« The word of the day is “obtuse” | Main | You wouldn’t get this from any other guy »
All in the game
By Ned | March 26, 2008
In a New York Times op-ed today, Neal Gabler has an interesting explanation about why the press lusts after McCain so much.
What makes 2008 different — and why I think Mr. McCain can be called the first postmodernist presidential candidate — is his acknowledgment of the symbiosis between himself and the press and, more important, his willingness, even eagerness, to let the press in on his own machinations of them. On the bus, Mr. McCain openly talks about his press gambits. According to Mr. Lizza, Mr. McCain proudly brandished an index card with a “gotcha” quote from Mitt Romney that the senator had given Tim Russert of “Meet the Press,” a journalist few would expect to need help in finding candidates’ gaffes. In exposing his two-way relationship with the press this way, he reveals the absurdity of the political process as a big game. He also reveals his own gleeful cynicism about it.
This sort of disdain might be called a liberal view, if not politically then culturally. The notion that our system (in fact, life itself) is faintly imbecilic is a staple of “The Daily Show,” “The Colbert Report,” “Real Time With Bill Maher” and other liberal exemplars, though they, of course, implicate the press in the idiocy.
The other big difference between McCain and political satirists is that they work with opposite intentions. Good satirists highlight absurdity not just to make people laugh but to also get to the truth, something that they care very deeply about. McCain, on the other hand, deliberately obfuscates but realizes he can get away with it by openly sharing his contempt for reality with the press corps. What McCain seems to share with various media bigwigs such as Tim Russert is this conviction that politics is a sport put together for their amusement and personal advancement, and fucking around with truth doesn’t have a whole lot of real-world consequences. Of course, if that were true, we wouldn’t be at war right now, would we?
As Gabler acknowledges, this isn’t the one key to unlocking the whole McCain-press circle jerk. But it’s a big factor, and one indicative of the larger problems we have with the fucked up attitude that the people who Atrios calls Villagers have towards the democratic process.
Topics: Elections, The White House |