I heard Ana Marie Cox call Imus, shortly after he was fired, the Grandfather/Godfather of the Washington Press Corps. What does that have to do with McCain? If you remember, a number of reporters were on Imus's show to raise their profiles. They willingly sat there and played the stooge to Imus just so they would have face time on television in hopes of moving up the ranks within the Washington press corps. The reporters were good to McCain because McCain and Imus were buddies.
Here's a Larry King interview with Imus from Aug. 2000 wherein McCain joins in over the phone.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0008/11/lkl.00.html).
KING: We're back with Imus.
We have a little surprise for the I-man. With us on the phone from Seattle, Washington, is one of his stalwart friends through thick and thin. Despite the fact that this man is oft been criticized, oft praised, he remains a fan of the I-man, Senator John McCain of Arizona.
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: How you doing, I-man?
IMUS: Hi, Senator McCain, how are you?
***
IMUS: We rode up to Mesa. You know the thing I noticed, Senator McCain is that you didn't make your bed when you left.
MCCAIN: Oh, my God. That just shows a classless guest. That will probably guarantee I'm never brought back. And I'm glad you checked, though, you anal...
KING: Hey, John -- Senator, first, what did you think of the ranch?
MCCAIN: You know, it's truly magnificent. The thing is really magnificent. It isn't just there for Don and Deirdre and Fred and his wife...
Here's another Larry King interview with Imus who reveals that he was a McCain supporter. (from Dec. 2000; see,
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0012/22/lkl.00.html
KING: You were a McCain supporter?
D. IMUS: Yes; I voted for McCain, I wrote his name in.
KING: You did?
D. IMUS: Yes; because I had to -- you know, I had to fill out a paper ballot and it was easy and I just wrote his name in, so.
So, in my mind, the press corps sitting aboard the Straight Talk Express willingly became McCain's Double Talk Express because they didn't want to piss of Don Imus. If they had written the truth about McCain and his affairs back in 1999 & 2000, chances are they wouldn't have been sitting at the left hand of Imus. No appearance on Imus, no move up the ladder. As proof of this assertion, I offer Ana Marie Cox's own words:
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1609447,00.htmlEvery time I've been on Don Imus' show, he has reminded listeners that he "discovered" me. It's not exactly hyperbole. He first invited me on when I was just a foulmouthed blogger who ran the gossipy political site Wonkette. As I recall, my first on-air conversation with him was about the Bush twins, or, as I called them, "Jenna and Not-Jenna." Last fall I became a regular guest and took up slightly more serious topics (on my last appearance we talked about Senator John McCain's Baghdad trip and Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani's lack of social graces), but the subjects hardly mattered. I had been invited inside the circle, and to be perfectly honest, I was thrilled to be there.
As the invites kept coming,
I found myself succumbing to the clubhouse mentality that Imus both inspires and cultivates. Sure, I cringed at his and his crew's race-baiting (the Ray Nagin impersonations, the Obama jokes) and at the casual locker-room misogyny (Hillary Clinton's a "bitch," CNN news anchor Paula Zahn is a "wrinkled old prune"), but I told myself that going on the show meant something beyond inflating my precious ego. I wasn't alone. As Frank Rich noted a few years ago, "It's the only show ... that I've been on where you can actually talk in an informed way — not in sound bites." Yeah, what he said!
I'm embarrassed to admit that it took Imus' saying something so devastatingly crass to make me realize that there just was no reason beyond ego to play along.
I did the show almost solely to earn my media-elite merit badge. The sad truth is that unless you have a book to promote, there's often no other reason any writer or columnist has to do the show. If Rich wants to "talk in an informed way," I'm sure there's an open mike at C-Span Radio, and if there's really a hunger for such adult dialogue, does it really have to be accompanied by childish crudeness? Actually, don't answer that.
In any case, the media figures and politicians who clown around with Imus can pretend that the show is really about informed conversation or pop sociology or anything except junior-high-level teasing, but its true appeal for them lies in the seal of approval Imus bestows. Here's a little more from the daily howler on how the media treated McCain during the 2000 election cycle.
Sweet selectivity: In an excellent piece in yesterday's Post, Howard Kurtz explores the flip side of this matter. He describes the press corps' relations with John McCain (sub-headline: "Does John McCain have the media eating out of his hand?") Clearly, some think that he does. After citing odd remarks by McCain that have gone unreported, Kurtz quotes Jacob Weisberg:
KURTZ: "At one level, the press protects him," says Jacob Weisberg, political writer for Slate magazine. "He delivers these stupid lines all the time. The typical response from journalists is either not to report it or to congratulate him for being so blunt instead of treating it as a gaffe...If Bush had talked about 'gooks,' everyone would say how callow he is and say he's not up to running U.S. foreign policy." (Kurtz's deletion)
Later, Kurtz quotes Time's Jay Carney:
KURTZ: "You get the sense that you're being manipulated by candor, rather than manipulated by subterfuge and deception, but it is a strategy," says Carney. McCain is gambling "that you'll put whatever potentially damaging statements he makes within the context of an overall picture of the man. That contrasts pretty starkly with a lot of other candidates and politicians." (Kurtz's emphasis)
Again, the scribes describe totally unprofessional conduct by the press corps, in which reporters bury strange comments from hopefuls they like. Are you really shocked to think it works the other way—that they gimmick up "gaffes" from those they don't favor? No one condemns the press corps more than the press corps itself, talking to Kurtz. (NOTE: If the press corps is unprofessional in its McCain coverage, that reflects on the press corps, not on McCain.)
http://www.dailyhowler.com/h120999_1.shtmlAnd, think about it. Don't you think the press saw Vicki Iseman hanging out with McCain back in 1999? I believe the press knew about Iseman and McCain but they didn't talk about then and they don't want to talk about it now. If they start admitting how they fudged the public record in 1999/2000 with their reporting the American people might just wake up long enough to realize that the press has been lying to them all along. It might also force more people to understand how the press has been helping to manipulate the news in the past for their own career interests, their ratings and their own spot in the limelight.