NYT op-ed, The Maverick and the Media: Why the press loves McCain

[DeepModem Mom]

Op-Ed Contributor
The Maverick and the Media
By NEAL GABLER
Published: March 26, 2008


(Wesley Bedrosian)

....What makes 2008 different — and why I think Mr. McCain can be called the first postmodernist presidential candidate — is his acknowledgment of the symbiosis between himself and the press and, more important, his willingness, even eagerness, to let the press in on his own machinations of them. On the bus, Mr. McCain openly talks about his press gambits. According to Mr. Lizza, Mr. McCain proudly brandished an index card with a “gotcha” quote from Mitt Romney that the senator had given Tim Russert of “Meet the Press,” a journalist few would expect to need help in finding candidates’ gaffes. In exposing his two-way relationship with the press this way, he reveals the absurdity of the political process as a big game. He also reveals his own gleeful cynicism about it.

This sort of disdain might be called a liberal view, if not politically then culturally. The notion that our system (in fact, life itself) is faintly imbecilic is a staple of “The Daily Show,” “The Colbert Report,” “Real Time With Bill Maher” and other liberal exemplars, though they, of course, implicate the press in the idiocy. Mr. McCain’s sense of irony makes him their spiritual kin — a cosmological liberal — which may be why conservatives distrust him and liberals like Jon Stewart seem to revere him. They are reacting to something deeper than politics. They are reacting to his vision of how the world operates and to his attitude about it, something it is easy to suspect he acquired while a prisoner of war.

Though Mr. McCain can be the most self-deprecating of candidates (yet another reason the news media love him), his vision of the process also betrays an obvious superiority — one the mainstream political news media, a group of liberal cosmologists, have long shared. If in the past he flattered the press by posing as its friend, he is now flattering it by posing as its conspirator, a secret sharer of its cynicism. He is the guy who “gets it.” He sees what the press sees. Michael Scherer, a blogger for Time, called him the “coolest kid in school.”

The candidates who are dead serious about politics, even wonkish, get abused by the press for it. Mr. McCain the ironist gets heaps of affection. In this race, though, it has forced some press contortions. While John McCain 2000 was praised for being the same straight talker off the bus as he was on it, John McCain 2008 is praised precisely because he isn’t the same man. Off the bus he plays to the rubes (us) by reciting the conservative catechism; on the bus he plays to the press by giving the impression that his talk is all just a ploy to capture the Republican nomination....

This suggests that love is blind. It also suggests that seducing the press with ironic detachment, the press’s soft spot, may be the best political strategy of all — one that Mr. McCain may walk on water right into the White House.

(Neal Gabler is the author, most recently, of “Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination.”)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/26/opinion/26gabler.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

[Demeter]

1. I May Vomit

Just what one needs in a President--symbiosis with the press.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Yep -- united in disdain for us "rubes," and for candidates actually concerned with policy. nt

[JDPriestly]

3. Mr. McCain is a front for the right-wing extremists.

They plan to put him in office with a right-wing "compromise" VP. Once in office, something will "happen" to McCain, a scandal, a health problem, any one of a number of convenient excuses for his resignation. And then we will be back to square one. Mark my words, you read it here first, McCain is not the real candidate. There are shadowy figures and shadow plays behind his ascendancy.

I am in a particularly cynical skeptical mood this morning. But I see McCain as mostly a kindly seeming old bungler. He is not the kind of guy that the crooks on the right really want to see in office. He is just a front. Mark my words. He crashed five planes and somehow sees himself as a hero. I don't think so. He is a fool, not a nice guy.

[classysassy]

9. Lindsey Graham

the new dick chaney.

[MotorCityMan]

4. How wonderful. Just like they loved * 8 years ago

It's sickening what "journalism" has become.

So it will be all sunshine and kittens with St. McCain, while the Democratic nominee will be the end of all that is good and decent.

8 years of the * nightmare, and nothing changes. Can ANYone imagine what the reaction would have been if a Vice President Gore had said "..the president suffers the most, obviously" about Clinton and military casualties?

[DeepModem Mom]

6. OMG, there are so many of those "can anyone imagine" questions...

and they are all so telling!

[Rageneau]

5. Wait till they start bashing Obama because of him.

Right now, the press is attacking Hillary every chance it gets, and Obama when it HAS to. But soon that will change. Soon the MSM will be attacking Obama for every little nitpicking thing he does (like the way some Obamaniacs and the MSM currently treat Hillary.)

When that inevitable day comes, Obama supporters won't know what hit them. Because, instead of a national press corp anxious to help Obama survive every setback and cover over every gaffe, they will instead encounter one that suddenly treats BO like Hillary.

Every slip of the tongue he makes will be amplified into its own news special. No excuse he offers will be believed. No distinction he makes will be clarified. No position he takes will be properly explained, and no mistake of his will get less than 25 hours of air play a week.

This is the kind of treatment Hillary always gets and is prepared for, while keeping the support of half the party. I doubt Obama will hang on to 50% of his CURRENT support, once he becomes subject to the kind of demonically unfair treatment she always is.

Obama has NEVER had to endure that kind of treatment. There have always been skirts to hide behind or a screen door to run into when Hillary is chasing him. Soon the press will lock that door and sic the dogs on him.

[DeepModem Mom]

7. And there's already been talk of Obama's being a little stand-offish with the press.

I guess he'd better buddy-up -- and, stop talking policy and start making fun of us "rubes"?

[Doctor_J]

8. A rerun of the nightmare of 2000

which is exactly what our people should be repeating every time a microphone comes into view. and they should do it with obvious disgust - "I can't believe after 8 years of disaster the media is going to ram another right-wing, fundie-loving extremist down America's collective throat".