Blogometer Update

BLOGGERS VS. MSM: No Love At The Freak Show

  ABC News Political Director Mark Halperin is not well loved in the blogosphere.  He's sniffed at by the right, loathed by the left.  It probably comes down to what Glenn Greenwald at Unclaimed Territory calls Halperin: "[T]he living, breathing embodiment of the 'mainstream media,'" and we all know how well bloggers and the beltway get along.

  What initially torques Greenwald off about Halperin is his promotion of a book he's co-written with Washington Post National Political Editor John Harris that takes, in discussing the strategies of modern politics, potshots at bloggers--or, as the book describes them, the "shrill voices" of "partisan megaphones."

  One of Halperin's stops in his promotional tour was at right-winger Hugh Hewitt's radio show.  And here's where Greenwald, and just about everyone else, has a fit:

  [Halperin] went on Hugh Hewitt's radio show for a three hour interview last night, and Hewitt spent the entire time trying to attack Halperin as one of the symbols of overwhelming, systemic left-wing bias in the "mainstream media."

  The ironic problem for Hewitt?  Halperin -- like so many of the most entrenched establishment journalists -- not only agrees with Hewitt about virtually everything, but was literally desperate to convince Hewitt that this is the case, that he is on Hewitt's side.  In front of an approving Sean Hannity, Halperin last week announced his self-debasing quest "to prove to conservatives that we understand their grievances."  He escalated that crusade by many levels with yesterday's interview.

  So many "journalists" like Halperin seemingly have as their principal objective convincing right-wing extremists like Hewitt that they are good boys and girls and do their job in a way that pleases the Right.  The effort is always tinged with self-flagellating confessions that they have not been Good enough -- they have been trying to be more fair to the Right, they insist, but they still need to do much better -- but these assurances are accompanied by pleas for the Right to recognize that they are not as bad as most of the other journalists.

  Greenwald goes on to illustrate several examples of Halperin's pandering to Hewitt, then wraps:

  In sum, Halperin, in one interview, illustrated the crux of the sickness of the national media -- every tenet of right-wing mythology, embraced.  Every opportunity to debase himself before Hewitt in the hope of getting a little head pat as one of the Good Boys, seized.  Every left-wing bogeyman, bashed.  Every right-wing hero, glorified and praised and treated with intense reverence.

  Following up on his own post later in the day, Greenwald heaps more onto Halperin:

Today, Halperin is very upset -- very emotionally distraught -- because Hewitt remarked both during and after the interview that he thinks Halperin is "very liberal."  Halperin spent three hours in the interview desperately trying to convince Hewitt that he is on Hewitt's side, but that wasn't enough to win Hewitt's approval.

  If anything, it prompted derisive, dismissive cracks from Hewitt, who writes at Townhall:

Mark Halperin was upset by my conclusion that he is a very liberal MSMer. ... Arguing for a sort of "sovereign immunity" from opinions being formed about his ideology and agenda is at first baffling and then humorous.  Smart and pleasant, but the condescension in his offense taking is startling.  This is the MSM disease, one associated with all aristocracies --that it will not endure criticism or questioning, is easily offended, and quick to cast aspersions on opponents.

  For the record, Mark Halperin e-mailed me and asked if he could be a guest.  Not only did I agree, I thought his position worthy of a three hour interview and the offer of a return visit.  His anger with me comes from my opinion that he is very liberal, and as I explained below, I don't think it is easy to come to any other conclusion with the evidence at hand.

  Then the volleys from the left picked up again.  Ezra Klein ID's Halperin as "what's wrong with the press corps."  He writes:

  It is now a matter of public record ... that Mark Halperin is writing with an eye towards Hugh Hewitt's approval.  Everything he writes must be judged through that lens.  Much of it must be discarded for that reason.  He's no longer a journalist, can no longer protect his pretensions of intellectual independence.  He's no longer, if he ever was, worth reading.

  Charles P. Pierce at TAPPED fires away at Halperin's "rules of mindless balance," too, in a post addressed to journalists:

  Halperin's a salon-sniffer with all the sincerity of a man who sells potions out of a wagon...

  It's step-up time today, boys and girls.  Are you going to play along with the bullshit controversy du jour or are you going to do your actual jobs?  By all means, let's talk about Iraq for the next six days.

  Rather than loathe Halperin, Atrios at Eschaton feels sorry for him.  To wit:

I've always really disliked Mark Halperin, but now I just pity him.  I really wonder what kind of psychological development he had in life which has led him get down on his knees and beg for the approval of... Hugh Hewitt.

  More than that, he's the political director of ABC news.  Last I checked it's a rather important time for such news.  And he's spending his time crafting whining emails to a conservative hack radio host?  There's no better use of his time 7 days before an election?

  Imagine how embarrassed his friends, family, and coworkers must be for him.  What a pathetic shell of a human being.

  Halperin got wind of Atrios' post, and--seemingly aware of all the net criticism directed toward him--this time he responded, via John at wtfwjd?:

  [A]s I have said to you privately, I am beginning to think you are intellectually dishonest on a few points.  It seems strange that someone who seems to be trying to bring truth to people would do such a thing, but I can't really explain your behavior any other way.  As I said to Hugh Hewitt, you and I disagree on almost everything.  On most of the points of agreement, I disrespect your position and thus my own, and plan to modify my beliefs in accord. ...

  I am mystified by your determination to lump me in with others.  Acknowledging the liberal bias that exists in the Old Media -- as John Harris and I do in The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008 doesn't necessarily prove that I am not a "wanker," but I would think you would be open to giving me the benefit of the doubt, when you have no actual evidence to the contrary.

  No sooner does Halperin put the period on the end than Jeff Borden has this posted at Poynter Online:

  So, Mark Halperin doesn't vote to maintain his journalistic purity, but he runs panting after a second-tier conservative talk show host's approval and slanders the entire press corps as anti-military in the process?  I know these self-absorbed DC creatures have some strange ideas, but what's up with this?

  It doesn't say much for Halperin's abilities as political director for a major network news operation that he fears casting a vote behind the privacy curtain of a polling place will hurt his reputation but transforming into a lickspittle for a rightwing radio host doesn't.  I'll certainly be looking elsewhere for political coverage.

  As if that weren't all enough, Halperin's writing partner Harris "begs Mark Halperin to shut up," as Weldon Berger writes at BTC News:

  Harris keeps telling Halperin, politely, to shut up about their book.  The reason Harris wants Halperin to shut up is that during the course of his promotion tour for the book, Halperin has courted right-wing talk and radio hosts and in so doing has disintegrated into a 10-year-old boy begging the bullies to like him.  ... Billmon likens [Halperin's behavior with Hewitt] to the desperate self-criticism sessions common in Soviet Russia and vividly described by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

  It isn’t just Halperin’s character or his ability to provide rational coverage of politics in this country that his courtship of Hewitt, and Sean Hannity before, calls into question: it’s his mental acuity.  At one point he tells Hewitt that “I am beginning to think you are intellectually dishonest on a few points.”  He is, mind you, writing to a man whose very trade is intellectual dishonesty and demagoguery.  Maybe Hewitt is capable of intellectual honesty off the clock, but when he’s on duty it has no part in his performance.

  The public disintegration of Halperin’s character, in both the critical and psychological senses, is extremely unpleasant to watch.  Harris is clearly uncomfortable with it: throughout his exchanges with Halperin he hints at that discomfort, telling Halperin in regard to “freak show” politics that “you know my view of the freak show, because I learned it from you.  It should be marginalized.  What incentives induced you to not follow your own advice?”

  Gadzooks!  Berger eases up on Halperin for a microsecond, knocking Harris' "traditional [press] myopia," before delivering a withering blow on Halperin again as he wraps:

[He] clearly has no business representing the national press in a discussion of that institution.  At the same time, his high profile going into the elections offers a valuable and rather depressing confirmation of the degree to which a great many journalists are operating with the equivalent of Jack Sparrow’s compass in Pirates of the Caribbean: it points neither east nor west nor north nor south, but only in the direction of the thing you most desire.  In Halperin’s case, what he most desires is acceptance from people who have always and will ever find him nothing but contemptible, and his only success is in broadening that demographic.

BLOGGERS VS. MSM: A.P. Freely

  Associated Press gun-for-hire John Solomon would be earning the wrath of lefty watchdogs, were his attacks... er, reports something more than wet noodle slaps, as folks at Talking Points Memo point out.

  First there was Solomon's carping that started back in June on Sen. Harry Reid's real estate troubles.  Josh Marshall's take on it, from mid-October:

  I know a number of people who know or have worked for Solomon.  And I've never gotten the impression that Solomon has any political or ideological ax to grind.  His rep is as an easy mark for oppo researchers peddling their wares -- and from both sides.

  Here's what one former colleague of Solomon's said last week: "I worked [X] years in the same office as Solomon, sometimes with him.  The consensus: he's lazy, and takes hit jobs handed him on a platter by opps research teams (and anyone will do.)  And doesn't do much to clean it up.  I also know one of his fave and frequent sources is Barbara Comstock, former DOJ spxwoman and GOP attack dog."

  I've heard the same from numerous oppo researchers and journalists.  If you're interested in finding out more about this, you might also look at this 2004 article in The Atlantic Monthly about how oppo researchers get their goods into articles.  Look at the articles referenced and then go back and see the bylines.

  On Reid, I think it's a combination of two things.  One, as I said, he's an easy mark for oppo researchers peddling stuff that other journos didn't think met the laugh test.  And two, he hasn't really landed a punch yet and Reid's fought back.  So now it's a bit personal.

  Well apparently Solomon got bored and went sniffing around for something else, and got it with a quick rip on Sen. John Kerry's soldier-education gaffery.  Reader DK at TPM was close to being entertained by Solomon's freestylin':

  Josh posted a couple of weeks ago about the modus operandi of the AP's John Solomon: "His rep is as an easy mark for oppo researchers peddling their wares -- and from both sides."

  So I was almost amused when I saw Solomon's hit piece today on John Kerry.  In a story that purports to follow up on Kerry's botched Iraq joke (the headline is "Kerry's '72 Army comments mirror latest"), Solomon reports: "During a Vietnam-era run for Congress three decades ago, John Kerry said he opposed a volunteer Army because it would be dominated by the underprivileged, be less accountable and be more prone to "the perpetuation of war crimes."

  Phrased that way, it appears that Kerry was linking being underprivileged to the commission of war crimes.  But once you read the rest of Solomon's piece it becomes pretty clear that Kerry thought that a professional army would be more likely to commit war crimes (which may be arguable but is not implausible) and also thought that an all-volunteer force would be comprised disproportionately (and unfairly) of the underprivileged.  Solomon commits the causal fallacy of concluding that Kerry therefore said that the underprivileged are more likely to commit war crimes.

  Now back to the Solomon MO.  His sources for the story were "a former law enforcement official who monitored 1970s anti-war activities" and "someone who gathered" the document in which the comments appear"from archives during Kerry's unsuccessful 2004 presidential campaign."  The first source gave Solomon the tip.  The second source, apparently an opposition researcher, provided the document.

  Like I said, almost funny.  Then I considered what a treasure trove the current national security apparatus must be yielding even as we speak for some oppo researcher to exploit against a yet unknown Iraq War veteran 34 years from now.