WEEKLY UPDATE 8/15/08

Zebra Meat
In matters of press coverage during this election season, the (on-going) John Edwards mess has widespread ramifications. By covering this story as they did, (or didn’t!) the “mainstream media” outlets have exposed themselves to further accusations from the right of liberal bias. But more significantly, I think, this Edwards business demonstrates once again that the usual suspects in the news business— the NEW YORK TIMES, CNN, et al— are no longer the exclusive gatekeepers of the news and information that reach the American public.

The NEW YORK TIMES, central pillar that it is of the mainstream media, has painted itself into a particularly awkward corner. For many months they refused to touch the Edwards Mistress Story with a ten-foot pole, haughtily disparaging the validity of the NATIONAL ENQUIRER as a credible news source. (NEW YORK TIMES columnist David Carr says that many news organizations "tend to pick up stories from the ENQUIRER with tongs…. They have been very right about some things, but there have been some misses too, so it's a little scary to follow on those stories.”) Anyone who steals a glance at this supermarket checkout rag or follows its seemingly regular out-of-court libel settlements would no doubt agree.

But it was this same ENQUIRER that broke the Rush Limbaugh-prescription painkiller story in October of 2003, a tasty morsel that was hungrily devoured by every outlet in the media universe. Furthermore, the TIMES had no problem with running a front-page article in February of this year about a purported affair between Republican Senator John McCain and a Washington lobbyist, an allegation with far less foundation than the Edwards story. (The TIMES did so beneath the dubious fig leaf of challenging McCain’s repeated claims of maverick-like independence from just such “special interests.”) Is the venerable TIMES so pro-Democrat that it has lost its sense of fairness? I suspect that it’s something bigger than that.

What this whole mess comes down to, I think, is a transfer of power and influence from the oligarchic Old Media (network television and newspaper) to the arguably more democratic New Media, the legions of the nosy and the opinionated who thrive in cyberspace. Recall that it was the “blogosphere” that did in Dan Rather four years ago-- after Rather gleefully raced to his CBS “48 HOURS” set with his seemingly damning George Bush/National Guard documents (did this remind anyone else of Sonny Corleone carelessly rushing to the toll booth?) it was the burgeoning web log community that pointed out the inescapable discrepancy between the dates on the documents and the technology that produced them. Ironically (to some, at least), it was two unabashedly left-leaning websites— SLATE magazine and Huffingtonpost— that kept the Edwards Mistress story on life support until it was viable, i.e., until the former democratic presidential candidate personally confessed on a Friday NIGHTLINE segment (albeit opposite the Olympic opening ceremony and Russia’s invasion of neighboring Georgia.)

Will the mainstream media buy Edwards’ carefully limited confession and now leave him and his poor wife alone? Not likely. Having allowed the lions at the ENQUIRER and in the blogosphere their fill of their hard-earned zebra meat, the old print and television guard, reduced to mere vultures, will likely scavenge this story to its bones.

Earth to Russia
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago in my piece about the “1812 Overture,” Russian military history is notable for its lack of decisive military victories. The glorious triumph celebrated in Tchaikovsky’s rousing foot-stomper was only possible because the Russians burned Moscow to the ground, and subsequent “victories” in the two World Wars came at a cost of twelve million soldiers. For all its post-war thermonuclear might and bluster, Soviet Russia was more of a menacing bully than a military power, overpowering only a couple of its helpless satellites while continuously talking tough to Western Europe and the United States. Post-Soviet Russia, arisen from the U.S.S.R.’s 1991 implosion, has until recently seemed a reasonable nation with whom the world community could do business. But now comes this Georgia thing, reminiscent of the Soviet’s treatment of Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

I certainly hope that it was not my article that got Russian President Vladimir Putin so riled up that he invaded Georgia. If so, I certainly meant no offense. But if Putin and the country he leads want to sit with the grown-ups at G8 meetings and Mid-East peace conferences and such, they need to understand the difference between being feared and being respected. The Cold War is long over, if only because we no longer live in a world with only two superpowers. China is a giant, economically and, potentially, militarily. India has a billion people and nuclear bombs, and the Arab nations have tons of money. Alliances are prone to shifting over time. No one country, no matter how powerful, has the capacity to stand alone against the rest of the world. Earth to Russia— smarten up and get with the twenty-first century.

(Danny May can be reached at DLTMAY@AOL.COM)