Town of Mirrors

by Molly Ivors

I think it must be a pain in the ass to live in Iowa. I'm not talking about the corn, or the lack of landscape, or even being attaturk's neighbor--no, I just think it must get frustrating not to be able to take a dump without someone asking you who your preferred presidential candidate is.

I admit, I've been a bit discouraged lately by the horse-race polling of the major candidates in Iowa.  No person has cast  a single vote, but the memes (Hillary is tanking! Obama is climbing! Bill Clinton and Oprah discovered in Ames Love Nest!) are annoying at best, and actively dangerous at worst. I'm one of those people who believes with all my heart that you vote your conscience in the primary and your intellect in the general, and I intend to do so. However, it's disheartening when your conscience appears to be invisible, even when your candidate is more or less tied with the frontrunners.

In late October, the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy released a study offering a first look at coverage of the 2008 campaign. They found that Hillary and Rudy received more, and more negative, coverage than other candidates, and that Obama received more super-happy fun coverage than anyone.  John Edwards was all but invisible, receiving about as much coverage as Fred Thompson, who didn't even announce he was running until September.

In a display of blindness to one's own complicity which rivals upscale Jewish girls from Commack laughing at JAP jokes, Kit Seelye from the New York Times reported on this study:

The news media are more obsessed than ever with the horse-race aspects of the presidential campaign, according to a new study. Despite the campaign's early start, the media have not been more reflective on the issues, the study said, but have focused on tactics and strategy.

..........

Almost two-thirds of all stories (print, television, radio and online) focused on the political aspects of the campaign, while only 1 percent focused on the candidates' public records.

Only 12 percent of stories  seemed relevant to voters' decision making; the rest were more about tactics and strategy.

..........

The campaign coverage has been sharply at odds with what the public says it wants, the study found, with voters eager to know more about the candidates' positions on issues and their personal backgrounds, more about lesser-known candidates and more about debates.

But the media is even more obsessed this time around with questions of tactics and strategy, despite what the study described as a ''generational struggle'' in both parties. Horse-race stories accounted for 63 percent of reports this year compared with what the study said was about 55 percent in 2000 and 2004.

''If American politics is changing,'' the study concluded, ''the style and approach of the American press does not appear to be changing with it.''

You don't say! I love that Seelye casts herself as a bemused outsider here, rather than a primary player in the phenomenon. "I know I murdered my father and mother! But take pity on me--I'm an orphan!" Self-reflection is for the little people.

Clark Hoyt, the Public Editor, does a bit better, acknowledging that, "news organizations — including newspapers, television stations and Web sites — long ago narrowed the field of eight Democrats and eight Republicans to only five presidential candidates who matter: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on the Democratic side and Rudolph Giuliani, Mitt Romney and John McCain among the Republicans.In that sense, the study accurately reflects the current performance of The Times." Biden and Dodd each got a front-page story, but not Edwards. Hoyt shamefacedly admits this: "In Iowa, which launched a little-known Jimmy Carter to his party’s nomination in 1976, John Edwards is close behind Clinton in the most recent Des Moines Register poll, yet The Times has given him comparatively scant coverage." But as he also cites his editor's lame-ass assertion that it's quantity, not quality (bullshit) and Hoyt blames, as per usual, the internets. "You can't expect us to do a good job! People who care don't even read the paper anymore!"

I'll take a bold stand here: John Edwards is my candidate. He's principled and intelligent, and he understands the three issues that matter most to me: Iraq, health care, and the economy. He "gets" class in America, and is determined to do something about it. He gets pissed off at the right people and says so. And he could do a lot worse than pick Chris Dodd as his running mate. But he's completely invisible in the corporate media.

As I noted above, Edwards is polling neck-in-neck with Clinton and Obama in Iowa. If this is horse-race reporting, and three horses are headed for the straightaway, isn't anyone else curious about why no one's bet on the bay?

Fear of a Populist Planet?

Comments

[tim quick]

I'm for Edwards, too, (despite little pangs of liberal guilt for being a white guy preferring the white guy). And everytime I hear the horse race meme I want to say, 'As if!'. It's not just the horse race-style coverage it's that they pretty much makeup the results. Greenwald, among others, documents how the so-called pundits are always telling us, with no basis in polling or reality, what America wants. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. These stories about who's ahead and who's behind are often front page, straight-up (supposedly) objective news stories - that, unfortunately, bear no relationship to any veriviable reality.

I'm about one election away from slipping from liberal to leftist - especially when it comes to analyzing our unfree, totally coopted corporate press. God help me, I don't want to have to start reading Chomsky again.

[tim quick]

I'm for Edwards, too, (despite little pangs of liberal guilt for being a white guy preferring the white guy). And everytime I hear the horse race meme I want to say, 'As if!'. It's not just the horse race-style coverage it's that they pretty much makeup the results. Greenwald, among others, documents how the so-called pundits are always telling us, with no basis in polling or reality, what America wants. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. These stories about who's ahead and who's behind are often front page, straight-up (supposedly) objective news stories - that, unfortunately, bear no relationship to any veriviable reality.

I'm about one election away from slipping from liberal to leftist - especially when it comes to analyzing our unfree, totally coopted corporate press. God help me, I don't want to have to start reading Chomsky again.

[tim quick]

Oops, sorry, for the double posting - browser problem. I've been reading blogs for years, but just started commenting in the last week or so. Still not very savy about it.

[Ghost of Joe Liebling's Dog]

This is what Kit "It Was Just One Word!" Seelye is writing about these days? The newsies' deliberate failure to honestly report on actual issues?

Wow ... the Times has an assignment editor with a wicked sense of humor.

Or had.

My money'd be on "had."

With kind regards,
Dog, etc.
papertrained!

[NTodd]

Um...Dennis?

[DrDick]

"I'm about one election away from slipping from liberal to leftist - especially when it comes to analyzing our unfree, totally coopted corporate press."

Been there done that (about 20 years ago) and am now a confirmed socialist. I support Edwards for exactly the same reasons as Molly. I do not feel the least guilt as a white man supporting a white man in this case. When both the woman candidate and the black candidate are unabashed corporatists, there is no contest. Give me an authentically progressive woman or black candidate and I am there, but these two have nothing going for them on the policy front. Clinton is actually a moderate Republican (a la Ford and Nixon), while Obama is as far right as you can be and still be a Democrat. If I wanted a Republican for president I would vote for one.

[Itchy Brother]

Edwards is invisible in the corporate media BECAUSE he understands the big three issues. Entrenched interests do not want changes in Iraq, health care, or the economy. To paraphrase Babs, it is working quite well for them.

[Molly Ivors]

NTodd, I know that's your position; I feel differently.

[LittlePig]

Concur. While I am sorely tempted to vote DK in the primaries, it will depend on the breakouts at that point (Arkansas is early February, I think - it was just moved up). I will probably end up voting for Edwards.

As DrDick so well noted, Edwards is the most lefty of the three (which isn't saying a lot). I'd like a large DK vote to stress the need for the party to stop being Rethuglican-Lite, but with only 1 halfway-real Democrat in the top tier, I may not have the luxury.

[actor212]

I think it must be a pain in the ass to live in Iowa. I'm not talking about the corn

No, but I'm betting that doesn't help...

[actor212]

Molly,

I'll likely vote either Obama or Clinton (NY here, so things will probably have wrapped up anyway).

Edwards lost my vote with his bungling of the whole "bloggers v. Catholic League" thing, altho I voted for him in 2004 ahead of Kerry.

The math is pretty simple. A Clinton win in Iowa eliminates Obama. A Clinton win in South Carolina eliminates Edwards. A Clinton loss in either Iowa or South Carolina...means Hillary is still in the race.

She's going to outlast the other two.

[low-tech cyclist]

Molly's point here isn't that you should support Edwards. It's about a corporatist media deciding they know what we should think, and what we should think about.

No, they don't want us to think about Edwards. The WaPo showed its hand on November 12, 2006, the Sunday after the Dems' resounding midterm victory, when the entire front page of their Outlook section was about "Hillary v. Obama."

Hell, not only did they not want us to think about Edwards (pretending then and whenever possible since that he didn't exist) but they clearly didn't want us to reflect on the implications of the Democratic victory that had happened five days earlier, choosing instead to rush us ahead to 2008.

It's straight out of Citizen Kane:

Emily: Really Charles, people will think-...

Charles Foster Kane: - -what I tell them to think.

[NTodd]

NTodd, I know that's your position; I feel differently.

Clearly. But keep in mind who the corporatist media has anointed as The Top Three, and who they've actively kept marginalized...

[low-tech cyclist]

But keep in mind who the corporatist media has anointed as The Top Three, and who they've actively kept marginalized...

Maybe they've included Edwards in the top 3, but other than that type of mention, they've all but frozen him out of the storyline.

While it's true that everyone from Richardson on down is even more marginalized than Edwards, Edwards has been marginalized quite thoroughly, thanks.

And with even less excuse: Edwards' poll numbers were better than those of every GOP candidate except for Rudy for most of the year. But McCain, Romney, and Thompson all got more ink.

[coozledad]

If Edwards were the Democratic candidate, the current Republican field would have to be scrapped altogether. He'd kill any of them.
I just wish the system worked that way.

[John O]

Thank you! I've been trying to make this point for some time now, but nobody reads my blog, and zillions read yours.

As a lib-leaner (not a purist) I want to let you know that I LOVE your blog, adding, boy, are you two smart.

[John O]

Edwards, by far, represents the biggest threat to the status-quo.

Media Man IS the status quo. They're scared like Cheney in a Mosque.

[may]

I've had surveys (I'm in NH) that asked Obama or Clinton and I would have to say, no, Edwards.

I'm in complete agreement about the media and about why I support Edwards.

I can't support DK by the way, despite his stated positions, and it isn't because he isn't in the top 3. But that is another conversation and a long one.

Maybe it is that Bonnie Raitt will be with Edwards at the Lebanon Opera House in NH next week, and I just have to do what Bonnie does.