Month: August 2008

Kurtz on why the media choked

Everyone is writing thumb-sucker pieces on John Edwards and the media. But I think Howard Kurtz perfectly nails how and why the media failed by giving him a months-long pass on news of his affair with Rielle Hunter:

The fact that big newspapers, magazines and networks have standards — that is, they refuse to print every stray rumor just because it’s “out there” — is one of their strengths. But in the latter stages of this case, it made them look clueless. Perhaps there is a middle ground where media outlets can report on a burgeoning controversy without vouching for the underlying allegations, being candid with readers and viewers about what they know and don’t know.

In the end, the much-derided MSM were superfluous, their monopoly a faded memory. People have hundreds of ways to obtain information in today’s instantaneous media culture, and are capable of reaching their own conclusions about what is reliable and what is not.

Kurtz also quotes chief Edwards inquisitor Mickey Kaus as saying that the chief reason the reporters laid off was out of solicitude for Elizabeth Edwards. But, as Kaus wrote, “If a politician whose chief appeal is his self-advertised loyalty to his brave, ill wife cheats on his brave ill wife, what’s he good for again?”

Follow the money

The media shouldn’t give John Edwards a pass just because his political career appears to be over. A New York Times story today summarizes a number of loose ends over his affair with Rielle Hunter. Here are some questions:

  • Edwards says he’s willing to take a paternity test, but Hunter has refused. Why? To put it another way: Who benefits from her refusal? And what would she risk if she said “yes”?
  • If Edwards’ friend Andrew Young really is the father, why isn’t his name on the birth certificate? Why has he made what the Times calls “conflicting statements” about his paternity?
  • Why would Fred Baron throw his own money at both Young and Hunter to help them get out of Dodge? Yes, he’s described as a wealthy Edwards supporter, but doesn’t that seem like a bit much? Again, to put it another way: Was it really his own money? His personal wealth is the perfect cover, is it not?
  • Baron has already been pushed into denying that the money came from Edwards’ campaign funds. OK, but that is the question, isn’t it?

The counter-argument is that the media should leave Edwards alone now that he’s no longer in public life. What good could come of turning over rocks and watching to see what crawls out?

My answer is that the media couldn’t have anticipated the effects of their decision last fall to cover up evidence of Edwards’ affair with Hunter. As I argued yesterday, that decision may have changed the outcome of the presidential race.

Let the rock-turning commence.

Calling all code warriors

Now that I’ve got a template I like, I was wondering if anyone out there in Media Nation could help me with a small tweak. I would like to change the template so that content in the center well doesn’t actually touch the line separating it from the right-hand column. I want a margin of a few pixels on the right, matching the margin on the left. (You can really see what I mean in my second Dylan post.)

The template I’m using is called Sand Dollar, and you’ll find it here.

Sunday morning update: Problem solved. Thanks, Steve. And thanks to Jess as well.

My Dylan top five

I’m ready with my final list of Bob Dylan’s top five songs. How can I resist? I’ve tried to rank them in some kind of order, but it’s hard to do.

Mind you, I’m not saying these are his best or most important songs. I think most of us would agree that “Like a Rolling Stone,” from “Highway 61 Revisited” (1965), is both, but it’s been so overplayed that I usually change the station. (But I’ll listen to the “Royal Albert Hall” version from 1966 anytime, with Zimmy’s barely audible “Play fucking loud!” admonition at the beginning.) Rather, these are the Dylan songs I most like to listen to right now. That could change.

With that caveat, here we go.

1. “Tombstone Blues.” (From “Highway 61.”) Dylan at the absolute top of his form. From start to finish, “Highway 61” features the best singing of his career. You may not like his voice, but he’s got a sense of timing that Miles Davis and Charlie Parker — not to mention Snoop Dogg — could appreciate. On “Tombstone Blues,” Mike Bloomfield’s howling guitar and Al Kooper’s zonked-out organ compete for attention. Similar to “Rolling Stone,” but more unhinged. “The sun’s not yellow, it’s chicken” anticipates Robert Duvall in “Apocalypse Now” by 14 years.

2. “Not Dark Yet.” (From “Time Out of Mind,” 1997.) Not a merely a sentimental pick. I’ve found Dylan’s latter-years revival to be as enjoyable as any period of his career. Someone — I think it was in the New Yorker — once described “Not Dark Yet” as the first great rock song of old age, and he was right. The somewhat clichéd lyrics mask a depth and sadness that emerges only after repeated listens. And the instrumental passage, though it may be more Daniel Lanois’ doings than Dylan’s, is as moving as anything that’s ever appeared on a Dylan album. Distant drums, signaling that the Reaper is at hand.

3. “Chimes of Freedom.” (From “Another Side of Bob Dylan,” 1964.) I somewhat reluctantly dropped “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” to make room for my only choice from Dylan’s acoustic period. I don’t like Dylan’s early message songs, including “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” (Sorry, Esther.) “Chimes” seems like a message song, but it’s actually as poetically obscure as anything he’s ever written — like “Mr. Tambourine Man,” but more evocative. “Mad mystic hammering” and “the wild cathedral evening” indeed. Chills, thrills.

4. “Idiot Wind.” (From “Blood on the Tracks,” 1975.) Maybe not the most accomplished song on this, his best album (along with “Highway 61”). But “Tangled Up in Blue” has been overplayed, “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts” is overly mannered and “You’re a Big Girl Now,” wonderful as it is, is just a bit too polite. “Idiot Wind” is a howl of anger and anguish. And the media critic in me can’t help but fall for the opening line: “Someone’s got it in for me, they’re planting stories in the press.”

5. “Thunder on the Mountain.” (From “Modern Times,” 2006.) Dylan the wordsmith is all the way back here, growling over a Chuck Berry beat about everything from Alicia Keys to “suck[ing] the milk out of a thousand cows.” As biting as “Tombstone Blues,” but with a sense of humanity and humor, too. Not exactly linear, but there are some amazing lines that stick with you. One could serve as an epitaph for his career: “Gonna sleep over there, that’s where the music’s coming from/ I don’t need any guide, I already know the way.”

What? Nothing from “Blonde on Blonde” (1966)? Sadly, no. A great album, but I’m going to have to give it a pass. (“Visions of Johanna” tempts me, though.) But let’s face it — I could compile Dylan top fives for a month, and come up with something different every time.

Heck, I could do a top five just from songs he never put on proper albums: “Series of Dreams,” “Blind Willie McTell,” “Positively Fourth Street,” “Up to Me” and “I Shall Be Released.” How’s that? For most people, those five outtakes would add up to a brilliant career.

Paul Begala on Edwards

Here is the CNN exchange between Paul Begala and Anderson Cooper that I mentioned earlier today. Alex Castellanos gets in on it, too.

COOPER: Yes, but, I mean, Paul, you’ve gone through this, obviously, with Bill Clinton. What do you make of the statement that John Edwards released just a few hours ago?

BEGALA: I thought it was bizarre. I thought this …

COOPER: Bizarre?

BEGALA: Bizarre. It was way too detailed. Way too much information. I don’t want to hear him talking about what medical tests he’s going to take. I thought it was way too …

COOPER: You’re talking about taking a paternity test?

BEGALA: Yes. God, shut up, Senator, with all due respect. He needed to say, I did it, I lied, I hurt my wife and I will — I am going to apologize to my wife publicly because I’ve humiliated her publicly, and then shut the hell up.

I thought it was way too self-referential. It was really narcissistic, it was really kind of a creepy statement, frankly. He needed to say a lot less, basically, to say I’m sorry and particularly apologize publicly to his wife.

COOPER: Alex, in the statement he says he’s had become increasingly narcissistic and egocentric. What did you make of the statement?

CASTELLANOS: And then he goes on to produce a fairly narcissistic statement. I thought — I was confused by it. I thought a lawyer or somebody who’d been on the national scene that long would know better.

But you know there are things in there, like I was 99 percent honest. You’re either honest or you’re not. There were lines in there that — you know, I’ve beaten myself up enough. And I’ve been stripped bare.You get the sense that he still thinks he’s the victim here. And I don’t think that most folks looking at this situation would agree.

I’m with Begala and Castellanos. Yuck.

I was thinkin’ ’bout Alicia Keys

Friend of Media Nation Esther, who blogs at Gratuitous Violins, is playing the Washington Post’s “five favorite Dylan songs” game. Poor Esther’s hung up on the early ’60s, but at least she’s narrowed her list down to five. I’m not sure I could do that.

OK, here are five, listed chronologically rather than by preference. I’m not going to submit them to the Post just yet, as I may change my mind:

1. “Tombstone Blues” (“Highway 61 Revisited,” 1965)
2. “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” (“Highway 61”)
3. “Idiot Wind” (“Blood on the Tracks,” 1975)
4. “Not Dark Yet” (“Time Out of Mind,” 1997)
5. “Thunder on the Mountain” (“Modern Times,” 2006)

So what am I leaving out? A lot, obviously. I’ve ignored Dylan’s entire acoustic period. “Chimes of Freedom,” from “Another Side of Bob Dylan” (1964), might be the best piece of poetry he’s ever written. I agree with Esther that the Bruce Springsteen cover version rocks, but I’ve come to like Dylan’s better.

“You’re a Big Girl Now,” also from “Blood,” has been one of my favorites for years.

“Nettie Moore,” from “Modern Times,” knocks me out every time I hear it, but the wordplay on “Thunder” is vintage Dylan.

And, gee, what about “High Water (for Charley Patton),” from “Love and Theft” (2001)? There has never been a verse in popular music quite like this:

Well, George Lewis told the Englishman, the Italian and the Jew
“You can’t open your mind, boys
To every conceivable point of view.”
They got Charles Darwin trapped out there on Highway Five
Judge says to the High Sheriff,
“I want him dead or alive
Either one, I don’t care.”
High water everywhere

Not sure how original that is, as Dylan in recent years has leaned on his source material a bit too hard. Still, that is an astonishing passage.

What do you think?

Photo (cc) by Thomas Hawk and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

The media and John Edwards

For the past few weeks, I’d been sort of half-paying attention as a few political observers — especially Mickey Kaus of Slate — ripped the mainstream media for not following up the National Enquirer’s stories about John Edwards’ affair. Frankly, I couldn’t bring myself to care, and I felt pretty much the same way last October, when the Enquirer broke the story.

Did anyone seriously doubt that Edwards had been screwing around? Did it matter? (Bipartisan alert: I say that as someone who’s perfectly happy that Larry Craig decided to stick around. His only mistakes were pleading guilty to toe-tapping and sounding like a schmuck in his public statements.)

In Edwards’ case, it took a caller to Howie Carr’s show on WRKO Radio (AM 680) yesterday to snap me back to reality. Her point: If the media had ripped the bark off Edwards last fall, when he was still a semi-viable presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee today.

Good grief. She was right. While Barack Obama was winning Iowa, Clinton was coming in third, behind Edwards. Though she came back and won the New Hampshire primary the following week, she never really recovered from that devastating opening round. And until Edwards dropped out, he and Clinton split the anti-Obama vote. (I will grant you that these things change quickly. Just a few months earlier, Obama and Edwards were seen as splitting the anti-Clinton vote.)

Now, I haven’t gone back and re-examined the post-New Hampshire results, so my logic may not be impeccable. Edwards did fade very quickly, so there probably weren’t too many Clinton votes that he soaked up. But to the extent that he delayed the emergence of the Obama-versus-Clinton steel-cage match, he helped Obama enormously. And it was in those early weeks that Obama won the nomination.

So, to return to my original question: Should the media have gone after the Edwards affair last fall? I guess I’d have to say yes, for a couple of reasons.

First, Edwards’ campaign was a serious one, as these things go. He had very little chance of winning the nomination, but his chances weren’t nearly as slight as those of, say, Chris Dodd. And whether we like it or not, sex still matters in American politics. It’s not the media’s job to decide for the rest of us that it doesn’t matter. (Nor should the media overplay it, as they did, most memorably, in the Lewinsky story.)

But whether you like it or not, many Americans want to know if their would-be leaders have been faithful to their spouses, and in that respect the media failed to report important information at a time when it would have mattered.

Second, there was the peculiar nature of Edwards’ appeal. It’s only a slight exaggeration to observe that his entire public persona, other than fighting on behalf of the elderly union folks who lined up behind him at televised rallies, was based on the idea that he had a great family, and that his wife’s battle with cancer had only brought them closer together.

It wasn’t true — or, at least, it was more complicated than that — and, thus, Edwards was engaged at some basic level in consumer fraud.

I first saw Edwards while covering the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles in 2000 for the Boston Phoenix. One morning, he spoke to the Massachusetts delegation. I was repelled by his smarmy unctuousness, and though I should probably let him speak for himself, I think it’s fair to say that my then-fellow Phoenician Seth Gitell reacted the same way. (Update: Seth weighs in, and I was right.)

Last night I went to bed rather than watch Edwards’ interview on “Nightline.” I figured if anything noteworthy was revealed, I’d hear about it and could watch it online later. But I read the statement Edwards issued, and like many, was fascinated by its icky self-absorption. Watching CNN last night, I thought Paul Begala might actually throw up in discussing Edwards’ self-pitying tone. Unfortunately, the transcript’s not up yet.

And how about Edwards’ wanting us to know that he never loved Rielle Hunter (turning “I never had sex with that woman” on its head), and that Elizabeth’s cancer was in remission at the time, so it was, well, not OK, but not as not-OK as it would have been otherwise? But I’ve ranged far afield of my original point.

Every day the media put their thumbs on the scale not just in terms of what they choose to cover, but what they choose not to cover as well. No doubt editors and news directors came up with a lot of high-minded reasons for not going after Edwards in October. I might have even agreed with them then.

But their decision — totally contrary to the way they handed similar allegations about Gary Hart in 1987 and Bill Clinton in 1992 — may have changed the outcome of the 2008 presidential campaign. No, they couldn’t have anticipated it. But that’s just another reason why they should have covered the story instead of covering it up.

Photo (cc) by Alex de Carvalho and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.