in late 2008 to prevent the commission of a crime – the selling of Barack Obama’s open Senate seat. He may have acted too quickly. It’s as if he burst into a would-be bank robber’s house the morning the heist was to take place. On a chair were a ski mask, a water pistol and tickets to Mexico. One could argue – and perhaps win – that this was preparation for the crime. But one could also argue – and perhaps win – that it is not a crime to possess a ski mask, a water pistol and tickets to Mexico.
“So Blagojevich said the opportunity was ‘golden’ and he should make money on it. That’s like me saying that all the money in the bank is mine and I want it. Scary? Yes. Unhinged? Sure. But a crime? We’ll see . . . ”
First, the intent to commit a crime is often a crime itself. Should the police wait until a planned murder is actually pulled off before interceding?
Second, even if the Senate seat charge doesn’t fly, Blagojevich is likely going to prison. If Steinberg had bothered to look at the indictment, he’d see that the charge involving the Senate seat is almost a footnote to a sweeping host of other alleged misdeeds that probably make up 495 hours of those tapes.
Bonus Steinberg!
“So I’m pushing through the revolving door heading to work. Coming out is a young man in a leather motorcycle jacket, wearing a Mohawk haircut, dyed blond and moussed so it stands 4 inches high,” he wrote last week.
“Which sparked a question I cannot answer, so I’m asking you: Why is this still a contemporary fashion? Why does it retain even the tang of rebelliousness? Why has it not sunk into nostalgia and period costume?
“The Mohawk hairstyle is, by my calculation, 34 years old. Which means it is the equivalent of a young man in the mid-1970s going around in a zoot suit and wide-brimmed hat. That would not have been considered edgy then. Why are Mohawks still considered edgy now? Is there no new way to rebel?”
Some possible answers:
A) Maybe the guy just likes to wear his hair that way. Is that a crime? it looks really good on some people.
B) Maybe it’s still contemporary fashion for the same reason that leather jackets and t-shirts and jeans are still contemporary fashion: Some people think it looks cool. What, did someone declare this could only be a fad? Why are Neil’s ties still contemporary fashion?
C) Who says the guy is rebelling? On the other hand, it certainly retains a “tang” of rebelliousness to square newspaper columnists.
In a follow-up column today, Steinberg writes “Me, I’d rather be ridiculed than forgotten.”
Done!
Don Wycliff: After the president’s State of the Union speech, Wycliff wrote that “Barack Obama, I am afraid, sealed his fate as a one-term president Wednesday night.”
Oh, please!
Only a fool would write such a thing. Even a casual observer of politics should know by now that – like in sports – it’s not over until it’s over and you can never really predict the outcome of anything. Remember when George H.W. Bush was a shoo-in for re-election, with an approval rating of, what, 80 or 90 percent? It was hard to fathom George W. Bush getting re-elected, and yet he did. Scott Lee Cohen! Jesse Ventura! I mean, the list goes on and on. Dick Devine! Marion Barry!
Bill Clinton looked dead in the water after the 1994 mid-term elections; Richard Nixon got re-elected in a landslide despite the papers filling up with Watergate revelations. Michael Dukakis had something like an 18-point lead at one point in the 1988 race.
The best “pundits” don’t pretend to be soothsayers; their predictions are almost always wrong. One (non-controversial, if mediocre) speech sealing a president’s fate?
Nonsense.
Which is what most pundits peddle.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on March 1, 2010