McCain’s temperament

Last week I was at a dinner with a former national political reporter who was telling stories about John McCain’s volcanic temper. It was a social occasion, and I don’t feel at liberty to repeat what I heard. But let’s just say those stories fit well with yesterday’s Washington Post piece, by Mark Leahy, in which McCain is depicted as angrily berating fellow senators and lowly aides alike.

In 1999 I wrote an article for the Boston Phoenix that focused in large measure on McCain’s temper. My reporting left me surprised by the degree to which McCain was perceived differently by the national press corps, which, if anything, loved him even more then than it does today, and the Arizona media, which had suffered his insults and silences for years over their aggressive reporting on — among other things — the Keating Five scandal and Cindy McCain’s drug problem.

As Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama tear each other to shreds, this is a story worth keeping an eye on.

The military-industrial complex

Retired generals and other high-ranking military officers get hired as defense contractors. Television networks pay them to offer analysis on the war in Iraq, both during the run-up and in the long aftermath. The Pentagon, which holds the power of life or death over said contractors, tells the generals what to say. And they do, despite secretly harboring doubts about the truth of what they’re being told about the success of the war. Eisenhower was more right than he ever knew.

This, folks, is as sickening a media scandal as we have seen in our lifetime. At least Judith Miller believed the lies Ahmed Chalabi was telling her about weapons and terrorism. At least Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher were harming nothing but their own reputations when they took money to promote administration policy in their columns or, as Gallagher has tried to argue, on the side.

The New York Times’ David Barstow lays it all out today in horrifying detail. Nor was the Times itself immune, having run nine op-ed pieces by these bought-and-paid-for opinion-mongers.

Take a look at this excerpt about Robert Bevelacqua, a retired Green Berets and former analyst for Fox News:

Mr. Bevelacqua, then a Fox analyst, was among those invited to a briefing in early 2003 about Iraq’s purported stockpiles of illicit weapons. He recalled asking the briefer whether the United States had “smoking gun” proof.

” ‘We don’t have any hard evidence,’ ” Mr. Bevelacqua recalled the briefer replying. He said he and other analysts were alarmed by this concession. “We are looking at ourselves saying, ‘What are we doing?’ “

Another analyst, Robert L. Maginnis, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who works in the Pentagon for a military contractor, attended the same briefing and recalled feeling “very disappointed” after being shown satellite photographs purporting to show bunkers associated with a hidden weapons program. Mr. Maginnis said he concluded that the analysts were being “manipulated” to convey a false sense of certainty about the evidence of the weapons. Yet he and Mr. Bevelacqua and the other analysts who attended the briefing did not share any misgivings with the American public.

Mr. Bevelacqua and another Fox analyst, Mr. [William] Cowan [another Fox analyst and a retired Marine colonel], had formed the wvc3 Group, and hoped to win military and national security contracts.

“There’s no way I was going to go down that road and get completely torn apart,” Mr. Bevelacqua said. “You’re talking about fighting a huge machine.”

What can you possibly say about the moral sensibility that informs Bevelacqua’s remarks?

The first major media figure who’ll be popping up today is Tim Russert, who’s pictured in the Times piece (above) surrounded by retired military officers on the set of “Meet the Press.” He ought to open by apologizing and promising a thorough investigation of NBC News’ use of this corrupt punditry. Next week’s show should be devoted to an hour-long self-examination. And every other network should do the same.

What’s so repellant about this is that it robs us of our ability to govern ourselves. Longtime Media Nation readers know that I’ve always been conflicted about the war — against it ahead of time, but, once we were in, hoping for a decent outcome.

I still haven’t abandoned that hope. But this morning I find myself wondering how much of that hope is based on paid-for lies that I mistook for honest analysis.

More about the flag-pin lady

Nash McCabe, the Latrobe, Pa., woman who’s so disturbed about Barack Obama’s decision not to make flag pins part of his everyday wardrobe, turns out to be a known Obama-hater whom ABC News tracked down with malice aforethought.

Josh Marshall: “[I]t does reinforce my sense that the disgraceful nature of the debate wasn’t just something that came together wrong, some iffy ideas taken to[o] far, but was basically engineered to be crap from the ground up.”

Stephanopoulos doesn’t get it

George Stephanopoulos, fresh from his Stephen Colbert shtick (right), tells the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz that Barack Obama deserved to get tougher questions than Hillary Clinton at Wednesday’s debate because he’s the front-runner. Kurtz writes:

“Senator Obama is the front-runner,” said Stephanopoulos, the network’s chief Washington correspondent and a former Clinton White House aide. “Our thinking was, electability was the number one issue,” and questions about “relationships and character go to the heart of it.”

Besides, he added, “you can’t do a tougher question for Senator Clinton than ‘six out of 10 Americans don’t think you’re honest.’ “

But the problem wasn’t that the questions were unfairly tilted against Obama; it’s that they were stupid and demeaning. Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson debased the process by mouthing Colbert-like parodies of Republican talking points as though they were actual questions.

“Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?” is not a question. “I want to know if you believe in the American flag” (from a Pennsylvania woman) is not a question. For that matter, “Six out of 10 Americans don’t think you’re honest” is not a question.

Does Stephanopoulos not understand this? Perhaps he does. Perhaps he realizes that he, Gibson and the debate producers screwed up big-time Wednesday night, and he’s just talking trash to Kurtz but will nevertheless learn from his mistakes.

If not — well, please, as Media Nation reader Peter Porcupine says, bring back the League of Women Voters.

More: Jim Romenesko rounds up the critics.

Illustration by Chris Arkwright, and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Getting Hubbed

I’ve got a profile of Universal Hub co-founder and blogger-in-chief Adam Gaffin in the new CommonWealth Magazine. Here’s the nut:

The idea behind Universal Hub is pretty simple. Every day — during breaks at work, while he’s on his exercise bike at home, or sitting in front of the television with a laptop — Gaffin tries to stay current with some 600 to 700 blogs in Greater Boston, looking for items that are unusually newsworthy, quirky, or poignant. He links to the best of them, along with an excerpt, some commentary, and a headline. He cites mainstream news sources as well, offering words of praise or disparagement.

What emerges from all this is something approaching a community-wide conversation. It’s like talk radio, only better, richer, more diverse, with people able to talk not just with the host but with each other through the comments they post. Universal Hub isn’t exactly an alternative to the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald, but it’s become an essential supplement — a source for hyperlocal and offbeat news you won’t find elsewhere, and a place to hash out the big stories of the day.

“It gives you a place to have a discussion with folks who you might not otherwise be talking to,” says Gaffin.

Also in the new CommonWealth, Gabrielle Gurley takes a look at a new model of investigative reporting, driven by students and non-profit foundations. Gurley focuses on my Pulitzer-winning Northeastern colleague Walter Robinson, whose students are regularly breaking important stories in his old paper, the Boston Globe.

Shales nails it

Tom Shales gets it exactly right in today’s Washington Post:

When Barack Obama met Hillary Clinton for another televised Democratic candidates’ debate last night, it was more than a step forward in the 2008 presidential election. It was another step downward for network news — in particular ABC News, which hosted the debate from Philadelphia and whose usually dependable anchors, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, turned in shoddy, despicable performances.

Indeed, it seemed like at least half the debate consisted of stupid hot-button questions that are of interest mainly to people who’ve already decided to vote Republican this fall. The bottom was reached when a voter named Nash McCabe, of Latrobe, Pa., asked by video: “Senator Obama, I have a question, and I want to know if you believe in the American flag.”

That’s a question? Who would choose to air such idiocy?

More: “This was a travesty,” Michael Tomasky writes in the Guardian. But I’m puzzled by Tomasky’s and Shales’ both saying that Stephanopoulos was off his game. I try to watch as little of Stephanopoulos as possible, so I’m not a good judge. But his performance struck me as entirely in keeping with why I generally change the channel as soon as his smug face appears.

Little Russ and me

My column in the Guardian is a finalist in the Syracuse University Mirror Awards for media commentary. I’m up against David Carr (last year’s winner) and Joe Nocera, both of the New York Times, Rob Owen of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Clive Thompson of Wired (also a winner last year). And yes, there is such a thing as a free lunch, in New York City on June 23.

Tim Russert will receive the Fred Dressler Lifetime Achievement Award. Hmmm … aren’t we almost the same age?

Making sense of the mortgage crisis

The mortgage crisis is impenetrable. One day, people can borrow all the money they want for houses whose values are skyrocketing. The next day, it’s all over. Bad behavior is somehow involved.

This week the Boston Herald’s Laura Crimaldi has a three-part series centered around one player — Dwight Jenkins (photo at right), a former felon from Dorchester who is accused of sweet-talking people into buying houses they couldn’t possibly afford, getting them loans based on false information about their income, and then secretly skimming tens of thousands of dollars off the top of each mortgage.

The series debuted on Sunday and concludes today. The Herald Web site can be pretty difficult to navigate if you’re looking for something other than breaking news, so here you go: part one, part two and part three. You should find most of the sidebars here.

When you read some of the details, you’ll be appalled that anyone could be as naive as Jenkins’ alleged victims. Then you realize that, for the most part, these are people with no financial savvy whatsoever, being told that they can get rich if they’ll just sign on the dotted line.

One alleged victim now suing Jenkins, a former Marine named Robert Smith, is described as “suffer[ing] from schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, a learning disability and mild retardation, [and] was told he could turn a profit even though he didn’t have money to invest or experience in real estate.”

Here’s another eye-opening excerpt:

Much of the business was conducted on street corners or at a Dunkin’ Donuts on Dorchester Avenue, according to plaintiffs suing Jenkins. He did not have business cards, plaintiffs say, and used multiple cell phone numbers, which were sporadically turned off….

“I didn’t really look at the mortgage application,” said Daniel Montrond, now 27, of Dorchester, a State Street fund accountant, who purchased 36 Milton Ave. in Dorchester for $487,500 on Aug. 13, 2004. “He said: ‘Don’t worry about nothing. Just sign and I’ll take care of everything.’ I was like, alright. Cool.”

Not cool at all, as it turns out. And good on Crimaldi and the Herald for bringing this to light.