are we this dumb now?
by Theron Dash

What's happening to Washington Week in Review? To PBS? To intelligent reporting and analysis? Are we this dumb now?

Washington Week, despite Paul Newman's flattering intro (which seems to have been missing lately...hmmm), has been getting progressively duller and unwatchable (as opposed to dully progressive, which describes...well, not us.) This used to be a fairly painless half hour update on the conventional wisdom in Washington, with the occasional insight and bit of real reporting. Now it's like a televised coffee break, in which unimpressive parrotheads giggle and mouth cliches, ingratiating themselves with each other and saying little or nothing new, trenchant or insightful.

Maybe the plethora of other news analysis shows on cable have depleted the ranks so they're forced to rely on lesser lights, but it's becoming embarrassing. Plus there's this giddy self-referencing hewing to a jockular theme, as in Friday's campaign coverage, about how both candidates are going negative so early, isn't it crazy, my god can they keep this up, what'll it be like in October? Shouldn't somebody go positive at some point? was one of the piercing questions. This was after they played a negative Bush ad and the counter-charge part of the new Kerry ad, neglecting to play, and therefore to notice, that the rest of the ad, most of it in fact, was positive.

It's not like there wasn't more to talk about, like the salon story about the Pentagon mentioned in the last post. Why is nobody else even mentioning that story?

But back to the dumbing down question. Frontline continues to be pretty damn good, but some other PBS docus I've seen are really puzzling, and maddening. I happened to catch a fellow named Wells on C-Span the other day---I've lost my notes on it already---talking about his research on human origins based on DNA, and it was pretty fascinating. He played excerpts from his docu aired on PBS, which I saw, but it drove me nuts to the point that I began hating this guy and his research. Which makes me even madder now that I realize I might have missed something interesting and important, all because people can't make a decent docu anymore.

That docu did the same thing as another very worthy project, "The Elegant Universe," a Nova production, about tne new physics, specifically string theory. In both cases some of the visuals were amazing. In the physics programs, the computerized visualizations and animations really helped with some of the concepts, such as Einsteinian curved space and gravity wells, and atomic structure (I liked how the nucleus pulsed like it was on speed) but it did what the Wells docu did: it made a point, then immediately repeated it, then repeated it again. Then came back to it, adding all the points onto the new point. Like the narrator's off-camera voice would say, " Einstein theorized that space is curved." Then picture of a scientist, and he says: "According to Einstein, space is curved." Cut to the narrator-host sitting somewhere very picturesque, or in the middle of a clever computer simulation (an elevator to infinity, for example) and he turns and looks at the camera and says with a perfectly straight face, "Einstein said that space is curved."

Did you get that? Well, don't worry. In about five minutes, they're going to repeat it all again.

Do they really think that because this stuff is hard, that the best way to approach it is blugeon your head with repetition until you're half dead, and then you'll be able to follow it? The sad part is that when the second half of the Elegant Universe program finally got to string theory and played it straight, it was fascinating and pretty easy to follow.

Are we really this dumb now? Are our attention spans so short, or just blugeoned into insensibility by endless repetition accompanying fast cut fancy movement images? What a waste of talent and money, and I might add, my time. Give me the twenty minutes of actual stuff, and save the rest for the pledge drive.

And can those Washington parrotheads. I'd rather hear Paul Newman talk about the news.

Toot toot

Seeing no one else stepping in to handle this job, the Dash brothers will now toot their own horn. Our political coverage, from Iowa to the Dem's v.p. hunt, has been close to unerring, and generally better than you'd get from any one media parrothead.

Still, we aren't the best of bloggers, in that we don't post everyday (we have LIVES, people! For instance, there are so many Star Trek episodes to watch for the fifteenth time!) and we don't do a lot of links.

So we'll try to do a little better on the links, but since the whole point of the blog is for us to shoot our mouths off, separately and together, that's what we'll continue doing.

Apropos of politics, the Iraq scandals continue to grow. Under heavy cross-examination fire in Congress, CIA director Tenet admitted that he had to warn Bush and Cheney that they were exaggerating intelligence judgments on Iraq's supposed WMDs and connection with al Queda. Now there's a report from inside the Pentagon that a lot of this stuff was manufactured there. It appears in salon, in their new alliance with move on.org: right here. (See? That's a link.) Halliburton continues to make news, all of it bad for the Bushies. The latest involves over-estimating and overcharges on some sweetheart Iraq deals. (You can look that up yourself. There's a limit to how much work we'll do for you.)


The narrative: So far this campaign season, the media is following the story called "Kerry attacks." It's dramatic, and it's new, since Bush has had the media in his pocket for three years plus. Now Bush is vulnerable and the media is famously shark-like, heading for any blood in the water and when not going for the kill (which might be too dangerous for our chickenhearted media)hovering there like chatty, sing-song grinning, heavily made-up vultures.

Kerry has been very skillful in keeping control of the story, but sooner or later he's going to hit a slack period. Then the media will look for another story, a reversal if possible, like "Bush fights back." The longer the Kerry-driven story goes on, the lower the bar the media will set to begin reversing it: the capture or killing of bin Laden would certainly do it, but so would something a lot smaller, like a modest uptick in job growth.

That's when the Kerry people have to be ready with Act III, not just Kerry Counter-attacks but "Kerry inspires." Ideally this would happen in the last weeks before the election, but it will need to begin at the Dem convention in July. Kerry will need to begin laying out a positive vision (which he does to campaign audiences, but those aren't the soundbites.) The convention will mainly be his best opportunity to project a lasting image of himself. That's when viewers/voters want to know, who is this guy? And his wife and family. He'll need to project honestly, but he can: he's a guy with dimensions, with a solid family life, he's athletic, etc. plus he has the personal authority to be a leader in tough times.

So that's the campaign as we see it: so far Kerry has successfully fought off the Bushies' attempts to define him, but they'll only just begun. He's been pretty impressive about remaining on attack, and he's clearly fearless. So the next months will be that game, and when or if the story switches from Kerry's to Bush's. Then the Dem convention is crucial to establishing Kerry as a man, a human being, voters can be comfortable with and above all (this time), have confidence in. Then at some point, especially if Kerry is still ahead in the polls, he concentrates on inspiring people to vote for him, rather than against Bush.

While we're blathering, a word about the status of the v.p. hunt. So far it's playing as we said it might. Kerry, having been stung by the very public Gore v.p. hunt in which he was mentioned and ultimately rejected, is keeping the process quiet and orderly. But as it goes on, support for John Edwards grows. The longer the process goes on, the more difficult it will be for Kerry to choose anyone other than Edwards.

No credible new names have surfaced, except John McCain, which is pretty interesting, however unlikely. We still like Gephardt, but with Kerry so effective on the attack, the need for a v.p. to do the dirty work diminishes, and Edwards as Mr. Sunshine makes more sense. The two are appearing together today or tomorrow, so let's see how that looks.

"Today's Stew

"We spend $30 (billion) to $40 billion in California, a trillion dollars in the country, on health care. Where is the money going?"
------Archie Lamb, chief counsel of CA Medical Association, in a new "California Consensus" report on health care by representatives of insurers, medical professionals and government officials, that calls for greater transparency in spending as a preliminary to universal health care.


"...And let's give special mention to The Wall Street Journal, which...in 1998 told its readers to 'rest easy': 'U.S. corporate accounting has been getting steadily more conservative in recent years, not less so.'
In other words, we shouldn't blame the public too much for getting caught up in irrational exhuberance. Foolish ideas were made to seem sensible by the unanimous optimism of analysts and the financial media. That unanimity was the product of a climate of fear in which everyone knew that asking hard questions put your career at risk. It wasn't just a market bubble: the system failed."
-----Paul Krugman, New York Times Book Review


Political notes: A Zogby Poll study of the electoral map shows a pattern favoring Kerry. In a bipartisan poll, Kerry has a lead in Florida of some 4 points, and while Nader polls at 3%, he is at the moment drawing equally from Republicans. Campaigning in Florida, Kerry vows to set up a legal team to monitor patterns of fraud in Florida voting before the election, and advocates voting systems with paper trails or some way to check and recount votes.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports Bushies preparing to attack Teresa Heinz Kerry during campaign. Pennsylvania is a must-win state for both Bush and Kerry, and Pittsburgh is a key. Attacking Teresa Heinz in Pittsburgh---home of Heinz Hall, Heinz Field where the Steelers play, and where every kid remembers the school trip to the pickle factory and the pickle pin they get on the way out---throws the city to Kerry.

Kerry has won primaries with strong support from the black community. It occurs to us that a lot of the qualities the media parrotheads criticize about Kerry are part of his appeal to this community. They see dignity, not stiffness, and they are used to feeling expressed in words, accompanied by gravitas. That Kerry reminds them of Kennedy is a big plus, as no other white politicians in the last half century are as revered as John and Robert Kennedy.