A Graceless Encounter

I was slightly upbraided in the post below for being “graceless”, and as I thought about it I realized that the word itself is a key into the attitude about journalists towards the people they cover. I’m just a blogger, and have no pretenses about this being a journalistic endeavor. Far from it – blogs represent a break in tradition away from business as usual. Because of the internet, the old order is breaking down. We are Philistines of a sort, bringing fried chicken and beer to a cocktail party. But the cocktail party has been going on too long, the participants so inured to one another that if a journalist were to do his job, he might be seen as a hooligan. Good journalists are a royal pain to politicians and other leaders. That is a sign they are doing their jobs.

Perhaps it was uncouth to criticize Tim Russert on the event of his death. Problem is, since he was regarded as a “dean” (a very high level sycophant), he could not be criticized while alive either. Timing matters, but only a little.

Journalists and politicians should not be comfortable in the same room. A journalist, if attending a party where politicians are gathered, should immediately develop sweaty armpits. After all, the journalist has been researching and interviewing, talking to underlings and monitoring the activities of the politicians. The journalist can rightly assume that, liquor flowing freely, a confrontation is inevitable.

A politician, upon seeing a journalist enter a room, ought to get angry. After all, the journalist has been a pain in the ass. The politician has not been able to favor his friends in dealings. The journalist has been poking his head in unseemly places, interviewing employees and former business associates. The politician might fly off the handle and let the journalist have a what-for, and then even that will become news.

In Washington, journalists and politicians are quite at ease with one another, usually attending the same parties. Politicians routinely talk up the press corp and salute its integrity, a sure sign that the system has failed. A proud profession has been co-opted, the knives and daggers have been shelved. There’s been a treaty.

Tim Russert’s obituary included countless homilies on how respected he was by the political faction. It’s a sure sign that he was a failure. But he did have access to the powerful. He got it on their conditions. They made the rules, he followed. A deal was struck.

Shortly before leaving office, President Bill Clinton lost his cool on Democracy Now!, the independent news program whose host is Amy Goodman. DN! is no respecter of propriety, and Goodman is not at all graceful. After enough confrontational questions, Clinton went on a diatribe. He said “every question you’ve asked has been hostile and combative”. It was not the kind of treatment he was used to. He was habituated, accustomed to cordiality and respect. He took it for granted that Goodman would approach him on bended knee, and when she didn’t, he got angry.

I found the exchange interesting because I was not aware that Clinton even knew of the nightly news program, much less deigning to find it annoying. But he knew about it. He called in unsolicited to promote the Gore candidacy. Interesting.

When Goodman questioned him on the Iraqi sanctions, which had killed over half a million kids, Clinton said that it was Saddam Hussein’s doing, completely exonerating himself. That was not enough for Goodman, who reminded Clinton that two former UN heads of the program overseeing the sanctions had quit in protest. It was a graceless question. One of many. I was never so proud of the profession of journalism as I was of her that day.

Clinton and Goodman would not be comfortable at a cocktail party together, not that Goodman would ever be invited. She openly confronted him with tough questions. Clinton was angry that she had dared to be “hostile and combative”. They might come to blows. Indeed, the journalists belong at the smoke-filled bars of days gone by, recounting their experiences, sharing the battle wounds. They should not even be invited to the same party, much less attend.

Compare the feisty Goodman/Clinton encounter to the standard presidential interview by a “dean of journalism” like Tom Brokaw or Walter Cronkite or yes, Tim Russert. Remove the submissiveness, set respect aside, ask tough questions, piss the guy off, and one is removed from the world of sycophant journalism to that of Democracy Now!, a news program looked down upon by the haughty practitioners of journalism in its current form.

It’s a shame. Journalism could be fun. They are not of much use in their current manifestations.