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The New Criterion

The Media

June 2006

Cheap laughs

by James Bowman

Manufactured reality, courtesy of the media.

One thing that living in the media age ought to have taught us by now is that reality has to bemanufactured and marketed, and that the media are the monopoly producers, the Standard Oil of

reality for our time. To this extent, they are right when they criticize, as they so often do, the leadersof their country for being out of touch with realitythey just leave out the part about how thereality in question has been patented and copyrighted and branded and sold as their own peculiarproperty. I imagine that when you are a part of a great corporate enterprise like the reality business,particularly on the marketing end of it, it must be easy to forget that reality is not a given. It has hadto be painstakingly constructed out of a chaos of confused information and is always in the processof being revised and reconstructed by new information. At its margins, too, it is always incompetition with rival versions of reality, and the clash between them can often be productive forboth sides. But Big Media have lately been seeking to squash the competition in order to protecttheir monopoly on reality production, and that is commonly what they are doing whenever they usethe word.

Its their world, and were just living in it. More importantly, those who wield political power andauthority are also living in it, and it has been constructed at least in part to thwart them, if notdisgrace them and hound them from office. As one small example of how this works, consider thereality-status of the undoubted fact that three years ago President Bush appeared in front of a bannerreading Mission Accomplished on board the aircraft carrierAbraham Lincoln and gave aspeechor, as Frank Rich would say, a victory jigto congratulate the men on board and,implicitly, himself and his administration. It was this latter part of the message, the unspoken,subtextual part, that especially annoyed the media. What annoyed them even more was the fact thatfor part of his flight the President had taken the controls of the airplane on which he arrived on theLincoln. Later, he appeared in photographs in his flight suit, which photographs also carried an

implicit message, meant to sail over the medias mediating powers to reach ordinary people, thattheir president was, well, a bit of an action hero.

That is the form of reality-manufacture known as public relations, and all politicians engage in it. Orattempt to. But the political public relations effortas opposed to that of, say, Hollywood, which isusually treated as a subcontractor to the medias reality-manufactoryis regarded by the media as achallenge rather than a partnership. As they wish to reserve a privileged place for their proprietorialversion of reality, the political flack with a rival version to sell must be discredited, his competingstory utterly derided and destroyed, for the media to go about what the media see as their business.Indeed, to a large extent, that is their business: to undermine where they cannot falsify what theycontemptuously call the White House spin. Accordingly, in the mediaand, as a result, to a

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considerable extent in the political culture as wellthe Mission Accomplished image has beenunspun and respun as a prime document in their case against Mr. Bush. Now it is never mentionedexcept as one of the leading icons of the constantly repeated theme of the administrationsincompetence (at best) or, more likely, its mendacity.

Of course, the media would never call this spin, but that is what it is. Looked at without itssubsequent and accumulated freightage of derogatory and sinister significance, the MissionAccomplished images are nothing very remarkable. TheLincolns mission, which was to provide

air support for the invasion of Iraq, had indeed been accomplished, and creditably so. Even if wetake the banner to have referred to the invasion or the war more generally, the defeat of SaddamHusseins armies was certainly a mission in its own right and, equally certainly, it had beenaccomplished. To say so, and to congratulate those who had accomplished it, did not in any wayimply that there could therefore not have been or were not expected to be any more missions to beaccomplished in Iraq. Yet once the ironically iconic and iconically ironic power of the image hadbeen established through its constant use by the mediaas well as the more openly avowedopponents of the administrationit became what passes these days for evidence of some kind ofpolitical wrongdoing. Here, for instance, is Ana Marie Cox in theWashington Poston theresignation of Scott McClellan as the Presidents spokesman. This is a White House that, for themost part, deals with errors, misstatements and blatant untruths by simply refusing to acknowledge

their existence. What Mission Accomplished banner? Which Social Security reform? Harriet who?

Its a little unclear here whether she means the Mission Accomplished banner to be seen as anerror, a misstatement, or a blatant untruth. But as Social Security reform and Harriet Miers couldonly have been errors at the worst, the blatant untruth label finds itself naturally, if not explicitly,attached to it. Theres spin for you! Except that Miss Cox, unlike Mr. McClellanfor whom shedemonstrates an exaggerated scorn under the guise of an exaggerated pitywould get very crosswith you for saying so. She may toil, but she spins not, at least to hear her tell it. Her spin, unlike thePresidents, isreality, and that pretense is always an essential part of the medias spinning. If they canclaim to be in a wholly different business from that of a contemptible flack like Scott McClellanaswell as being morally and intellectually his superiortheir monopoly on reality manufacture and

marketing is protected. Thats an unquestioned advantage for any salesman over his competitors.Accordingly, the medias most furious fights come in response to imputations against their supposedobjectivity. They know such attacks, if successful, threaten their very existence as reality makers.Without the bias towards a mythical objectivity, without the spin of their spinlessness, the greatmedia money machine would grind to a halt.

But their fight for their monopoly cannot be too overt, either, without giving the game away. So it iscarried on with the help of disingenuously condescending articles like Miss Coxs, which was one ofmany published in a similar vein in response to poor Mr. McClellans retirement, hurt, from the fieldof battle. Over and over again it was alleged that he had represented the contempt in which the Bushadministration held the press. At the White House Correspondents Association dinner inWashington at the end of April, Stephen Colbertwho has a show on the Comedy Central cablenetwork and who had been hired as the evenings entertainmentalluded to this latest bit of mediareality when he volunteered his own services as Mr. McClellans replacement and cited as his chiefqualification for the job the fact that I have nothing but contempt for those people, meaning thepress. The irony of the remark lay in the fact that it was true, but for the opposite reason to thatwhich lay behind the administrations contemptas Mr. Colbert suggested when he accused thepress corps of being nothing but an amanuensis for the the latters view of reality.

The president makes decisions the press secretary announces those decisions, and you people ofthe press type those decisions, he said, making use of a trope that has lately been advancing fromits origins on the loopy left, furious that the media do not hate the President enough, to a new and

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widely accepted bit of media-reality. But is it possible for a sane man actually to believe that themedia are indeed docile, obedient, and subservient in their dealings with the administration? Well,heres where the power of media-reality to degrade other and competing accounts of it makes itselffelt. For as it is one of the central tenets of media-reality that the media themselves are objectiveobservers of the world, without any political agenda of their own, there is always a case to be madeby the politically engag that it is time for objectivity and dispassion to be discarded and for thebanners of revolutionary opposition to be taken up. It only sounds crazy if you are yourselfsufficiently distant from media-reality to harbor doubts about the myth of media objectivity.

For those of us who fight to maintain that distance, the obvious point to be made is that, if it is truethat the administration is contemptuous of the media, it is no less true that the media arecontemptuous of the administration, as their routinely disrespectful treatment of its pressspokesmanor Mr. Colberts satirical stand-up actmade manifest. What else do they expect inreturn? If youre constantly described as a liar and you know or believe yourself to be no liar, youare hardly likely to feel much respect for your accusers. Here, for example, is what EugeneRobinson of the Washington Postthinks: At least now we know that the Bush administrationsname for spying on Americans without first seeking court approvalthe terrorist surveillanceprogramisnt an exercise in Orwellian doublespeak after all. Its just a bald-faced lie. Is it really?Then for what purpose, pray, has the surveillance been undertaken, if not for the detection and

apprehension of terrorists? Mr. Robinson does not know. Mr. Robinson declines even to speculate.But the mere fact that it involves people who are not terrorists as well as people who areand if itdidnt there would be no point to the exercise, as they would already know who the terroristswereis enough in Mr. Robinsons book to call it a bald-faced lie. And so the catalogue of theBush lies that has become an accepted datum in media-reality is increased by one more.

Once again, the medias conceit of themselves as being unspinning and unspun flatters them into sountroubled a coziness with their reality that they imagine there to be, even conceivably, no other.People like Eugene Robinson probably dont even realize that they are being insulting in making acharge that, a couple of hundred years ago, might have cost them their lives. They imagine theyspeak the simple truth, which would explain how they might regard the administrations contempt

for them as gratuitous. Mr. Colbert, by contrast, strikes me as a man with a pretty good idea of whathe is doing. Certainly, he must have known that by insulting the medias supposed supinenessbefore the administration, he was also insulting the administration, though in the presence of both histargets he was able at least to this extent to leave his assumption of the latters malfeasancesunspoken and so to pay his deference to the lighthearted spirit of the occasion. This made some ofthose present nervous. Several articles in the Washington Post, which as hometown newspaper hasmore of an interest than most of its media brethren in preserving some shreds of comity in thediscourse between politicians and public, criticized Mr. Colbert for being unfunny by ignoring thecardinal rule of Washington humor: Make fun of yourself, not the other guy. This, in turn, produceda predictably vitriolic reaction from the Presidents implacable detractors in the blogosphere,damning as a Bush stooge anyone who didnt find Mr. Colbert funnyor else praise him for not

being funny.The latter bit of subtlety was the tack taken by the most highbrow of the comedians defenders, thedistinguished literary critic James Wood, in The New Republic. Professor Wood took particularissue with Richard Cohen of thePostfor daring to suggest that the funnymans brand of politicalhumor was not only less than sidesplitting, but rude to the President. Was Stephen Colbert funny?,the professor asks himself. No, he was not being funny. He was being ironic, satirical, brutal. Dontyou get it? These issues are just too painful for humor. A pity, then, you might think, that they andthe correspondents dinner itself were dressed up as being humorous and matters for humor. On thisview, Mr. Colbert should have been commended not for being funny but for smuggling into the hallunder the guise of his (mostly) unfunny comedy routine the brutally ironic, or ironically brutal, satire

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that had been unbidden at the feast. What Mr. Cohen deploredthe entertainments rudenesswasthus the very thing that Professor Wood, obviously sharing the raging blogospheres conviction thatno place should verbal thrusts against the President sanctuarize, commends.

Its odd, then, that in attacking Richard Cohen he puts the word rude in quotation marks thusquoting from Mr. Cohen, to be sure, but also devaluing his word, if not treating it with a contemptusually reserved for Bush defenders. Does he exalt rudeness then, only to deny that it is rude? Theexplanation, perhaps, comes later in the piece where he notes that there is something

breathtakingly, sublimely insulting about the way Colbert, in the midst of his rudeness, continues touse the words sir and Mr. President not ten feet from the man he is dressing down. I infer fromthis language that the ironic punctuation is meant to convey the professors sense that we are not tounderstand rude in its traditional sense, still current in Mr. Cohens column, as being something bad,but in the new, Woodite sense as being something good. The word may be the same, but inmedia-reality it carries an opposite meaning. Indeed, it seems increasingly to be the case thatmedia-reality is inconsistent with any vestigial sense of the proper decorum belonging to public life.Should not the man have said what he thought? Would he not have been merely cowardly if he hadnot told President Bush what he thought of him, albeit in a manner meant to be humorous, even on alighthearted occasion such as this? If he thinks so, the professor must also be opposed to the verypretense of decorum and civility on an occasion meant to bring two opposing political sides together

for an evening and therefore to such occasions themselves. Something of the sort would seem to bethe corollary of the extraordinary beliefand particularly extraordinary in a man who has writtenwell of Shakespearethat these issues are just too painful for humor.

If I had been President Bush, I would have called Mr. Colberts bluff and offered him the vacantpress spokesmans job on the spot, but the moment passed and the choice fell on the Fox Newscommentator and radio host Tony Snow, who had served in the administration of the first PresidentBush as a speechwriter. This moved Jim Rutenberg ofThe New York Times to write that, Informally naming Tony Snow to be his press secretary on Wednesday, President Bush completed adecade-long transformation of the role of the presidential spokesman from behind-the-scenesfunctionary to daily on-camera personality. In a sense, therefore, his job was to be the

administrations answer to Stephen Colbert, a personality whose license to speak is conditional,like that of a royal fool, on his not being taken seriously. And just as Mr. Colbert knew that his jobwas to criticize the media as well as the President, so Mr. Snow was thought by some in theadministration to have burnished his credentials for the job by having called the administrationsdomestic policies lackluster and the President himself something of an embarrassment. ThusMark McKinnon, a media consultant to the President, was quoted as saying that, Tony has hugestreet cred. It gives him credibility, and thats the most important thing for a press secretary.

But credibility with whom? The media? Are we to suppose that they will reverse all their efforts ofthe last three years to call into question the Presidents own credibility for the sake of lacklusterand something of an embarrassment? The media might run one of those mock apologies in whichthe satirical magazine Private Eye specializes: We may inadvertently have given the impressionthat we thought the President was a liar and a scofflaw, a torturer and a war criminal who ought tobe impeached and then turned over to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. In fact, nothing couldbe further from the truth. We now accept that he is a thoroughly decent fellow and a great presidentwho has hired as his press spokesman someone who once dared to apply the word lackluster tosome of his policies. The very idea is ludicrous, but the medias spin on the appointment and theirown role as objective and dispassionate observers depended on their temporarily upholding thefiction that it might be so in order that it may appear more persuasive when they find, as they surelywill, that Mr. Snow is just another hapless puppet of the Bush junta, as Gore Vidal affects to call it,like Scott McClellan.

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All this is part of the publicity for the medias latest product line, a retro, 1970s-themed butthoroughly renovated version of Watergate. Theyve invested too much in developing and rolling itout not to keep it up now, which is what explains the hysteria of Mr. Robinson at the news thatsecurity services are checking phone records in search of terrorists. The media spin was that this wassomehow scandalous just because it hadnt been known about beforeexcept that it had. Nevermind, the main thing is to bring out something that can pass for a scandal every few days so as todrive down the Presidents poll numbers. Then the low poll numbers themselves become a scandal.One of the hilariousor rude and unfunny, according to tastejokes told by Mr. Colbert at the

Correspondents dinner went like this. Now I know theres some polls out there saying this manhas a 32 percent approval rating, but guys like us, we dont pay attention to the polls. We know thatpolls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in reality. And realityhas a well-known liberal bias. And so it does, too, at least for as long as we leave to the media theexclusive rights to realitys manufacture.

James Bowman is the author ofHonor: A History (Encounter Books) andMedia Madness: TheCorruption of Our Political Culture, also published by Encounter (2008) .

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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 24 June 2006, on page 65

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