Reply #16: Good reason not to watch corporatepundit head snooze... [View All]

[Cha]

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"PUNDITS STEAL THE SPEECH"

There’s real value in offering people an informed analysis of major presidential addresses. But the way that the analysis gets delivered can be more or less corrosive to the relationship between the government and the governed. When pundits are so clear in their demands, so visceral in their disappointment, so numerous, and so verbose (the 18 minutes that Obama spent delivering his speech was a fraction of the time the cable channels devoted to talking about his speech), it weakens the communication between president and audience that defines theater, political or otherwise.

"First the talking heads work themselves and their audience into a fit about what the president must do. A sort of collective narrative takes shape—with heroes and villains, successes and reversals—building as it goes. Thus Chris Matthews and Wolf Blitzer both referred to onscreen clocks counting down to the speech, like the Super Bowl kickoff. Suzanne Malveaux told CNN viewers, “He’s going to try to convey that he gets it.” John King caviled a little, saying that actions would matter more than words.”Without a doubt,” confirmed Anderson Cooper from a photogenic corner of the gulf. “What the president is going to do tonight is hold BP accountable,” added Gloria Borger.

By the time Obama appeared, CNN and MSNBC had done a thorough job of telling the audience how to judge what he said. (I imagine Fox did the same, but it’s so riddled with its own pathologies I didn’t check.) Did the president “get it”? Well, he studded the speech with the language of war, referring to his “battle plan” and describing the spill as “a siege.” Was BP “held accountable”? He failed to use the head of a BP executive as a paperweight, but he did say in plain terms that the company “will pay for the impact this spill has had on the region.” Characteristically, he seemed most engaged not during the backward-looking stuff about assigning blame, but the forward-looking stuff: offering a big-picture look at a clean-energy initiative. “We cannot consign our children to this future,” he said, neatly evoking a kind of inverted Mad Max scenario, with oil spills everywhere."

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http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/16/pundits-like-that-are-the-only-people-here.html