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Tuesday, July 08, 2008

What flip-flop?
Posted by Jill | 6:10 AM
Here is why we worship the ground on which Rachel Maddow walks:





Can we please stop with the "flip-flop" meme? You know, we've had nearly eight years of a president who absolutely refuses to change policy based on changing conditions. There's "resoluteness", and then there's being Beavis sticking his hand in the fryer and screaming "Ow!" -- and then sticking your hand in the fryer again. George W. Bush has been Beavis over and over again. You'd think the media would stop defending this kind of stupidity -- especially when there IS no flip-flop -- as Rachel points out here.

But no, they've become so addicted to the narrative of the "flip-flop" that they can't, or won't, tell the difference between the politically-expedient pander and thoughtfulness about a policy based on changing conditions. And good on Rachel for noting that the Obama campaign is guilty of giving the media too much credit for being able to handle a concept more complex than "apple....good.....cookie" (or as Keith Olbermann put it in his Special Comment last week, "Obama voted uh-uh… thing terror stop.").

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3 Comments:
Blogger Unknown said...
Rachel is largely right on this one, IMO (although Obama has plenty of *other* flip-flops to his credit besides Iraq.) But what I wonder is this: if Obama's plans for withdrawal are contingent on "stability" and allowing "anti-terror" operations, then how does his position differ materially from the president's?
7/8/08, 12:19 PM  
Blogger Eric Easterberg said...
The more important idea in this post is the media's inability to handle even the least complexity. There was a time when a reporter would be left on a beat long enough to understand the issues behind the political rhetoric, and occasionally to convey some semblance of reality to the reader.

Now, for example, we're told the surge is working, at least by McCain (who was for it before the president was) and Bush (who desperately needs to burnish the image). That it's not working as well as portrayed goes right over the heads of the media - they'd be required to do some digging (or, at least, some reading) to figure out the truth.

What's easier is to present every issue as an athletic contest, and to figure out how many yards are gained by each side as the issue "plays" with the public. This way is a lot more fun, it gets you a chair as a media talking head, and it doesn't require you to put anything in that head. After all, no reporter wants to be labeled a policy wonk, that ain't cool at all.
7/8/08, 6:02 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
It's really quite disgraceful how terribly incompetent the media is. My 12 year-old cousin could probably do a better job.
7/9/08, 2:35 PM  
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