The Daily Show: Fuck Yeah. (Coming again to save the motherfucking day, yeah.)

Satire is the only way!

I'm just reminded for the eleventieth time why Jon Stewart is so FUCKING awesome, and that those who've bemoaned the rise of The Daily Show as some kind of rise of political unawareness don't know their ass from a hat.

A) He is interviewing the ambassador from Pakistan, Husain Haqqani. He does this shit all the time -- he's had foreign dignitaries, like Bolivian president Evo Morales and Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, to Obama officials like Peter Orszag (director of the Office of Management and Budget) and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, to important and (or?) thoughtful authors and thinkers, some with viewpoints he very much disagrees with, like Cliff May, and others like Doris Kearns Goodwin and Philip Alcabes. Don't recognize some or all of these names? Good. You see, that's called learning, baby. It feels real good, don't it?
B) He's fucking PREPARED for these interviews, asking Haqqani, for example, various detailed questions based in Stewart's studying of the issues and previous writings of his guest and others ("As you yourself has written sir..." is a phrase intimating research to a degree you don't often hear on late night shows like Leno or Letterman, or even to some extent on Lehrer, when the guest is neither promoting a book nor is a columnist.) He debated Cliff May on torture, and even though they disagreed on it (if I may grossly distort Cliff May's viewpoint, he's all for it), with May actually saying that it was probably the best discussion he'd had of the issue on TV. And I don't think he was bullshiting, either. All in all, Stewart's combination of thorough research, thoughtful analysis, and a (somewhat over-stated but, I think, genuinely felt) "everyperson" (aka "everyman") approach that keeps even hostile guests mostly open to continue the discussion.
C) Given his place (and Colbert's) as a cultural phenomenon in the space between late-nighters like Leno or Conan and earnest news magazines and interview segments on NewsHour, CNN, 60 Minutes, or what have you, his popularity with "the kids" is actually a fantastic thing. He not only invites thinkers, politicians, and authors (and also comedians, actors, musicians, and other people with less urgent effects on global politics), but he interviews them premised on a pretty high level of understanding from his audience. One might surmise that they're simply sitting through this but really there for the rest of the show, though I think one would miss about half the humor without a working knowledge of current events and politics (the other half the humor is a melange of puns, self-referential and self-mocking humor, and graphical puns). And in a way, that's the genius -- whatever the audience is "there for", the relatively high level of discourse in his political interviews might get some learnin' in for him and the audience, intended or not.

From the Colbert/Stewart approach, I feel you get a much more working understanding of global events and ideas than the drier approach of the Lehrer et. als (that tend to AVOID challenging guests on equivocation or directly contradicting them when they spin, and thus remain on a superficial level alarmingly akin to a typical late-night interview like Leno) and yet also keeps the fun of a Leno, Letterman-type interview with jokes, sarcasm, etc. while maintaining nuance and in-depth probing of ideas.

The only other person with comparable deftness and intellectual rigor as a pop figure is Bill Maher, who evinces a similar level of intellectual curiousity as Stewart. With both of them, you don't just get topical thinkers, but also challenging ones that you just don't see on any other channels or shows, news or entertainment, from authors and scientists that simply interest them or whom they find insightful to the dignitaries I mentioned earlier, who I haven't seen on any of the mainstream news shows -- but that could be because I don't typical watch them. (Still, I challenge you to show me an interview of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of similar length on TV -- which there may very well be, but I again doubt it had either the good-natured humor and non-forced light-heartedness of Stewart nor implied the depth of research he did.)

Ok, I'm done flogging TDS. I'm just saying -- at it's best, it's a TV show without parallel or competitor (well, except Bill Maher and sometimes Stewart's own protegé Colbert), and at its worst, it's probably a step or so ahead of Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me, the light-hearted NPR news quiz show focused on weird currents events to a greater extent than it is to any kind of education about the topics discussed.

Fuck yeah.

Good reads

For those interested in racial politics in the US, I highly recommend spending some time browsing Slate spin-off "The Root". I read a bunch of good articles in short order, even though I disagreed with most of them in part. (Which is natural, I'm just being pedantically clear.) But their analyses are, from my point of view, succinct, eloquent, relatively comprehensive in terms of at least touching on the major elements of the story in question, and insightful in a way that makes what may be opaque about African American perspective clear.

So. Read them. Now. Especially D. (Just cuz she's expressed interest in this area and these seem like better than average further primers.)

Addressing and Undressing the Race Problem, Charlayne Hunter-Gaul

A Nash'nul Conversashun 'Bout Race? O-Tay, Jack "Ironically Named" White

The GOP's Next (Black) Idea?, Casey Lartigue

Grand White Party, Dayo Olopade (and the subtitle here bears repeating, perhaps: "Can the Republicans get down with the brown?"

I read these in reverse order that you see here, which I only mention because they seemed especially lucid in that order, but that might be just me.

I recommend browsing around the rest of the Root: I don't like all of their articles, but their average is pretty high quality -- slightly higher than Slate probably. Indeed, "The Root" probably looks something like the print version of what I think NPR's News & Notes should be like (instead of being like a NPR's "All Things Considered" -- or worse yet, like a CNN news/talk show -- with black people. The range of views on N&N is approximately the same as on ATC, and the analyses seem to me to be often be as facile; what's the use of having African American voices if they sound (in types and range of questions) pretty much like Noah Adams and Linda Werthheimer and Tom Ashbrook talking?) I wrote in comments that "mainstream" Slate should have The Root writers and XX Factor Fraysters write the actual articles -- both seem to have better analyses than many of Slate's (and certainly NPR) regulars. (I'm looking at you, David Plotz on the Gabfest.)

Is Susan Stamberg on Crack?

This is perhaps a most trifling note, but listening to reports of the Republican Convention this morning, and being reminded of how effective sounding tough can seem to be to Americans -- Fred Dalton Thompson rallying against Obama as the most liberal, least experienced candidate for president ever [sigh] -- it was crazy-making to have that followed up by NPR's Susan Stamberg wondering at the exotic wonderland that is Wyoming.

Now, there's nothing wrong with being enchanted by Wyoming; every state has its charms. And Stamberg had apparently visited all other 49 states, but had never been to Wyoming in her years of travel, for journalism or otherwise. Ok -- great -- sure. But she got there, and thrilled on-air to hear those three words she'd been waiting for decades to hear -- "Well, howdy, ma'am."

WTF?

Apparently, Wyoming = Old West to Stamberg, and she was charmed to have her feelings confirmed. She went to some small town that had a stagecoach and Westy-type stuff "for tourists," and was told that the town wasn't really Wyoming, but it was the closest she'd get. Huh? Presumably, the closest to some imagined Old West Wyoming, since it was in the state of Wyoming after all -- so I'm pretty sure that counts. But certainly, if you want to go get a tourists'-eye view of your preconceptions of a state, your options are limited to certain tourist spots disdained by all the states' "real" residents. (Heaven forfend you, as a journalist, stretch yourself and report on anything about the rest of the state, rather than a navel-gazing travelogue purely about your own reaction to the state, not about the state itself.)

She was thrilled to -- what the hell? -- go to a "roh-DAY-oh," she said, only realizing afterwards that it was pronounced "roh-DEE-oh." She explained to those Wyomingites that heard her mispronounce "rodeo" that she "was from the East," which she said she ended up having to explain a lot, she said. Umm... I've been to the Wild East Coast of this here nation, and I didn't notice that ro-day-oh was the accepted pronunciation. Or that Stamberg had apparently never watched any show about ANY western/southwestern state for more than 5 minutes, with the sound down. Ro-day-oh? Who is she, Paris Hilton? I mean, sure, there's California's "Ro-day-oh" Drive, but, um, Stamberg's not from California... plus she supposedly had visited 49 other states, of which I'm thinking at least several of them pronounced it with the "dee" sound. (It is "roh DAY oh" in Spanish, but as far as I know, we don't all pronounce our appropriated words in the original tongue here in the Civilized East, or, er, Midwest either.)

She followed this with wondering at the buffalo walking across the road, just hanging out, eagerly pointing and asking her hostess to slow down so she could clearly see them. She may have never seen them, but it's still clearly weird to me that that was a big part of her "Wyoming" experience -- considering Bison have more famous herd/enclaves/protected populations in various other states.

Why am I going on about this? Just because the juxtaposition of Fred Dalton Thompson's Southern drawl and Stamberg going "Oooo! He called me 'ma'am'! Can I take a picture of him in front of that buffalo?" was a bit too much -- it was the ultimate in the portrayal of the East and West...ern United States as foreign Others. And her excusing her practical ignorance with "Sorry, I'm from the East," seems support attempts to show that the East and The Liberal Media are elitist, out-of-touch, and out-of-step with "real" people. It's the ultimate "East Coast Liberals are wide-eyed and totally out of touch with reality, too busy sipping their lattes." Now, it's not Stamberg's fault that there's that perception, or that she had glee at Wyoming's, um, perceived stereotypical quaintness I guess, but seriously... was she THAT out of touch that buffaloes, sheriffs, rodeos, and "Howdy ma'am," was the Wyoming experience she wanted, that she'd REALLY never found anywhere else in the US? It's not just a little disheartening, it seemed like bad journalism to go somewhere just to have your cookie-cutter images of someplace confirmed, and play out the segment with "Happy Trails." There's so much else that could be learned about or commented on from Wyoming, but apparently, it really IS just Big Sky Country... oh, wait, that's Montana. So Stamberg experienced the REAL Wyoming the... um... Equality state. Er, um, the Park state. Oh, oh! Ok, it's ALSO the "Cowboy State." Apparently, of the three state nicknames, Stamberg had to choose one and just go with it. So thank goodness we got to confirm our biases, and not learn anything new in that 5 minute segment. Thanks NPR, I had nothing better to do than learn that Stamberg has remained incredibly naive for someone who visited 49 states already, and then to, er, grouse about it for 15 minutes.

Seriously, if this is the Red State/Blue State divide, I am living in an entirely different set of states from everyone else, cuz I can pronounce rodeo AND drink lattes...

On The Media should get On Its Knees and blow me

OTM is apparently "the weekly, one-hour program [that] is America's only national radio program devoted to media criticism and analysis." But is it criticism if they end up condoning, tacitly or explicitly, whatever practice any given outlet engages in?

Case in point: I recently was annoyed and disappointed to learn more and more of the heavy hand of editing and "fiction" in the primarily and nominally non-fiction "This American Life." (There is apparently also a growing -- and by growing I mean I've now heard it from 4 people rather than 3 -- backlash against the "cool" ironic hipster style of TAL. It never occurred to me to be bothered by this, because I felt that Ira Glass was knowingly twee and ironic in a way similar to that of many people I know -- indeed similar to many of the people who dislike him/TAL so. I didn't get it, but I'm starting to -- I think it's because he is always twee and ironic, and that he makes all the stories twee and ironic, so that not only does it ring false, it IS false, because all of life is not composed of arms-length irony, and such a diversity of stories can't all be meant to be told in the same way. But I get ahead of myself.) I have read that Glass edits the pieces down to the exact number of seconds or parts of seconds that makes the perfect ironic pause, the ideal hesitation, the most of the recently revived art of discomfort humor from preternaturally long awkward pauses. That rather bothered me, but I managed to ignore it. But then came Malcolm Gladwell.

In this piece, Gladwell comes across as a big bit of a dick to me, a feeling I shared with a friend on Facebook, who rather felt that people should know enough not to trust reporters, and that as a reporter his particular or special obligation to clarify when he's joking/lying and when he was less significant than the idea that "we" shouldn't take "anything at face value." The real shame was on us for believing, and anyway, Malcolm Gladwell (and James Frey) didn't really matter in the scheme of things.

Ok. So I admit I may be an over-serious killjoy. Check, moving on.

I feel that as a big-name star reporter, Gladwell has obligations. Journalists are, after all, a specially Constitutionally protected group. Rights have responsibilities with them, imho. So Gladwell had a segment on TAL where he basically said that as a cub, naive reporter he found out he could influence events and have fun by making up bits of stories -- that he once (accidentally) caused a 10-point fall in a stock by misreporting a company's earning, and that he realized he could do whatever he wanted, like fabricating possible sights for convention so that he could go on vacation where he wanted to covering said convention.

Except that his story, this part and others, are largely untrue. And he has the flimsy but real excuse that he told the story in a place where people often spin tall tales. But Glass put it on TAL in front of 1.7 million listeners.

In an article I largely agree with, Slate's Jack Shafer reports:

This American Life host Ira Glass gives no indication that any part of Gladwell's performance is fictional when he breaks in to end the Gladwell segment. Instead, he encourages young listeners not to follow Gladwell's example.

"By the way, if there is any ambiguity in here at all, young journalists, please note, putting false information into the newspaper is wrong," Glass says.

Gladwell... adds that they promised to run a disclaimer.

<...>

Ira Glass of This American Life says via e-mail that the show agreed to include a comment at the end—about The Moth being a place where "people come to tell both true stories and occasional tall tales"—to indicate that the talk "contained elements of exaggeration or untruth."

As disclaimers go, Glass' is weak, something he acknowledges.

"It seemed best for the story if this were kept a little vague," writes Glass. "I thought it would be lousy and undermining and killjoyish if—at the end of a story—a radio host came on and said 'that wasn't true.' Seemed nicer and more artful to simply raise the possibility that it might or might not be true. I figured: the audience is smart. A little goes a long way."

So what's got my boxers in a bunch? This constant pedantic "I know better than thou,"-cum-inverse condescension. "People are smart enough to know better" -- which has the quite clear converse that if you don't, you're not smart. "On the Media" -- the original target of my rant -- pulls similar and quite annoying shit:

NPR's Executive Producer for Training Jonathan Kern is overseeing a year-long project on news standards, which will likely result in the network providing listeners with more information on production techniques. But he doesn't see much utility for the public in adding transparency for transparency's sake.

JONATHAN KERN: Do they really want to know how we edited every actuality and whether there were internal edits? I would say no, they probably don't want to or need to know that. Would it be a good idea occasionally to explain how it's done? Absolutely.

FUCK YOU! "Transparency for transparency's sake?" Isn't that the point of transparency? Simply to be open with what you're doing? It's not as if transparency is meant to be reserved for only when you actually HAVE committed a crime or impropriety; the whole point is that one shouldn't be forced to let YOU (in this case, NPR) decide for yourself what's proper. Transparency is for the sake of others to make their own decisions about methods and approach; when you start picking and choosing based on your perception of what we "need to know," that's hardly transparency any more. RRrrrgh. I mean, no one/nothing can be completely transparent, but this attitude of "Well, only a pedant would find this concerning" when quite clearly that's not so (earlier in the article on OTM, it's mentioned that "NPR's Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin believes trust in television news has declined in part because viewers see it as over-produced entertainment. Is it possible that the fact listeners are unaware of how much production is involved has helped retain their trust in NPR News?"). It can't possibly simultaneously be a cause for a decrease in trust in television news, and unworthy of being transparent about. (For the other reason OTM pissed me off, see this PoorMojo rant by Pappy Hants here, titled "NPR Allows Caller to Put His Dick in My Ear, Parts I & II.")

That's what gets me, in the end. Glass, Gladwell, and OTM act as if they KNOW that what they're doing is as least plausibly questionable. But they cover it with the concept that anything questionable they do is either already known by or irrelevant to the audience... without explicitly asking the audience. (Certainly a colleague of mine buys into their world view; I leave it as an exercise for the reader to guess my stance.) As Shafer says in his piece:

Gladwell's spiel works not because the stories are particularly funny but because of his reputation as a reliable, meticulous journalist. Puncture the illusion that he's telling the truth, and the laughs leak into the ether.

A storyteller can't have it both ways, instructing listeners to "look it up" while stretching the yarn beyond the breaking point or claiming that smuggling the "baffling" phrase into Post copy became "literally" an "obsession." Gladwell's method, and his decision to let This American Life air his tale, raises … well, new and troubling questions about his attitude toward his audience...

On March 13, after I interviewed him, Gladwell had second thoughts about his Moth talk, qualifying it on his blog with these words:

There is a disclaimer at the end of the This American Life broadcast, to the effect that the Moth is a place where "people come to tell both true stories and occasional tall tales." As I think should be obvious if you listen to it, my story definitely belongs to the "tall tale" category. I hope you enjoy it. But please do so with a rather large grain of salt.

Virginia Heffernan of the NYT makes what I believe is the unwarranted assumption that since most random people don't tell interesting stories, and since Glass works so hard to mold "everyday" stories into amusing ones, that perhaps indeed, "[A]lmost no one has a bona fide story, though most have arguments to make, consolations to offer and widgets to sell." (I think this is bullshit, but it would take too long to get further into it here.) BUT Heffernan's point that Glass' methods on TAL are "A way to take the wheel of stories when it’s clear that the everyman he’s recruited isn’t saying exactly what the producers want him to." As she says of the TAL story she reviews, "Ultimately it’s maddening to watch Mr. Glass force this point on Ralph and Sandra, two fascinating people whose dual intimacy with the fading art of ranching and the ascendant art of cloning should have earned them the microphone for the full hour. But Mr. Glass apparently can’t help himself. Only one person really has a story to tell here."

The problem isn't just that, as my TAL-loving friend asserts, that there is artistry in Glass' manipulation that has its own worth, different (greater than?) the worth of true stories told truly without an overriding outside point of view, it's that Glass seems defensive about this idea, that not only is it true but that it doesn't matter. It's more fun if you believe it's true and not heavily filtered, and it's unimportant or killjoyish to let you know that it's not and it is, respectively. It's that this point of view doesn't seem restricted to Glass; it's the official point of view of NPR. They admit that, unlike TV, you can't even see the cuts, deceptive or not. But ultimately, they assure us, their version of reality is close enough, that we should know it's reality presented with their own opinion of fealty to the source, and that -- this is my favorite (ugh) part -- not only do we not need to know that explicitly, but truly, we don't want to. Of course, that's just their opinion -- but what does that mean when they feel that their point of view is more important than reality?

*****

One might ask "What's the alternative?" -- to which I would say that at least as far as "real news" goes, journalistic integrity and the advantages of the web would mean that they could post full, unedited versions of interviews -- raw transcripts, as are published for such venerable and truthful institutions as Fox News for many of their shows. True, they do this primarily for Talk Shows -- news-light angry folks like O'Reilly -- but NPR could innovate it with raw transcripts of interviews, at least, if not audio and/or video of interviews and raw transcripts for their reporters. (The OTM piece reveals that they sound so intelligent, urbane, pithy, and concise because the reporters are also edited such that the "uhs' and "ums" come out; apparently this is what some people "appreciate" about NPR -- it's polishness. I could give two shits for polish -- I'd rather see it as it was. All communication is a lie, in a way -- nothing can be communicated in absolute true purity -- but that doesn't mean all alterations are the same, or irrelevant. In general, the more alteration, the further one gets from reality, so it seems to me that a minimum of editing and alteration should be the goal. I'll give you editing for time -- an artifice but a necessary one. But not "polish", which is pure aesthetics. Beauty may be truth to some, but I prefer my truth with morning breath and frizzy hair, not truth that's been groomed enough to appear on America's Next Top Model.)

Revisiting John McCain's Journey Up His Own Ass (and other bits and bobs)

Wow. It is, of course, old news that presidential "hopeful" John McCain is probably drawing more on hopefulness than realistic chances to win, and old news that he has must needed to suck up to conservative Republicans rather than his erstwhile large moderate base in 2000, but I hadn't really put it together as succinctly as this (via Slate's Today's Papers from a story in the WaPo): "Ron Kaufman, a former aide to Bush's father, gives us the best take on McCain's alternating praise and criticism of Bush. He bluntly states, 'It's ironic that McCain spent eight years sucking up to the White House, and now it's a negative.'"

Daaaaaaaamn.

He's right, though. I was one of those taken in by McCain's seeming moderatism and "Straight Talk" in 2000, going as far as thinking of voting for him then (had he won the nomination) and after 2000 settling on him as someone who, at least, I could tolerate as an honorable-ish politician, someone with whom you could disagree on priniciple but respect that he had conviction of his beliefs.

HA. How naïve, hoh boy. It's interesting to see, however, how much his extreme ass-kissing and sticking his head so far up his own ass he somehow ended up inside Bush's has backfired. I now think McCain was never that great shakes -- I mean, if he can't even keep up his "Man of Principle" Act throughout an unpopular war and unpopular president and falls on his sword to get a chance at the gold ring again before it's even in sight, well, how much principle would he keep to as an actual president? People aren't known for their bold, radical moves of principle after they enter a presidency (though one could argue Bush did do the bait-and-switch of moderatism and ended up making bold, radical moves of principle, at least as far as principles that apply in his own dreamworld. But I'm not sure bold and radical in this case don't stem from being a dipshit as much as "principle". And I suppose you could call it "principles" to follow your beliefs no matter what they lead to and who they kill, but that's not any kind of good principles people are usually referring to.)

All that puckering up to Bush, and it turns out that an ass is just an ass. Oh, sweet schadenfreude.

I have long been skeptical of McCain -- after all, he was not only a long-time politician, he was a Republican. He talked good on Global Warming, for example, but I read numerous articles laying out how he didn't spend his considerable political capital (now somewhat diminished) to actually get substantive bills through. He did go to the mat on campaign finance, which, most agree, hasn't really worked. (I still don't understand the intricacies of how and why it does and doesn't work, but at least he was working in an area I cared about.) Of course, when he REALLY went to the mat, all the way, offering his hindquarters up like an animal in heat, was for Bush after he lost the nomination in 2000 (in part due to dirty tricks, duly recorded and verified, such as Bush supporters spreading rumors of McCain's "illegitimate black child," presumably based on the RealFact that McCain has an adoptive Bangladeshi daughter. He says he's "very good, friendly relationship" with Bush in a 2004 interview on Democracy Now!. He has since, in order to try and win the Republican nomination, backstepped on his criticism of Bob "No interracial dating" Jones University and has spoken at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.

That, of course, in addition to merrily speaking up for Bush in his 2004 speech.

Of course, I seriously questioned what world McCain was living in anyway when, on (I think) NewsHour with Jim Lehrer years ago, he said something to the effect that he didn't believe any of his colleagues in Congress were corrupt, or took bribes. This could be dismissed as normal politicking, but he repeatedly stuck up for it under questioning, saying that there had been occurences of bribery and corruption in the past, but he seriously didn't believe any of his colleagues were subject to such things. Considering that this was still in his supposed "straight talk" days, and that Tom Delay was still in Congress, then, frankly, give me a fucking break. I don't cotton to lies that insult my intelligence; I feel if you're going to lie, at least make it entertaining (or give it the sarcastic bite McCain sometimes used on The Daily Show to give a wink to his necessary kowtowing and politicking).

In utterly other news, MarketPlace on NPR just had a story about local currencies popping up in Europe alongside the Euro. Such currencies, like the "berliner", are apparently not even meant to supplant the Euro or simply represent exercises in Nationalism, but rather to emphasize a local resistance to globalization and embrace of local variety, and to encourage patronage of local businesses. Hear hear, what a good idea! This is an idea worth revisiting in the future. In the meantime, a relevant quote from one of the founders of modern economics, John Maynard Keynes (and apparently originator of the phrase "In the long run, we are all dead"):

"Ideas, knowledge, art, hospitality, travel -- these are the things which should of their nature be international. But let good be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible; and, above all, let finance be primarily national."

This, of course, is dismissed by people who are otherwise pro-Globalization Keynesians as him being creaky and soft-headed in a moment of weakness, but there you go.