Joe Klein is hopping mad again. He is upset that Glenn Greenwald cited this bit of Kleinian praise for David Broder for evidence that the Elite Punditry is out of touch with the American rabble:
what I most like about Broder as a reporter is that he has taken pains over the years to talk at length with the sort of people who don't go to protests, and even to folks who don't go to political meetings in Iowa and New Hampshire. He'll actually go door to door, or convene a group of neighbors, to find out what's important to them. This informs the questions that he asks the candidates, and I must say he's done it in an entirely fair way over the years, even when I've disagreed with his judgments.
For Klein, the point is that Broder has street cred because he talks to Ordinary Folk, and thus is a real reporter:
the blogospheric media critics have served a valuable function at times, and at other times it's just vitriol for vitriol's sake. I thought an essential part of the critique was that some of us are out of touch with reality...but now Greenwald is saying that any efforts to actually report what's going on outside the Beltway are bad, too?
I'm not endorsing everything Broder writes. I've disagreed with his recent opinings about a Bush comeback. But there really is a bright line between those who make the effort to report and those who don't. Broder makes the effort, even now, at an age when many pundits have retreated into armchair columny.
But if Broder's opinions in his columns are based upon "reporting" that gives him special insights into the opinions of "The People," how come these insights are never detectable in his actual columns?
Where is the "effort at reporting" in the column about how "long lists" of even Democratic Senators think Harry Reid is a terrible majority leader? Is he calling the Democratic Senators who said this isn't true liars? And in that column was Broder actually correct in saying that there was "political fallout" for Reid's "gaffe" about the war being won -- where's the evidence that the remark bothered anyone but Republicans, wingnuts, and... David Broder?
Klein thinks he has an answer to this, but it just makes things messier. He wants to draw a "bright line" between reporting and pundit-ing... but then, he also doesn't:
Several readers and also Greenwald seem to be conflating Broder's DC columns, which are fair game, and his lifelong history of going outside the Beltway to report. I don't think Broder would argue that his columns about Bush and Reid (another one I disagreed with) directly reflect What The People Think...but I do think his heritage of reporting influences his worldview, just as the time I've spent in the middle east affects the Washington-based columns I write about middle east policy.
Which is wanting it both ways. Broder's "heritage of reporting outside the Beltway" surely has not impacted his opining from inside the Beltway in the slightest, because one habit you'd expect from a fellow with a "heritage of reporting" is some sort of disdain for just making up shit that fits your "worldview." Thus, when he's opining... Broder is most definitely on the dark side of the "bright line," the side where nobody bothers to report but sits back in his armchair and columnizes.
So by Klein's own categories, the Broder who writes his Washington columns is an smug, insufferable non-journalist and gasbag.
But hey, let's hear it for the Reporter Broder, whoever the hell he is when he's at home.
Feh.
