Glenn Greenwald: David Brooks' fictitious defense of his industry's behavior

[babylonsister]

Glenn Greenwald
Friday April 18, 2008 10:24 EDT
David Brooks' fictitious defense of his industry's behavior



As I've noted more times than I can count, the premiere manipulative, deceitful tactic of the Beltway pundit is the pretense that they are the Spokespeople for the Regular Americans, and that the pundits' views can therefore be assumed to be representative of how Regular Americans think, even when there is no evidence remotely suggesting that to be so and ample evidence suggesting that it is false, and the prime practitioner of this corrupt method is David Brooks. Today, in his New York Times column, Brooks again defends the tawdry, juvenile ABC "debate" and hauls out this tactic to do so:

But the fact is that voters want a president who basically shares their values and life experiences. Fairly or not, they look at symbols like Michael Dukakis in a tank, John Kerry's windsurfing or John Edwards's haircut as clues about shared values. . . . When Obama goes to a church infused with James Cone-style liberation theology, when he makes ill-informed comments about working-class voters, when he bowls a 37 for crying out loud, voters are going to wonder if he's one of them. Obama has to address those doubts, and he has done so poorly up to now.

As always, David Brooks knows how "they" think and what's important to "them" -- so much so that no proof is ever needed for his claims. As always, it's not David Brooks and his childish colleagues in journalism who are interested in insipid, Drudge-like storylines. No, not at all. They so wish they could be covering weightier matters. But they can't, because those stunted, unsophisticated Americans out there -- the ones Brooks is able simultaneously to look down upon and understand and speak for -- don't want to hear about any weighty matters. They are capable only of thinking about whether Obama can bowl and whether Edwards likes his hair too much (and, of course, it's the very same media stars who spout this condescension about the Regular Folk who have decreed that Barack Obama -- and Al Gore, John Kerry, Mike Dukakis, etc. etc. -- are elitists because they look down on Regular Americans).

Leave aside the question of whether those who hold themselves out as political journalists ought to report on substantive matters and be guided by objectives other than maximizing profits. Even with regard to what "Americans" want, David Brooks has no idea whether what he's saying here is true and he also doesn't care. He asserts these matters as fact because his only goal is to defend his "profession" and his colleagues. Thus, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos and all the rest of them have no choice but to be as petty and vapid as they are because that's what "Americans" want.

All available data proves the opposite. As the media assault on Obama's "character" intensifies using the petty, cliched personality themes that are the hallmark of their leader, Matt Drudge, Obama hasn't appeared to suffer much at all. To the contrary, he has steadily gained on Clinton in Pennsylvania beginning with the lapel pin/Michelle Obama/Wright/bowling/"bitter" controversies. Americans are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the political coverage fed to them by the establishment media, which is held in almost as low esteem as the Bush administration, and complaints are common that the political process has little to do with their lives. Though it never occurs to him, the fact that the David Brooks of the world can't stop fixating on bowling scores and haircuts -- while the country spirals into extreme economic insecurity and more deeply into a Middle East occupation which the country hates -- might be one reason why:

The public, in turn, sees a news industry whose corporations increasingly act like other businesses. News outlets in an era of fragmentation seem more prone to produce content designed only to attract a crowd. Alerts of journalistic failures are coming more frequently from politicians, bloggers, mainstream press critics and, with more ways to add their own voice, even citizens themselves. Perhaps most important, with more choices, the public can easily see the limits of what any one news organization is offering.

more...

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/04/18/brooks/