Posted by
The SCSIBug on Thursday, February 21, 2008 6:00:00 AM
I'm fully aware this issue is three weeks old, but I was truly moved by Ms. Ham's response to Keith Olbermann's Jan. 29th broadcast. The commentators on that reply only fueled my fire.
Ms. Ham, I must admit, I don't know you personally. To be honest, I doubt I care to. This does not mean I earnestly believe that you, on that bleak January day, were actually the worst person in the entire world. You may be a lovely person with whom to have dinner, see a movie, perhaps even walk along a beach under a full moon. Your politics, however, and those of your supporters, seem especially baseless in this case. Here's why:
Olbermann was saying that not only *did* Clinton face a 24-hour news cycle during his Presidency, and continues to contend with it now, but that the media also flogged the scandals of Flowers, Lewinsky, "Whitegate," et cetera regularly. Assuredly, private political web logs (what I like to call "poliblogs") were not as "in vogue" back then as they are now. That doesn't mean there weren't investigators both inside the media and outside trying to dig up as much dirt as possible.
This, I believe, was Olbermann's larger point: no President ever gets a pass. Any President who was impeached clearly had especially little leeway. In fact, I would argue that Clinton's greatest political break was not from the media but from the legislative branch when they acquitted him. I'll further admit that some Presidents have faced a more complicit media than others, but none of them ever "had it easy." They are all scrutinized as much as we, the people, can scrutinize them. In fact, the Bush camp is so terrified of this forced transparency, they've gone out of their way throughout their tenure to make this administration as inscrutable as possible.
As long as TV news has been a business, there's been a bias towards the sensational, scandalous, salacious, and sexy. It did not become a business after the poliblogs began seeping from every nook and cranny. The news industry started grinding its mill a long while ago. Its grist has always been our celebrities, our public officials, our criminals, and those in their periphery. Bloggers have added nothing new to that mix.
There were anti-Dem and anti-Clinton websites before DrudgeReport.com. IMHO, many poliblogs are little more than a new spin of a very old top: the political toy of yellow journalism. Except now the architects of smear campaigns have the proxy of "independent bloggers" to do their dirty work. Of course, the poliblogs still have to sell ad space to yacht dealerships and Ford trucks, don't they? Just like the Hearse-owned newspapers of old...
As previously restated, Clinton became the second President in our nation's brief history to be impeached. Personally, I think we're long overdue for a third.