New York magazine’s Kurt Anderson — a self-described Obamaphile –becomes the latest in a string of media figures to admit that establishment media journalists generally back Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton, even going a little Pauline Kael in the process:
…I don’t know many of those fierce Clinton supporters, because most of my friends and acquaintances are writers and editors and cultural impresarios of one kind or anotherâ€â€members of “the mediaâ€Ââ€â€and there are precious few Clintonites among them. Because almost as much as geography is dispositive in spectator sportsâ€â€if you live in New England, you’re bound to love the Red Sox and hate the Yankeesâ€â€demography is dispositive in this year’s Democratic race. And the great majority of media people are members of the same (white) demographic cohort that has rejected Hillary and voted for Barackâ€â€educated, more-affluent-than-average residents of cities and suburbs.
Anderson claims that “much of the press never really loved the Clintons,” largely due to “half-conscious intragenerational resentment.” That is a hoot to anyone who remembers that The New Republic used to run a regular feature called the “Clinton Suck-Up Watch” to chronicle establishment media fawning over the Clintons. However, Anderson captures something significant about the media’s affinity for Obama:
It’s not only that the people who create and run the mediaâ€â€and who love Obamaâ€â€occupy the social and cultural upper rungs. The world depicted in “the media,†broadly construedâ€â€not just straight journalism but everything we watch and read and hearâ€â€is overwhelmingly a bright, shiny, upscale, youngish world. Uneducated white people, residents of the so-called C and D counties, and the elderlyâ€â€in other words, Hillary Clinton votersâ€â€are seldom allowed into the mass-media foreground, and when they appear it’s usually as bathetic figures, victims or losers. (And working-class black pop culture is considered part of the sexy mainstream in a way that working-class white pop culture is not.) The shocking eclipse of Hillary (an eight-figure net worth, maybe, but at least she’s got a normal American name and a Wal-Mart shopper’s bad hair and big bum) by this fashionable (black!) media darling is one more slap in the face for the people chronically excluded from the pretty mediascape version of America, one more damn new new thing that they don’t really get. It makes them … bitter, and the bitterness makes them cling to the Clintons.
Anderson manages to let the mask slip the end. This demographic is not bittter because they don’t get Obama. Downscale, older rural Americans figured out that they were being swept from the mediascape in 1971, when CBS cancelled shows like Mayberry R.F.D., The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres and Hee Haw in favor of shows like All In The Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and M*A*S*H. Indeed, the media’s attitude toward this demographic has been sufficiently clear that when CBS tried to launch a Beverly Hillbillies reality show in 2003, it met stiff opposition from rural activists convinced the network was intent on ridiculing Appalachians as poor and uneducated.
Anderson nicely exposes the media’s elitist attitudes, even as he exhibits them. Then again, when even Ezra Klein can flag the condescension that drips from the pages of yesterday’s New York Times story on chain restaurants in the suburbs around New York City, it is hard to miss how blatant the elitism has become.
I used to fear the media’s impact on things. They have blinded themselves, fortunately, and become more useless with each passing year.
As the product becomes ever more glaringly defective, the market grows ever smaller. The layoffs at the big organs make them limp semblances of their former selves, and the glamour of the trade dissipates with each discredited emission.
An Obama debacle is what they deserve and will suffer.
For real Geezer’s right. Mostly I think the media has totally forgotten how to be persuasive and jump straight to their “framing” irrespective of actual reality and stuff. They end up in an NPR echo chamber where what they mostly do is convince like-minded people that other people are indeed being properly informed with The Narrative. But no one’s really buying it anymore. Not even the like-minded people really believe in the global warming scam, for example… they just want to believe that all the riff-raff believe it.
Journalists’ cultural biases might be less significant if they still bought into the old-school “skeptical” model of reporting.
The navel is gazed at to the exclusion of all else.
When the “Times” loses Ezra Klein, it’s lost America.
I have to agree that the New York Times and the mainstream media types have been pushing the Wright story for weeks and the NRCC attempted to win a special election by using it against a Dem in Louisiana. Didn’t work, as the Dem won. Surely, the mainstream media and its obsession with silly, shiny stories has outlived its usefulness. If so, McCain is in real trouble.
As for the NY Times story, I guess you read more in it than I did, since almost every restaurant received a favorable review and a comment on pricing. Then, again, condescension is sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. You looked for it and found it. Nice work.
P.S. I’ll save the trouble of looking for it here. It’s gthere in every word. It’s nice to stumble on a place and finally be able to address one’s social and intellectual inferiors.
“Journalism may not be the oldest profession, but it strongly resembles it.”
(some guy named R. Reagan)
Suck it, Seymor.
Seymour would be shocked to discover how little news coverage Wright actually got, so I may have to do a follow-up post with that data.
…and searching for them on the internet, you are! Self fulfilling prophesy!
Bah – bi – yee
Suddenly Seymour
Is here to provide you
Sweet understanding
Seymour’s your friend
Feed ME!!!
Believe it or not, they get upset at Outback if you call your server a bloody bogan and punch his lights out!
Some “realistic” Aussie theme, huh?
We’ve come to expect no less than the best in inexorable logicless bias from ya. A full trough attracts the swine, so c’mon, Karl.
working-class black pop culture is considered part of the sexy mainstream in a way that working-class white pop culture is not
That’s good, because I don’t mind you showing your disdain, just don’t try to treat me like your fucking token.
That’s sardonic is what that is. The thing about the trough.
Seymour Skinner –
From your comment: “…It’s nice to stumble on a place and finally be able to address one’s social and intellectual inferiors.”
Just curious. Are you a journalist, or just another lefty elitist? If you ARE a journalist, the last half of that sentence was redundant.
Thanks for proving the point that is being made here.
Maybe food writers are perhaps not the best example, bcause they are just as insufferable no matter who they write about, but as was said about you (psychically, apparently) here earlier seems to be an apt description. “The navel is gazed at to the exclusion of all else.”
If you lie down with dogs, you’re gonna get fleas. And Obama has been lying down with more dogs than Wright. The media just chooses to not report on it because, they are, self-admittedly in the tank for Obama.
But actually working-class black pop culture is not really a lot considered part of the sexy mainstream really at all. What the hell does that even mean really?
. It’s nice to stumble on a place and finally be able to address one’s social and intellectual inferiors.
How bourgeoisie of you … Seymour.
You know. The hopey changing thing that rings like a bell when you give it a hard look. The hopey changey thing rings like a bell, because, just like a real bell, if you look at it from the bottom, it is empty.
thor: You’re just boring, now. Make an argument against the facts or STFU.
When I got grumpy what me and mom used to do is sing the when you’re happy and you know it song. We sang that song a lot. Not so much lately though.
Eh, what these twits don’t get is how insane those of us that have visited cesspools like NYC, LA, you name it feel they are for actually wanting to live there. Sorry, but I actually LIKE grass, trees and real people. Does that sound like I’m looking down on those that live in most big cities?
Gosh, I sure hope so.
Well, actually, Seymour, Karl was emphasizing the fact that Ezra Klein was ridiculing the article’s condescension and the Times’ haughtiness. Ezra is one of you, Seymour. It’s a shame you lack the gravitas, nuance, and intellect to comprehend mere reading.
Dolt.
… because most of my friends and acquaintances are writers and editors and cultural impresarios of one kind or another…
Well, isn’t that special?
Charles, from MerriamWebster.com:
Ah, yes, where would we be without the bicoastal directors of our culture?
I have to agree that the New York Times and the mainstream media types have been pushing the Wright story for weeks…
The New York Times’ own Public Editor disputes that:
Could be. Might also be that “Suddenly Seymor” is an insufferable, condescending twat, intellectual wannabe who has been looking for just the right blog to drop his little pile of steaming of misplaced superiority.
I threw the extra “of” in there just to see if anybody notices.
Statements suggesting the amount of news coverage accorded Rev. Wright was so “little” so as one might find it “shocking” is the sort of logicless homerun, BJTexas, that I find impossible not to take a Louisville slugger to.
How you’re able to sit there and read Karl’s dumfuckery and not say to yourself, “whoa, whoa, that Obama-hating nerd’s head is gone,” I have no clue. Shockingly little news coverage! Please. No, no, I won’t be S’ingTFU. Karl’s self-declarations of insanity are to be embraced and echoed!
The question of how much coverage Rev. Wright got is an empirical question, not a logical question. Which demonstrates that thor might be a little shaky on the concept of logic.
Before I get back to that issue, I have a post coming that thor will find much more to his liking.
You want I can sing with you.
Not you Karl. thor, mostly. I remember all the hand motions and everything.
It was pretty small, thor, up until their TV critic commented on O’s repudiation speech, at which point everyone said “WTF is the TV critic doing talking about politics? And furthermore, WTF is he talking about in general?” Kind of forced their hand, he did.
Karl, if Rev. Wright so much as farted in a public restroom a hundred mics on boom extensions would be thrust under his stall door. Rev. Wright’s shocking bowel burps would lead the 6-o’clock news and you’d scramble your silver jet of crypto-Marxist BLT analysis.
Admit it. Major Tom is no longer responding to earth. You’re simply gone.
Wow. That’s some pharmaceutical grade irony ya got there, man.
I threw the extra “of†in there just to see if anybody notices.
It really worked like that.
But the Reverend Wright tried to play himself off as mainstream and then Baracky’s media pals tried to play Reverend Wright off as mainstream and then Baracky said he was a freak and then the media said he was a freak. But Reverend Wright had been saying the same stuff all along, from way back when Baracky first started sitting in his well-endowed pews til a week ago when Baracky called him a big hatey freak. It’s very perplexing.
Go ahead, thor. you have the floor. Give us the thor on Teh Barack That I Know and Love version of all of that crap. You know, actually make an argument that isn’t a Pee Wee Hermanesque caldrum of snarks, half baked ideas, obsession and Karl-No-Good, ugh!
Explain away all of the connections to 60’s radicals, the socialist who edits his blog, 20 years in a church committed to BLT, his including a segment of the church’s mission statement in his book (you know, the gooey sweet part of the statement, conveniently leaving out the “all blacks oppressed all the time” part because, I’m sure, it was just a bit too changey for the bitter gun clingers,) his obvious duncehood on tax policy and economics in general, his and his wife’s consistant, petulant cries for redistribution OF THE PIE, MAN! Etc., etc., etc.!
Go ahead, mighty thor, make a Barack appeal devoid of Karl bashing or race baiting or any of the other screeds that have plopped onto this site after soiling yourself in righteous indignation..
Go ahead, hammer god, I dare you.
What if Baracky gets to be President Baracky and then decides he wants to get his freaky hatey Jesus on again? We’d sure be in a pickle I think.
If the Presidential campaign had shaped up as a two-man contest between Obama and McCain nobody outside of our corner of the blogosphere would ever have heard of Wright or Ayers. We have Clinton Machine hack George Stephanopoulos to thank for raising the issue during the Democratic debate in Philadelphia, forcing the MSM to cover the issue, if only to attempt to spin for Obama.
Arguably one of the greatest sources of power for a President is the ability to fill the executive branch with his (or her) people. When evaluating a candidate like Obama, who has such a thin resume, it is hardly a “distraction” to look at the people he has chosen to include in his inner circle in the past for clues as to the type of people who would be running the country in his administration. We are fortunate that two Democrats are fighting for the nomination, so that information like this can find the light of day.
Plenty of Catholics are pro-choice. Plenty of moderate and conservative university professors enjoy sharing time with professor’s who are radical. You don’t always share the beliefs of those you call your friends.
My love for Dan still blooms even after he shoots his poo slinger at Obama. He’s not howling mad with illogical rhetorical hate. Obama is not a Marxist, some of his friends are, and so are some of mine, frankly.
But Baracky hates America and plans at least four long years of reparations for his people that will leave this country bankrupt and vulnerable. It’s not the same as having Marxists friends. It’s scary.
thor has Marxist friends?
Shocka!
I kid on that last bit. In college, I hung out wiht all sorts, including most of the DSA… but no one mistook me for one. If my issue positions were like those of Obama, however…
You hung out with a man who said he was a former KGB agent. Me, I drank vodka with both Eduard Limonov and Grigory Yavlinsky. Kiss my ring finger if you are, as you say, a Russophile.
Leaving aside the nutcases in Obama’s “Kitchen Cabinet,” even his formal advisers are scary.
thor, if you’re looking for a Johnny-one-note on this subject you need go no farther than your shaving mirror. Do you want I should write you a script? One line will do it:
IF(SUBJECT=OBAMA AND POSTER=KARL) EMIT Karl’s just hating on St. Barack again, nyaah, nyaah, nyaah.
It would save you a lot of typing.
As for agents and the like — I’ve hung out with Stasi operatives and once bought dinner for a Russian propagandist (interesting fellow, that last.) It means my friend at Booz, Allen, Hamilton can’t hire me because I can’t get a clearance. What I have not done is hang out with such people continuously for twenty years, support them with cash donations and political favors, and cite them approvingly in my writing — and I’m not even running for President. Nor are you, and on the evidence presented here you’re about as qualified for the office as B. Obama is.
It’s not so much that Obama’s associated with Marxists. Many of us have; it doesn’t matter. It does matter that in every single discoverable case except for stump speeches and prescripted “interviews” Obama’s attitudes are revealed as Marxist, BLT, or some combination of vaguely-Leninist Socialism. Stump speeches are the ultimate in PR; nowadays, especially for Democrats, they are carefully crafted to tell the listeners what they want to hear based on polling and research. If there is a contradiction between what the candidate tells us under such formal conditions and his or her normal, typical conduct in the absence of TV cameras, the latter is much more likely to be predictive of what the candidate will do if elected.
Regards,
Ric
For the record, thor (as usual) has it wrong: I never claimed I “hung out with a man who said he was a former KGB agent.” I did meet someone who not only claimed, but in fact was (and is) fairly high up on the Soviet (now Russian) diplomatic corps. And I know it to be a fact for many reasons, not least of which that he was an official guest where I went to school, and tends to turn up in summit photos in the New York Times, on national news programs, etc.
You can’t measure this bubble from the inside.
Only someone who mistakes big-media minstrelsy for “working-class black pop culture” could believe this. That shit’s for Whitey, mostly; poor (and “black!”) people use irony, too, you know. Is Un:Cut still on BET? I don’t think it is, but that show was a hint. Some of the real stuff made it through their “positivity” filter, for a while.
On the flip side of that, in every “more-affluent-than-average” city, there are bus lines from suburban factories to ghetto bars where at quitting time you can learn that TV’s not real — or at least it hasn’t been since Good Times, which, not coincidentally, disappeared at about the same time Karl’s list of quasi-sympathetic TV portrayals of poor whites did — and that working-class black life is almost indistinguishable from the hated white version. And unlike the “educated” world, this one’s not segregated. You can go see it, if you’re not uncurious. It’s just sitting there, undisturbed by cultural impresarios.
I’d say so.
The only recognizable exponent of working-class black culture who’s in the news is Clarence Thomas, and he’s consistently hated in the same terms and -types as rednecks are…plus one — but not really, if you regard media mockery and handwringing re: the white working class and white-lefty accusations of Uncle Tomism as differently roundabout accusations of insufficient whiteness.
And you should.
And while it’s the topic, I’ll add that the DSA-types knew that a lot of the people in the Russian program I ws in were either in military intel already, or looking for a job with CIA or NSA.
Plus, I once got a rifle butt in the gut from a member of the Red Army, but that was years earlier.
Here’s something that is only tangentially related to the topic:
Mayberry is actually Mount Airy, NC, right by the VA border. Nearby is Pilot Mountain, which was rendered in the show as “Mt. Pilot.” A bunch of my ancestors are from there. One of them (a fourth cousin thrice removed or some such) married Eng Bunker, as in Chang and Eng, the original Siamese twins.
Thought you should know.
It does matter that in every single discoverable case except for stump speeches and prescripted “interviews†Obama’s attitudes are revealed as Marxist, BLT, or some combination of vaguely-Leninist Socialism.
No, no. It’s Swedish socialism. The good kind.
A bunch of my ancestors are from there. One of them (a fourth cousin thrice removed or some such) married Eng Bunker, as in Chang and Eng, the original Siamese twins.
That’s pretty kinky.
“Marry me, marry my brother…”
Thank you, psycho. For real I just didn’t know what to do with that “working-class black pop culture” thing, other than to figure that pop cultural recursions can only resolve to a whole lot of subjectivity.
And how cool is dicentra? Mostly I just know about them Siamese twin people from that Cronenberg movie with Jeremy Irons, which really only makes the whole thing cooler I think.
“Plus, I once got a rifle butt in the gut from a member of the Red Army”
You young’uns – I was bayonetted during a Chicom human wave attack.
During a snow storm.
Had to walk uphill to get to Battalion Aid while carrying a 80lb pack.
I don’t have any meaningful real-life commie experience except for working in media. But my sense is that having fun commie pals is different than what happens when these people actually get power.
Thor,
Not to start a flame war, but you might be right about Obama. I hapeen to not trust him as far as I can throw him. He has absolutely no idea of economics, and absolutely no idea about the realities of this world. He is a creation of charisma and media skills, but, as far as I can see, that’s ALL he is. What little legislative history we have of his, points infallibly towards a hard leftist.
The crap he is espousing has been tried over and over again, and has always failed miserably, and has cost millions of lives, and a swing to equal misery for all.
I tend to think anyone who thinks that they are smarter than the billions of people who have lived before them, and has no use for World or American history, no use for right and wrong, is not a very smart man. Intelligent maybe, but not very smart in my book.
I think Obama is a pretender, and the biggest give away to his Marxist bent is his statement that, regardless of shrinking revenues and what raising taxes on the “rich” will do to those same revenues (dirty word! “History”), he will raise taxes on rhe rich because it is “fair”! Forget the economics of it and that it will affect the lower and middle classes far more negatively than it will the rich (dirty word again! “History”!). “IT’S IS JUST FUCKING “FAIR”, says the big O!. His words, minus the obscenity. As usual, appealing to ignorance, as the left has been doing for years and years and years. They have destroyed our schools, our communities, and now, after they have destroyed the black family structure, are working on white families, and indeed, ALL families. And, mark my words, “rich” is going to wind up being anyone who makes 60K or more.
Exept for the elitists who spew this feel good horseshit. They’ll still have their limos and jets, and we’ll all be sucking wind. I can’t believe that, in the light of history books that can be found in any library, ANYONE could possibly believe this smoke and mirrors nonsense! But, they even tell you that HISTORY books are full of shit! And you believe it! God help us all!
Blind idiocy my friend. Obama should let us see what is going to pour out of his cornucopia a little more clearly before we anoint him king.
If Obama is elected with a fillibuster-proof Congress, the Carter years are going to look like a conservative picnic.
Obama may NOT be a marxist, but after listening to his wife’s statements, there is not much question in my mind that she IS.
The “fleas” thing raises it’s ugly head again…
The left might just finally be able to cash in on the 40+ years of dumbing our public schools, where you are expected to graduate without any knowledge of histoy, common sense, or economics. Or even right and wrong. That makes it much easier to be a pushover to empty promises and feel-good philosophy from these predators who think you are too stupid to live your own life without them to guide you. And half the country believes it! JEEBUS!
But, hey! It feels good, so let’s just go for it, huh?
Back later for more. Gotta go do some things…
My encounter with the Red Army was on the subway, so RTO takes it, unless Rick isn’t kidding.
RTO wins.
The crap he is espousing has [snip] cost millions of lives
A statistic. Merely a statistic. Means nothing.
Rick, it may be that RTO wins; I certainly haven’t anything to match it. But there would be nothing particularly unbelievable about your story only a few years ago — the cousin of mine who actually had that experience died only last year. He wasn’t anything like the only American to share it, either. You’d have to be, what, in your eighties? Lots of eighty-year-olds about, and not all of them are Alzheimer’s victims.
I think the Iraq adventure is going to have long-term effects unforeseen by anyone on either side. Clinton cut the military to the bone; in order to have enough warm bodies, the Army (especially) has been calling up reservists. McCain and I are old farts, and he and I more or less bookend the ones who had direct experience in Viet Nam. The country spent thirty years gaining no experience except that of direct volunteers. But now — tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people are cycling in and out of the sandbox, going from more or less everyday jobs to uniforms and M16s, then back again. Not all of them will agree with one another on their return, but they’ve seen the elephant. As my parents’ generation did. It’s bound to make some difference, but what it is we don’t know yet, do we?
Regards,
Ric
I had my passport stolen in Yugoslavia in 1980. Someone gassed me on the train and cut my document bag out of my shirt. Took all my money and my traveler’s checks, too.
I had to get a new passport at the American embassy in Belgrade, and then I had to get an exit visa from the authorities (some kind of secret police), who chain smoked and interrogated me for a few hours in a dark room under a hot lamp, one guy yelling at me in chhheavily agzented Eenglishk and another guy pounding away on a typewriter and sneering, just like in a shitty Cold War potboiler. Or like in a Yugoslavian thriller, I suppose. They accused me of selling my passport to some hapless Yugoslavian, even though they’d strip searched me and seen that I had no money. Commie logic.
They let me go but gave me 24 hours to leave the country, after which I’d be arrested. I got out of the sewer called Yugoslavia in three hours flat.
In 1999, during Operation Allied Force, NATO bombed the very building where I was interrogated and threatened. I saw it on the news. It felt good to see the place in flames.
I won’t vote for Obama because he’s just an actor. When he goes off script, he stutters like Porky Pig. Doesn’t inspire confidence in this uncertain era. Oh, and he wants to increase my taxes by 35 percent.
N-n-n-n-no th-th-th-th-thanks, Barack.
RTO wins.
Not so fast. With all due respect to RTO, in ott-seven, I had to schedule all my sitcom viewing for first run when the TiVo was on the fritz – had to sit through commercials too. And if that’s not the clincher, I had to wear slacks and sport coats for a whole month when my suits got caught up in what is now known as “The Great Drycleaner Strike” back in ’93.
There’s still the occasional night when I wake up in a cold sweat – Walker: Texas Ranger-style.
the horror…. the horror….
I’ll probably have nightmares about that while I sleep in
tomorrowtoday.Don’t forget to set your TiVo maggie.
A strained association of Barack Obama to one’s not-so pleasant past life experience, thank you for that colorful canard, Tom W. Commie logic! Flaming edifice! Joy-joy! Take that, Obama.
Alp, ever pass a kidney stone while a Baracky commercial aired? Lose a limb in a wheat thrasher? Count your fingers and toes, got all twenty of those? You have a strained association to Obama building up. Break through your one-up blockage. Detail how Obama and misery collided in your life.
Detail how Obama and misery collided in your life.
There was a time when I was charisma. Nail technicians would throw their underwear at me as I walked out of WalMart. Toll booth workers would let traffic build up just so we could chat. Then, charisma was redefined. Dress socks and sandals became passe. An alabaster gut set against a red face and forearms no longer inspires cat calls. I walk alone.
Such beautifully-felt pain, thank you Alp for that epic tragedy. You’ll be in my whispered prayers tonight. Be strong. Those nail-tech-thongs probably weren’t your size anyway.
the sad thing is, that’s not always a guarantee, alp. I check on it every few days because sometimes it decides to bump programs for no apparent reason. it flags them ahead of time, but it’s sneaky about it. I have to check the schedule. at first, I would blame RTO, but after watching it, I see that it’s the tivo. bastard, getting my hopes up and randomly crushing them.
sometimes it decides to bump programs for no apparent reason.
That’s the Fairness Doctrine which was loaded onto your TiVo by Al Gore’s group. It bumps 24 for The View, doesn’t it?
Don’t cry for me thor-gentina. There’s still a few tricks up the ol’ Haggar wash and wears.
I had it tough last Saturday, taking an auxiliary boat crew refresher course at Station Belle Isle and for lunch they served served pork chops and noodles with gravy and green beans on the side and I had to drink the Kool-Aid! And the station mascot (labrador puppy) was too cute!
It was horror, I tell you! Horror!
There’s still a few tricks up the ol’ Haggar wash and wears.
I don’t care who you are. That’s hot right there.
Never say die, alp. Go kicking and screaming and biting and carrying on into that good night!
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