Frank Rich: Obama Outwits the Bloviators

[RamboLiberal]

STOP the presses! This election isn’t about the Clintons after all. It isn’t about the Acropolis columns erected at Invesco Field. It isn’t about who is Paris Hilton and who is Hanoi Hilton. (Though it may yet be about who is Sarah Palin.) After a weeklong orgy of inane manufactured melodrama labeled “convention coverage” on television, Barack Obama descended in classic deus ex machina fashion — yes, that’s Greek too — to set the record straight. America is in too much trouble, he said, to indulge in “a big election about small things.”

As has been universally noted, Obama did what he had to do in his acceptance speech. He scrapped the messianic “Change We Can Believe In” for the more concrete policy litany of “The Change We Need.” He bared his glinting Chicago pol’s teeth to John McCain. Obama’s still a skinny guy, but the gladiatorial arena and his eagerness to stand up to bullies (foreign and Republican) made him a plausible Denver Bronco. All week long a media chorus had fretted whether he could pull off a potentially vainglorious stunt before 80,000 screaming fans. Well, yes he can, and so he did.

But was this a surprise? Hardly. No major Obama speech — each breathlessly hyped in advance as do-or-die and as the “the most important of his career” — has been a disaster; most have been triples or home runs, if not grand slams. What is most surprising is how astonished the press still is at each Groundhog Day’s replay of the identical outcome. Indeed, the disconnect between the reality of this campaign and how it is perceived and presented by the mainstream media is now a major part of the year’s story. The press dysfunction is itself a window into the unstable dynamics of Election 2008.

At the Democratic convention, as during primary season, almost every oversold plotline was wrong. Those Hillary dead-enders — played on TV by a fringe posse of women roaming Denver in search of camera time — would re-enact Chicago 1968. With Hillary’s tacit approval, the roll call would devolve into a classic Democratic civil war. Sulky Bill would wreak havoc once center stage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/opinion/31rich.html?ref=opinion

[redqueen]

1. ...

:wow:

[Captain Hilts]

2. Too bad the NYT has been pitchin' lies about the Clintons all through the campaign...

including Rich.

[KittyWampus]

4. no, quite a lot of what you're referring to are uncomfortable truths.

[Captain Hilts]

6. Psst....contrary to what Bob Herbert is STILL saying, there wasn't any vandalism...

of the White House when the Clintons left. The FBI and GAO said so.

Pass it on!

And we won't even get into the tripe MoDo pitches.

You have to remember Bob Herbert and MoDo are the guys that slayed Al Gore as too snobby to be president. Why would you trust them now? I don't.

[redqueen]

19. You might want to judge each article on its own. (nt)

[Cha]

22. Yeah, and not do Hillary a disservice by

continuing the Primary when it's indeed OVER.

Yay, Frank Rich nailed it.

[Muttocracy]

3. kick - what a great article - very much worth reading the whole thing. nt

[NatBurner]

9. agreed

[PA Democrat]

5. Frank Rich nailed it.

A lot of the "reporting" done leading up to and at the DNC was actually pure fiction because they WANTED a dramatic story to boost ratings. In truth, they have probably alienated viewers who are sick of the theatrics.

[quantass]

7. WOW what a great article! Very fascinating to read..BIG KICK! Hope more read it

[LonelyLRLiberal]

8. Thanks. Good article.

I liked this part:

"The latest good luck for the Democrats is that the McCain campaign was just as bamboozled as the press by the false Hillary narrative. McCain was obviously itching to choose his pal Joe Lieberman as his running mate. A onetime Democrat who breaks with the G.O.P. by supporting abortion rights might have rebooted his lost maverick cred more forcefully than Palin, who is cracking this particular glass ceiling nearly a quarter-century after the Democrats got there first. Lieberman might have even been of some use in roiling the Obama-Hillary-Bill juggernaut that will now storm through South Florida.

"The main reason McCain knuckled under to the religious right by picking Palin is that he actually believes there’s a large army of embittered Hillary loyalists who will vote for a hard-line conservative simply because she’s a woman. That’s what happens when you listen to the TV news echo chamber. Not only is the whole premise ludicrous, but it is every bit as sexist as the crude joke McCain notoriously told about Janet Reno, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton."

[Cha]

23. Yeah, get that there about mccain's fucking idea of

humor.

[cliffordu]

10. Yep. K&R

[demwing]

11. PSSST... "deus ex machina" is Latin, not Greek

but it was a good read anyway :)

[RadicalTexan]

28. right?

That actually does make me question the accuracy of the rest of his piece.

Weird.

[Lasher]

12. K&R

I ran across this elsewhere and was about to post it myself. I'm glad I searched first.

Good article from start to finish.

[angee_is_mad]

13. Thanks 4 posting something relevant

instead of a palen super post. I am so OVER her.

[AuntPatsy]

15. you and me both

[Tarheel_Dem]

14. Great find RL. The whole article is great from start to finish....nt

[Emit]

16. I just recently watched the special The Sixties on PBS

Caught the tail end on Wednesday night of the Politics segment of that piece. Man. Seems Rove et al, who are likely stuck back there in '68, sure were pushing for a Democratic convention such as the one in Chicago in '68.

http://www.pbs.org/opb/thesixties/

Thanks for posting Rich -- I like his stuff and he can be spot on in a very entertaining manner.

edit typos

[BumRushDaShow]

17. Hits nail on head.

The media has and will continue to manufacture a virtual unreality during this election season. All the talk of "floor fights", "nomination coups", "riots in the streets by PUMAs", "general disunity", "repeat of 1968", and other such nonsense, failed to materialize when "real life" reared its lovely head before the nation and the world for 4 days (even though they managed to block much of it, but thanks to CSPAN, PBS, TV One, and a few other outlets that didn't).

The multitude of observations about how these faux pundits were rendered "speechless" further solidified how far outside reality they had descended. And the media had so internalized their faux universe, that they actually believed it was true. And so ALL of their reporting and bloviating ignored what was going on in front of their faces and they merely repeated their faulty material, ad nauseum.

I had predicted to myself that within the next couple weeks, they will begin a "Lessons Learned" process whereby they spend inordinate amounts of air and print time admitting that they did this in a nonsensical critique of themselves.... After which they will forget those discussions and go back to their faux worlds once more...

[Captain Hilts]

18. Does Rich really think the unreality began in late June? nt

[BumRushDaShow]

20. Maybe that is when he started paying attention to it. n/t

[Cha]

21. I don't know which hall in the bowels of hell the fourth estate has

been consigned to but I hope they never ask us for something to drink.

"All week long a media chorus had fretted whether he could pull off a potentially vainglorious stunt before 80,000 screaming fans. Well, yes he can, and so he did."

Wow! Frank Rich did a good job in descibing the craven press and how it might even be extinct one day.

[Merlot]

31. The whole media "can he pull it off" bs actually did some good

I think it made more people intrigued and wanting to see it. Like the super bowl, it added some suspense to the broadcast. Probably not for people who were already familiar with Obama, but for the people meeting him for the first time, it was a rather spectacular first impression.

Just think if they'd said "oh, he's done this a hundred times, no big deal to fill a stadium with 80K fans and give a knockdown speach."

Actually, that's what the repubs should have been saying, instead all their breathless anticipation just made it seem even better.

[Cha]

32. Thanks for that view...I don't think they

planned on helping Obama.

[jazzjunkysue]

24. "stop being distracted by small, let alone utterly fictitious, things."

"As Obama said, this is a big election. We will only begin to confront the magnitude of our choice when and if we stop being distracted by small, let alone utterly fictitious, things."

Frank always puts the details into perspective.

[ClarkUSA]

25. Frank Rich = Truthsayer

Bravo!

[FrenchieCat]

26. The media is trying to make and then manage the news, and in essence

our electoral process.

They are traitors to this country and nothing more.

[ClayZ]

27. Yay, Frank Rich! K and R

[FrenchieCat]

29. The media is a fool.

It's almost like they are fighting to stay relevant, and the fighting part is making it worse. They tried to steal history in the making from us but couldn't!

I have to write a letter to Frank Rich on this....because he is so very on the mark.

[Captain Hilts]

30. Folks here clearly don't remember that in 2000, Rich was leading the "there's no difference ...

between Bush and Gore" pack.

The differences were important, even back then.

[senseandsensibility]

33. Rich sees through all the media driven junk about hillary

supporters being willing to vote for any woman. And he points out that mcsame fell for it! So in their effort to help mcsame, "journalists" actually misled him. They had no idea how out of it he is. He actually bought their drivel!