Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics (10 page)

This is bad: When you go to Google and enter “Edwards haircut,” the first item that comes up is a story by Bill Wundram in
The Quad-City Times
of Davenport, Iowa….

The article got 324 comments from readers. When people inside the Beltway are talking about your haircut, it doesn’t matter much. When people in Iowa are talking about your haircut, you may have a problem.

So Simon used the excuse that the item in the Iowa paper received 324 comments as proof that this was a huge story outside the Beltway, that there was this spontaneous groundswell of interest in John Edwards’s hair among salt-of-the-earth ordinary Iowans. Therefore, as much as he wished he could spend his time on more elevated matters, he simply had to write about it.

But what Simon omitted is that the reason the item in the Iowa paper received so many comments is that Drudge had linked to it, just as he linked to
The Politico
’s stories on this “issue.” That sent hundreds of thousands of right-wing Drudge fanatics to the Iowa article, producing hundreds of comments. The slightest critical thought would have revealed that the article generated so many comments not because Americans care about the story but
because Drudge linked to it.
But critical thought was nowhere to be found in what Simon wrote. In his mind, media chatter about a “story” is proof of its importance.

During the two-week period when the political press, following Drudge’s lead, was fixated on John Edwards’s haircuts, the following are but a few of the stories that were never once mentioned, let alone covered, by
The Politico,
and that barely received any attention in the wider establishment political press:

• Retired Marine Corps general John Sheehan requested that his name be removed for consideration as “war czar” because our Iraq policy was being destroyed by what he called “the constant refrain by a small but powerful group that we are going to ‘win,’ even as ‘victory’ is not defined or is frequently redefined.”

• The Bush administration sought vastly increased powers to spy on the telephone conversations of Americans, then threatened to begin spying again illegally and without warrants.

• It was revealed that Condoleezza Rice would meet with Syrian officials, a significant shift in Middle East policy.

• It was disclosed that Iraq’s government was actually purging itself of anyone who sought to impede lawless Shiite militias.

• One of the right wing’s most influential academicians, Harvard’s Harvey Mansfield, published an Op-Ed in the
Wall Street Journal
explicitly advocating “one-man rule” in America, whereby the President can ignore the “rule of law” in order to fight the Terrorists.

Given the political press’s eagerness to repeat and disseminate the twisted personality-based attacks on Democratic candidates cooked up by the right-wing noise machine, it was hardly a surprise when a Fox News poll in June 2007 found that an astonishing 44 percent of the electorate was able to answer “Edwards” when asked: “Do you happen to know which presidential candidate has been in the news recently for paying four hundred dollars for a haircut?”

As Greg Sargent of Talking Points Memo pointed out, a Harris Interactive Poll from July 2006 found that only 45 percent of Americans answered “Not True” when asked whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the United States invaded. As Sargent pointed out:

Only one point more knew Saddam didn’t have WMDs—a statistically identical amount. That’s right—
the same number know about Edwards’ haircut that knew the truth last year about Saddam and his phantom weapons.

Far worse still, a
Washington Post
poll taken in September 2003—a full two years after the 9/11 attack and a full
six months after the United States invaded Iraq—
revealed that a truly depressing 69 percent of Americans believed it “likely” or “very likely” that “Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11 attacks.” As Sargent concluded:

So nearly 20 percent more know about Edwards’ haircut than believed Saddam wasn’t behind 9/11
—two years after the attacks and six whole months after the invasion.

Something’s wrong here.

What is “wrong here” is that our political press has been consumed by the filthiest, most slothful, and pettiest personality attacks—engineered by the likes of their leaders, Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh—while the vast bulk of its “journalists” ignore substantive stories except to repeat government claims about them uncritically and mindlessly. The political discourse engendered by our nation’s media is thus suffused with an unceasing parade of juvenile “discussion” about patent nonstories, and even our presidential elections are decided more by contrived personal imagery than by any real consideration of policy and substantive issues.

Indeed, comprehensive surveys of media coverage demonstrate that discussions of actual issues are excluded almost completely from press discussion even of our elections. An October 2007 report from the Pew Research Center examined press coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign and found that a minuscule 12 percent had anything to do with “how citizens might be affected by the election.” The overwhelming bulk of the coverage was instead devoted to campaign tactics, polling chatter, and gossip about the candidates. Worse still,
virtually none
of the discussions of the candidates involved their record or past performance:

In all, 63% of the campaign stories focused on political and tactical aspects of the campaign. That is nearly four times the number of stories about the personal backgrounds of the candidates (17%) or the candidates’ ideas and policy proposals (15%). And
just 1% of stories examined the candidates’ records or past public performance,
the study found.

Thus, a very well-funded new political magazine, staffed by some of the nation’s most establishment political journalists, jumped immediately into the Drudgian attack muck because, in our political culture, that is where the real action is. Ground zero for our political discourse among our establishment media are scurrilous, personal smears and attack gossip dredged from the Beltway gutters.

The fact that such adolescent smears are directed primarily—or at least most potently—at liberals and Democrats was demonstrated by the virtually complete silence in the wake of a
Politico
item concerning Mitt Romney. In July 2006,
The Politico
’s Kenneth Vogel published a 360-word article reporting that “‘communications consulting’ is how presidential candidate Mitt Romney recorded $300 in payments to a California company that describes itself as ‘a mobile beauty team for hair, makeup and men’s grooming and spa services.’” The Romney campaign “confirmed that the payments—actually two separate $150 charges—were for makeup.” Vogel’s article included an interview with one of the makeup artists who worked on Romney:

Stacy Andrews, who made up Romney for Hidden Beauty, said he barely needs makeup.

“He’s already tan,” she said. “We basically put a drop of foundation on him…and we powdered him a little bit.”

Despite its obvious similarities to the Edwards haircut story, this item went nowhere, as it was ignored almost completely by the establishment press. While Drudge heavily promoted the Edwards story, he completely ignored the Romney item. A 2007 article by
Salon
’s Michael Scherer sheds light on the likely cause of Drudge’s lack of interest in the Romney “makeup” story:

Matt Rhoades, Romney’s communications director, has a long history as the source for Drudge headlines, having previously served as the research director for the Republican National Committee during the 2006 campaign. In their book
The Way to Win, Time
’s Mark Halperin and
The Politico
’s John Harris recount that Rhoades traveled to Florida for a friendly steakhouse dinner with Drudge when he took the research director job in 2005.

Drudge aggressively promoted the Edwards haircut story; therefore, it became one of the most covered items from the political press he leads. Drudge ignored the Romney story; therefore, it was ignored almost entirely by his journalistic followers. A LEXIS search reveals that the Edwards haircut story was mentioned 2,372 times in the media from the time it was first reported by
The Politico
through October 2007. A similar LEXIS search reveals that Romney’s $300 makeup expenditure, during the same period, was mentioned a grand total of 21 times. Drudge rules their world.

The Politico
’s immediate effort to court and copy Drudge is by far not the only evidence demonstrating the supremacy of this strain of “journalism.” In October 2007, Jim Rutenberg of the
New York Times
explored Drudge coverage of Hillary Clinton’s campaign in an article headlined “Clinton Finds Way to Play Along with Drudge.” That article, echoing the Halperin/Harris confession, made clear that Drudge single-handedly continues to rule the political press. Rutenberg documented coordinated efforts by the Clinton campaign to court the ruler of the media world:

Mrs. Clinton is learning to play nice with the Drudge Report and the powerful, elusive and conservative-leaning man behind it….

[I]t also speaks to the enduring power of the Drudge Report, which mixes original reporting with links to newspaper, Internet or television reports far and wide….

Aides in both parties acknowledge working harder than ever to get favorable coverage for their candidates—or unfavorable coverage of competitors—onto the Drudge Report’s home page, knowing that television producers, radio talk show hosts and newspaper reporters view it as a bulletin board for the latest news and gossip.

Because of the sheer number of people who look at it and because of the attention it gets from the media,
what appears on Drudge can, for a few minutes or an entire day, drive what appears elsewhere, making it, “a force in the political news cycle for both the press and the campaigns,” said David Chalian, the political director at ABC News….

On the Republican side, a generation of campaign consultants has grown up learning to play in Mr. Drudge’s influential but rarefied world. They have spent years studying his tastes and moods while carefully building close relationships with him that are now benefiting some Republican presidential campaigns—and that others are scrambling to match.

That these establishment political journalists, following in the Harris/Halperin footsteps, admit—without the slightest trace of shame—that Matt Drudge determines the coverage choices for America’s political media outlets is utterly astounding. After all, much of Drudge’s reporting is, as the
New York Times
article put it, “delivered with no apparent effort to determine its truth.”

And yet America’s most respected journalists casually praise this fabricating smear artist as their leader. As Philip Weiss reported in
New York
magazine:

“This is America’s bulletin board, and much more than that,” NBC’s Brian Williams said recently. “Matt Drudge is just about the most powerful journalist in America,” said Pat Buchanan.

The caption underneath the photograph accompanying the
New York Times
story read: “
News reporter
Matt Drudge, publisher of the Drudge Report Web site, attends the White House Correspondents’ Dinner at the Washington Hilton Hotel on April 30, 2005.” Notwithstanding the avalanche of smears and outright fabricated stories, political journalists consider Matt Drudge not merely one of their own—a “news reporter”—but their leader. The
Times
article quoted Jim Dyke, a Giuliani strategist and the communications director for the RNC in 2004, as proclaiming: “No single person is more relevant to shaping the media environment in a political campaign.”

As Rutenberg documented, the highest levels of the Bush 2004 reelection campaign were devoted to placing “embarrassing tidbits” about Kerry with Drudge that establishment reporters were reluctant to cover. Like clockwork:

An item’s appearance on Drudge would drive it into mainstream news coverage: A video clip of Mr. Kerry contradicting himself, or a photograph of him wearing a protective germ outfit.

“It’s the stuff that speaks to the absurdity of politics, and it’s done with devastating effect,” a former Bush campaign aide said.

Despite the efforts of Hillary Clinton’s aides to develop a rapport with Drudge—and notwithstanding the right’s constant yammering about the “liberal media”—the most influential force in American political press coverage is decisively right wing and pro-Republican. As Weiss observed in
New York:

In 2000, he helped defeat Al Gore by turning up the volume on such stories as Al Gore’s fund-raising appearance at a Buddhist temple. In 2004, he did more than anyone to upend Kerry by playing up a small ad buy by the Swift Boat Veterans. In this campaign season, he has made a virus of the John Edwards $400 haircut….

His audience is decidedly right-wing. According to the online advertising company linked to his site, the audience is 78 percent male, 60 percent Republican, only 8 percent Democratic.