A liar, but surely an honorable man

Somerby on the McCain script really must be read.

POOR RICHARD, NOVELIST: New evidence never effects their novels. Case in point? Here’s the first paragraph from Richard Cohen’s column in today’s Post:

COHEN (12/19/06): Earlier this year a close friend of John McCain gave me fair warning: McCain was about to become much more conservative, and I would not like what was coming. He was right. I did not like McCain's speech at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, and I think his support of intelligent design is—sorry, John—just plain brainless. But it is not the supposedly new McCain that bothers me, it's the old one: His incessant sword-rattling has gotten just plain rattling.

Grisly! According to Cohen, McCain deliberately “became much more conservative” this year, forging a “supposedly new McCain.” And not only that—in order to reinvent himself, the New McCain has adopted positions which are “just plain brainless!” Ah yes, a New McCain! We well remember the days when Cohen punished Big Dems for imagined reinventions; in those days, Cohen was even prepared to invent absurd “evidence” to support the vile charges he was making. But nothing can be permitted to change the novel he’s typing about John McCain. Case in point? Here’s the sixth paragraph from Cohen’s column—yes, from his column today:

COHEN: Anyone who knows McCain appreciates that his call for more troops in Iraq is not, at bottom, part of any political strategy. McCain is a thoroughly admirable man. Like any other politician, he will punt when he has to, but he is fundamentally honest, with sound political values. For a long time those values—a belief in public service, a visceral hostility toward the ways of Washington's K Street lobbying crowd and a sense of honor that his Vietnamese captors came to appreciate—obscured the always present, but muffled, sound of drums and bugles.

We now have a New McCain, complete with “just plain brainless” positions. But so what? The novel was blocked out long ago. McCain remains “a thoroughly admirable man.” It’s the law—he’s “fundamentally honest.”

But so it goes when our strange pundit corps types its political novels. Indeed, all the way back in March 2000, E. R. Shipp, then the Post’s ombudsman, described their remarkable practice. Shipp’s column, which was headlined “Typecasting Candidates,” remains the most accurate description in the mainstream press of the way this bizarre cohort works. Think of Shipp as an anthropologist describing a strange foreign culture:

SHIPP (3/5/00): The Post has gone beyond [in-depth] reporting in favor of articles that try to offer context—and even conjecture—about the candidates' motives in seeking the office of president. And readers react...to roles that The Post seems to have assigned to the actors in this unfolding political drama. Gore is the guy in search of an identity; Bradley is the Zen-like intellectual in search of a political strategy; McCain is the war hero who speaks off the cuff and is, thus, a "maverick"; and Bush is a lightweight with a famous name, and has the blessings of the party establishment and lots of money in his war chest. As a result of this approach, some candidates are whipping boys; others seem to get a free pass.

According to Shipp, the Post wasn’t really “reporting” on a group of candidates. No, it was more like the Post had pre-assigned “roles” to a group of “actors” in an unfolding “drama.” Shipp went on to describe the way the Post’s reporters were bending the facts to support the typecasting which defined their drama. Ceci Connolly was misreporting the things Gore actually said, Shipp noted. And other Post scribes were actively burying McCain’s mistakes and misstatements.

The role the press played in 2000 and 2004 weren't aberrations. We are living in an age of insanity. We've already begun seeing stories about the four years of sexual soap operadom a Hillary Clinton presidency would usher in (in the growing library of stories discussing her "Bill problem," the "problem" refers either to his unfettered libido or his unfettered ability to give speeches). Newsweek is already burying the magazine's own poll data, just as they did with Gore. Kucinich is still a freak (how else do you explain his opposition to our glorious war in Iraq?). We'll see how the script plays out for Obama. The consensus doesn't seem to have formed just yet.