Rob Long, Call
OK, Rob, I'll bite. (You knew I would.)
Not news that a UCLA prof fantasizes about keeping Fox News down. That's not the scandal of JournoList.
The scandal, as my WSJ colleague James Taranto put it in his Best of the Web column yesterday, is that a group of journalists used a private forum to discuss ways to suppress the news -- and no one thought this was, well ... inappropriate (at least until the Daily Caller started publishing the email traffic. The money quote, as James pointed out, was the one by journalist Spencer Ackerman, who now writes for Wired.com, where he suggested that his fellow journalists should push back against the media treatment of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright with a deliberate policy of libeling Fred Barnes or Karl Rove -- he said it didn't matter who -- by calling them "racist," in the hope their response would help get people off the Wright story. Again, not for anything Karl or Fred said or did, but as a deliberate strategy of smear.
The larger story is that it is part of a pattern of establishments (media, academe, etc.) that profess to be "objective" or "scientific" but really harbor deep biases against conservatives -- some of which are so vile they dare not express in public but clearly feel free to express to one another without any fear of rebuke. Indeed, so far as we can see, the only objections to Mr. Ackerman's mudball were tactical, and as Politico reports, he has kept his job with Wired. It comes atop the Weigel story, where he made clear on JournoList not only his disagreement with conservatism but his loathing. Which itself comes in wake of ClimateGate emails about professors trying to undermine colleagues and rig the peer review process: Nobody here but us objective scientists here.
Is it any wonder that conservatives feel that these ostensibly "objective" or "scientific" institutions are rigged against them? Nothing we didn't already know, about the press on most issues and the academy on climate change. But somehow it's still striking to see some smoking guns.
Now I have my own fantasies. E.g., that one day the New York Times or Washington Post might decide that conservatives, who account for about 40% of the U.S. population by self-definition (compared to about 20% for liberal), are not treated as an exotic tribe. In that regard, it would be nice to have people cover conservatives or represent conservative thought who 1) did not vote for Barack Obama; 2) does not loathe conservatives.
In the meantime, let us enjoy the spectacle of the JournoList, as we watch all these Wizards pleading with us to trust in the Great and Wonderful Oz instead of looking at the pathetic little huckster from Kansas behind the curtain.
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May '10
Re: Rob Long, Call
Bill, I can imagine your wish for the New York Times or Washington Post treating conservatives with something resembling objectivity coming true... if Rupert Murdoch sees fit to purchase one or both of them! Barring that, I think leftism is so far ingrained in the big papers and the journalism programs they hire from that the NYT, WaPo, et al. will drive themselves to the brink (or the bottom) of bankruptcy by catering ham-fistedly to America's liberal minority.
Re: Rob Long, Call
And all these years I thought it was a vast right-wing conspiracy.
Jul '10
Re: Rob Long, Call
The shocking thing about this story isn't that liberal journalists were strategizing to protect their candidate; the fervor of press support for Obama was worn on its sleeve. The shocking thing is Ackerman's cavalier attitude. He appears to pick a conservative pundit at random—Fred Barnes—and is ready to paste him with a label he'll spend, depending on its purchase, days, weeks, months, or years living down. Whether Barnes actually is a racist is of no concern at all.
Worse still, even after this revelation of his expedient indifference to the truth, I imagine Ackerman will face little difficulty securing future employment in journalism.
I can understand being so infuriated by someone's opinions that you might feel an impulse to smash them through a plate-glass window. It's a sign you should take a deep breath and, weather permitting, go for a long walk, but it happens. What I don't understand is randomly looking for someone you disagree with to defenestrate. Something far uglier than anger is at work there.
Jul '10
Re: Rob Long, Call
Well stated, amurderofcrows.
Jul '10
Re: Rob Long, Call
I am aften confused as to the relative weight of political ideology vs. cultural arrogance with scandals of this sort. The excerpts I have seen speak less to a sense of ideological certitude than of frustration at having to deal with clear cultural inferiors. Culturally, they see Fred Barnes as not all that different from a gap-toothed trailer court redneck. One does not deal honorably with opponents like that!
The red/blue, coastal/flyover, 30/70, city party/country party cultural morphosis will probably occupy a large portion of the history books written about our age. This is just a clearer-than-usual example.
May '10
Re: Rob Long, Call
Patrick, well said. I believe our second Civil (hah) War is going on now. It's not as regional, but clearly cultural. And the city folk want the country folk to shut up, join the military as their substitutes, and pay taxes to subsidize their constituency...and stop complaining about it.
May '10
Re: Rob Long, Call
Patrick Shanahan: I am aften confused as to the relative weight of political ideology vs. cultural arrogance with scandals of this sort. The excerpts I have seen speak less to a sense of ideological certitude than of frustration at having to deal with clear cultural inferiors. Culturally, they see Fred Barnes as not all that different from a gap-toothed trailer court redneck. One does not deal honorably with opponents like that!
The red/blue, coastal/flyover, 30/70, city party/country party cultural morphosis will probably occupy a large portion of the history books written about our age. This is just a clearer-than-usual example. · Jul 21 at 6:29pm
But Fred Barnes isn't an American from flyover country with Red State cultural cues -- he's an Inside the Beltway graduate of the University of Virginia and a former Nieman Fellow at Harvard. He's made cameos in Hollywood movies and hosted television shows. The cultural arrogance explanation doesn't make sense here, though I've objected publicly to what Spencer Ackerman said about Barnes and Rove, for whatever reason.
Jul '10
Re: Rob Long, Call
Barnes writes in a column that he always assured people who asked about the left wing bias in the oddly-named mainstream media that it was the result of groupthink rather than conspiracy. Well, he's singing a different tune these days. Let's call JournoList what it was, a subversive cell whose aim was to change the way the country is governed. The next question is how much financial backing it got from George Soros, who for my money is the most dangerous man in the country.
May '10
Re: Rob Long, Call
What concerns me most about this is not the members of JournoList by themselves. I have to wonder how many other Americans in influential positions share this sort of moral apathy toward their enemies. It is a key feature of Obama, Pelosi and the rest. Such apathy is quite literally dangerous.
Our nation's stability is based upon the basic agreement that we will treat our political opponents as human beings with inherent rights; that dislike will not translate into dismissal or acts of malice, but instead into public debate and orderly confrontation. Sadly, it seems an increasing number of politically involved Americans are accepting an "end justifies the means" morality. Such a trend could lead in many directions, none of them good.
America's very identity depends upon the concept of civil disagreement. If we lose that, we will lose everything.
May '10
Re: Rob Long, Call
Conor Friedersdorf
But Fred Barnes isn't an American from flyover country with Red State cultural cues -- he's an Inside the Beltway graduate of the University of Virginia and a former Nieman Fellow at Harvard. He's made cameos in Hollywood movies and hosted television shows. The cultural arrogance explanation doesn't make sense here, though I've objected publicly to what Spencer Ackerman said about Barnes and Rove, for whatever reason. · Jul 21 at 11:26pm
Conor, aren't we missing the boat if we set the discriminator here as being of UVA-Harvard origins? We are speaking of an attitude, a dismissive or clueless attitude about the people and life-types of middle America. Fred Barnes is one of those guys who has never projected disdain for flyoverland by writings or demeanor. I am less concerned about bona fides than about attitude. He wasn't that way at TNR (neither was Michael Kelly, nor Michael Barone, or, really, Kondracke, either now or back when they were "more left")
One can be an indicator of the other, but none of this is deterministic- I am concerned with body of work and demeanor. Origin is just one indicator.
Jun '10
Re: Rob Long, Call
Did someone say Wizard??