By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
Here’s what happens when newspaper-business cutbacks finally reach the New York Times: A legend like Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse takes early retirement. (Via Romenesko.) Who will Nina Totenberg hang out with?
More important, what will become of the so-called Greenhouse effect — the tendency of justices to move to the left in order to be thought well of by the dean of the Supreme Court press corps? Good grief. This could be bigger than another judicial vacancy.
In my latest for the Guardian, I consider the media fallout from last night’s debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Yes, Obama outperformed her. But it certainly doesn’t help that the media detest Clinton and are openly rooting for her demise.
The great William F. Buckley Jr., founder of modern conservatism, has died at the age of 82. His magazine, National Review, is assembling a tribute.
I thought Clinton sounded sad and subdued at the end, as though she knew that whatever she needed to do tonight she didn’t do. If she’s going to get back into the race, it won’t be because of this debate.
A further thought on the Louis Farrakhan reject/denounce exchange. Russert really let Obama off the hook by not forcing him to answer for things his minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, has said. Yes, Russert noted that Wright has praised Farrakhan, but then he let it pass. Obama “rejected and denounced” Farrakhan, but we never got back to Wright.
To be sure, Obama needn’t endorse everything Wright says to belong to his church. But it would have made for a more interesting conversation than simply beating up on an easy target like Farrakhan.
Maybe I’m too caught up in the moment, but I thought Clinton really got the worst of it in trying to say Obama didn’t go far enough in “denouncing” Louis Farrakhan’s endorsement — she said he should have “rejected” it, as she had done with a sleazy supporter in New York. Obama laughed a bit, said he didn’t see the difference and added that if it made her feel better he would “reject and denounce.” Oof.
This is their third one-on-one, but the first time I’ve seen such a performance differential between the two of them.
Tim Russert is questioning Obama about what assurances he can give to Jewish voters in light of Louis Farrakhan’s unsolicited endorsement of Obama and controversial remarks by Obama’s minister. No mention of Obama’s “Likud” comments in Cleveland.
Obama just pulled off the neat trick of going to Clinton’s left and right on national security simultaneously, and he was able to do it because Clinton handed him the opportunity. First, she criticized his opposition to the war in Iraq as nothing more than a speech, saying both of them had voted the same way on war-funding and related issues since that time. Then she questioned his judgment for saying last summer that he would bomb Pakistan.
Obama responded by saying that Clinton had enabled President Bush to “drive the bus into the ditch,” and that the reason their voting records are similar is that there are only so many ways to get out of the ditch. Then he said he didn’t favor bombing Pakistan, but did favor targeting specific Al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan. And he praised the Bush administration for doing that last week in taking out Al-Qaeda’s third-ranking leader.
That said, Brian Williams and Tim Russert seem to be doing everything they can to drop live grenades in her lap while making it easy for Obama to cruise along.
I think Hillary Clinton may have just burst into flames. After a contentious, 16-minute exchange over health care, Brian Williams finally moved the discussion to trade. Before she answered, she started channeling her campaign spokesman, Phil Singer, by complaining about always being asked the first question and referring to a “Saturday Night Live” skit in which Obama was portrayed as being coddled by the media. This can’t be helpful to her.
Media Nation has been nominated in the Blog/Podcast category of the Boston Phoenix’s 2008 “Best” poll. I invite you to vote early and vote often. (Just kidding. Sort of.) Yes, I used to work at the Phoenix, and I still write for the paper occasionally. But this is a reader poll — I have no advantage over anyone else. If you visit Media Nation regularly or occasionally and like what you see, I hope you’ll make your feelings known. I’m keeping the graphic in the upper right until the polls close.
Other nominees are Universal Hub, Jon Keller, Blue Mass Group and the Allston Brighton Community Blog.
Michael Kinsley once memorably defined a “gaffe” as what happens “when a politician tells the truth.”
Barack Obama has committed a gaffe, telling Jewish leaders in Cleveland:
This is where I get to be honest, and I hope I’m not out of school here. I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt a unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re anti-Israel, and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel. If we cannot have a honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we’re not going to make progress. And frankly, some of the commentary that I’ve seen which suggests guilt by association or the notion that unless we are never ever going to ask any difficult questions about how we move peace forward or secure Israel that is nonmilitary or non-belligerent or doesn’t talk about just crushing the opposition, that that somehow is being soft or anti-Israel, I think we’re going to have problems moving forward. And that, I think, is something we have to have an honest dialogue about.
Hillary Clinton definitely has an opening at tonight’s debate. And I’ve worked in my second Michael Kinsley reference in one day.