Posted on 11/20/2002 8:44:26 PM PST by What Is Ain't
Accustomed as I am to being called names — "twit," "liberal weenie" and "pinko commie hack" being the regulars — there was something unsettling about the calls and e-mails that flowed in response to Saturday's piece on Garrison Keillor's startlingly vitriolic shots at U.S. Sen.-elect Norm Coleman.
Call me whatever you want, but when the tone among 65 messages is about evenly "split" between those accusing me of being "another media stooge of the Republican Party" or (even scarier) "a welcome antidote to the liberal bias of the Pioneer Press," something more needs to be said.
Supporters of Keillor's columns in Salon online magazine were nearly universal in their delight with him "saying what needed to be said" and "saying what should have been said by the media before the election."
They declared themselves to be as angry, too. "I'm mad as hell," said one, consciously evoking the spirit of "Network" TV anchor Howard Beale. They wholeheartedly agreed with Keillor that Coleman had been given "a free ride" by the Twin Cities media.
And they were not referring to reporters' investigations into the details of Coleman's prescription drug policy.
Many believe Coleman ran an unusually nasty, dishonest campaign before and after the Wellstone plane crash, and they didn't think the media paid nearly enough attention to that.
But mainly they were talking about Coleman's private, personal life.
One after another, they demanded to know, "Why didn't the media blow the lid off this?" Many echoed one who said, "If the right-wingers can turn Bill Clinton's private life into an impeachable offense, why is Coleman's taboo?"
The lust for payback hangs palpably in the air, and it is understandable, but despite repeated digging, local media haven't turned up any proof about the Coleman gossip.
In a country split 50-50, liberals are fuming about what strikes them as a profound double standard. On the one hand, their candidates are demonized and slandered day after day, hour after hour, by the vast right-wing attack engine (to paraphrase Hillary Clinton). They see an aggregate of lavishly funded conservative think tanks linked to 700-plus talk-radio stations beating out the same pro-Republican, anti-liberal group-think and agenda 24/7.
They also see a mainstream media so flustered and cowed by this engine's persistent accusations of "liberal bias" that it is now energetically contorting itself rightward to feature and promote conservative writers, commentators and pundits, creating, per the engine's brilliant strategy, a conservative bias concealed in plain sight.
Meanwhile, unequivocal liberals — Molly Ivins, Robert Scheer, Eric Alterman and David Korn — remain rare curiosities in mainstream media (TV in particular). As much as anything else, they exist as exceptions proving the rule of a dominant conservative media culture.
So yeah, the liberals are angry. And maybe that explains Keillor's anger, too. Maybe he meant his pieces to be a call to arms. What startled me, though, was that for a literary lion who long ago mastered the art of satire and fully understands the dissective power of humor, his Salon pieces were anything but funny. They were raw and personal.
But it's not like this anger at double standards and routine character assassination by Republican media foghorns validates rumors about a politician's private life. Mainstream media organizations routinely pursue rumors of all kinds about politicians of all ideologies. And by "mainstream," I mean actual journalists. People who require verifiable facts as the basis of their stories, as opposed to slicing and dicing reality, logic and common sense in order to supply their audiences with exactly what they want to hear, which is the norm on most of AM radio.
In other words, the insistence of infuriated liberals notwithstanding, the media are unlikely to run with a story if they can't prove there is any there, there.
It is interesting, though, when you ask news organizations, theoretically, what they would do if they found rumors about a politician's personal life to be true. Some say it would be a story in and of itself and that they would run with it. Others say it would require another set of factors — something that would trigger the so-called "hypocrisy factor," such as pandering to the family values crowd.
Either way, anyone who was disgusted by what was done to Bill Clinton ought to stop and think how far into this sewer they want to go.
Leni
Like those other rare, multi-million dollar curiosities Katie Couric (D-NBC), Dan Rather (D-CBS), Peter Jennings (D-ABC), etc., etc.
Perhaps, but the voters believed that the Wellstone Funerally was nastier.
"their candidates are demonized and slandered day after day"
But they demonize themselves day after day. And it isn't slander if it's true.
Refresh my memory. Has Norm Coleman also been accused of perjury, obstruction of justice, witness tampering and abuse of power?
Baloney!!!! They let Molly Ivins on 60 minutes two days before the election ... when was the last time a conservative political commentator was on 60 minutes and got free reign?
Evidently this is something readers are supposed to know, but I sure don't: What is this "gossip" anyhow?
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