BakerMuckraker
Blogs in the Month of
JUNE - 2006
- June 02,
I-PIFFLE
Did you miss Muckraker? He certainly missed you. As he noted previously, he’s off on a journalistic wild-goose-chase these days, and so blogging time is scarce. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care.
I-PIFFLE
Muckraker just hates those articles about what is supposedly on the I-Pods of politicians. The first of these bits of nonsense that he recalls was a New York Times piece where the writer purportedly got an exclusive glimpse at President Bush’s play list. Not surprisingly, it had something for everybody, and portrayed him as a guy perfectly in touch with the sensibilities of his base, and then some. It’s about as realistic as Bush’s summer reading list, undoubtedly weighed down with philosophical works and masterpieces on military strategy. Since then, it seems there have been plenty of these phony ‘let-your-hair-down’ accounts.
Anyway, someone else is peeved about this. Here’s from CBS News’s blog (yup, even CBS has one now)
>Let's say you're a politician who wants to seem down to earth, likeable, and loose. Your speeches are notoriously stiff, and you've been criticized for appearing too ambitious and driven. What, you wonder, do you do to make people feel like you might be an actual human being? Easy – just go to the iPod.
Today brings us the latest in a string of stories in which politicians have offered up the contents of their iPods to seemingly credulous reporters. Hillary Rodham Clinton's iPod, according to what she told the surprisingly sympathetic New York Post, features Aretha Franklin's "Respect," the Eagles' "Take It to the Limit," which includes the line "You know I've always been a dreamer," and U2's "Beautiful Day," which the Post describes as "an upbeat, uplifting single Clinton blares over the speakers moments before she hits the stage to deliver a red-meat stump speech."
What, no "Star Spangled Banner?"
Well, maybe, actually. "I've got everything - a total smorgasbord," she told the Post. CBSNews.com ran an Associated Press rewrite of the story.
I'm not saying Clinton's choices are necessarily tailored to what's going to play well with the plebes. But I have a hard time believing that she chose the songs she did without a little advanced planning. I mean, really, could a political consultant have come up with better selections? It's not just Hillary who has offered up their seemingly poll-tested iPod contents, of course – as the Post notes, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Chuck Schumer have all advertised what they've got playing. "Cheney," writes Ian Bishop, "stays true his Western roots and tunes his iPod to Johnny Cash." Wow. And here I thought he was a Trent Reznor fan.
One need not be completely cynical about all this – Bush's iPod, for example, wasn’t completely on message, as CNN points out, containing as it did a song by anti-Bush artist John Fogerty and the somewhat risqué "My Sharona" in addition to the expected country and boomer rock. But the look-what's-on-my-iPod story is fast becoming the modern version of traditional stunts like appearing on Laugh-In, the Tonight Show, or Saturday Night Live to show folks that you're just a regular Joe or Jane. (Not that the latter is completely dead.) And reporters are, for the most part, eating it up without the slightest trace of skepticism.
Bill Clinton famously used Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow" on the campaign trail, transforming a breakup song into a paean to his vision of the future. (And remember when Bruce Springsteen protested Ronald Reagan's use of the not-actually-patriotic "Born In The USA?") The iPod craze has made it even easier for politicians to use their alleged musical tastes to their advantage, and, not surprisingly, more and more of them are jumping on the bandwagon. The subsequent stories are a small but not insignificant illustration of the way that technology is transforming the tools at politician's disposal to win over a skeptical electorate. Once again, it seems, yesterday's gone.<
Let’s have some fun with this. Readers, send Muckraker your imagined I-Pod lists. For example, what would Joe Lieberman listen to? How about Jack Abramoff? For that matter, how about Katie Couric? The winning entries will be featured in an upcoming post.
SPEAKING OF HARGWASH….
Poor Muckraker has been deluged with e-mails breathless about a new article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in Rolling Stone, proving that the 2004 election was stolen. M.R. hasn’t had the time or energy to fully apply the red pencil, but on the points with which he is personally familiar, he can safely say that this is simply a giant clip job by a fine fellow who is, alas, not a journalist and shouldn’t even play one on tv.
Muckraker himself actually went to Ohio after the 2004 election expecting to find new details on the shocking acts of theft allegedly perpetrated by the Bush forces, asked the leading lights of the ‘We Wuz Robbed’ School to pass along their most disturbing exemplary incidents – and found little or nothing there (as you can see for yourself here and here.) Muckraker wasn’t alone – ace reporter Mark Hertsgaard came to similar conclusions in a subsequent piece he did for Mother Jones magazine.) Now comes RFKJ -- who, sadly, apparently didn’t read Muckraker’s debunking -- to parrot those MR already debunked. And so MR has to hear from friends and enemies alike how he’s apparently all wet – cuz RFKJ said so!
There’s a whole cottage industry of circulating junk and getting otherwise-functional people in a tizzy, convinced that elaborate James Bond-esque plots exist everywhere. But the reality is that the Bush people have been able to win through a combination of highly effective politicking and nasty big and little gambits that don’t require the massively-complicated and very illegal act of rigging computers. That’s not to definitively conclude that even something so nefarious was not possible – just that no one has remotely proven that, and RFKJ certainly hasn’t done any independent due diligence. Neither has professor-author Mark Crispin Miller or any of the others who seem to devote an inordinate amount of time trying to make everyone hysterical and to convince us that the most basic features of democracy are already completely compromised.
The truth, as Muckraker has said, is that the voting apparatus needs to be fixed top-to-bottom, and the effort needs to go into systemic corrections, not panic and controversy. Yes, there were all manner of things to investigate, notably the disenfranchising of voters, particularly African-Americans – so RFKJ et al are partially correct. But they throw in everything including stale nuts and berries into their brew, all without any real vetting. That’s why we need investigative reporters. If you agree, you can always go to www.realnews.org and make a donation to support the exhausting spade work that the glamourites of political activism don’t themselves have time to do.
AND....
Nothing.
More, including the humor you have come to expect, in an upcoming post. Now, go quietly. And chew slowly.