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Among the Intellectualoids
Lingua Crapa
Yes, the MSM is biased. They’re also bad writers.
The decline of the mainstream media is not only a matter of liberal bias, but of linguistics. The dinosaur media is losing readers because it is full of bad writers.
I grew up with the Washington Post, and still pad down the driveway faithfully every morning to read the paper. To be sure, the leftward tilt is annoying, but to me it’s not only what the writers are saying, but how they are saying it. A typical example is a recent piece by Hank Stuever about Jay Leno’s new 10 p.m. television show. At the climax of the piece, Stuever offers this:
But what are we looking for in all this — a new network business model or passing entertainment? Or some sort of variety show from our imagined glory days of vintage TV, something that will refocus our ideas about comedy, celebrity and frivolity?
Anymore it’s hard to tell. Leno, of course, would say he’s but a humble funnyman and there is now pressure for “The Jay Leno Show” to do anything other than fill the air with mirth.
But we’ve been trained by the infotainment industry for nearly two decades now to believe in a fictive epic battle known as the “late-night wars,” with its ancestral Jack Paar and Johnny Carson cave etchings.…[But] set aside the ratings game and instead engage the viewer on the subject of Leno’s talent. Then what sort of conversation are we having? Leno is funny, but in the safest way.
Note: it took Stuever most of his piece to get to the point where he was actually addressing whether he thinks Leno is any good or not. About halfway through the piece, he writes that “armchair critics almost never talk about whether Leno’s good, and instead acknowledge his universal appeal, his role in the national chitchat and buzz.” There are more important questions, insists Stuever: “So was [the new show] funny? Was it new? Was it worth all that? Will it last?”
Well, we don’t know. Because, as Stuever awkwardly puts is: “anymore it’s hard to tell.” At the end, Stuever says that Leno is too safe. But this should have been the beginning of the piece, not its end. And the idea should have been developed. How is Leno too safe? Was he ever more daring? If so, how did he change? Steuver’s piece reads like his notes, not like a finished article. (I paid 75 cents for this?)
Many journalists in the mainstream media today feel compelled to perform a balancing act: they feel it is their job to give their opinion, but it can only be given at a glib and childish remove, and only once the piece is larded with observations about process. Thus, directly opposite from the Leno piece in the Style section is a piece about “high-profile outbursts” — Joe Wilson calling Obama a liar, Serena Williams going postal on a line judge, Kayne West jumping on stage to interrupt an award winner. Do the outbursts of celebrities in public like West make us “hit new lows”? According to Post writers Wil Haygood and Chris Richards, we don’t know. They describe “the convergence of entertainment and moxie, shamelessness and passion” that comes with a public outburst, and interview experts from academia, who — naturally — blame such eruptions on talk radio and town hall meetings. The two writers let these critics make their point for them, rather than having the guts to simply say what they believe.
The person most responsible for this cowardice is probably Maureen Dowd. The best piece about Dowd’s effect on the media is still “Creeping Dowdism,” a 1992 piece written by Katherine Boo in the Washington Monthly. Boo notes that by the early 1990s Maureen Dowd’s aloof, smirking, superficial and too-cute style in the New York Times had infected the rest of the press corps. A little of this fizz was fine, Boo wrote, but it had gotten to the point where it was corroding any kind of earnestness: “Coursing through stories of [Dowd’s] sort is a fundamental doubt about the beneficial possibilities of the democratic process. It’s so phony, says the subtext, that I’m not going to try to wring out any meaning. Instead, I’m going to amuse you.” Boo then observed how the Times’ Elizabeth Kolbert concluded from watching a debate between Bill Clinton and Paul Tsongas that “one cannot help feeling somehow implicated in their dispute. Perhaps, one wonders, it is time to find them professional counseling.” Boo: “Kolbert’s metaphor is as revealing as it is patronizing. Locking in on the posturing, she actually seems to believe that what they’re arguing about — which happened to be the taxation of entitlements for the affluent as a means of cutting the deficit — is as private a matter as a marriage dispute. In this conception, and it’s not just Kolbert’s, politics is not about affixing an imprint on a country or the world. It’s a wholly self-serving, inner-directed enterprise.”
The endgame, Boo writes, is a press corps that resembles a high school locker room:
To these bored and overexposed insiders, everybody eventually begins to seem absurd, predictable, incapable of sincerity, inspiration, or meaning — undeserving of being “taken seriously.” A game it is, then. Whoever pens the most metaphors wins.
What’s so dreadful about that? Well, there’s the tiresome matter of the people — what Dowd calls “the Joe Sixpack constituency.” Sure, it’s useful to them to know that politicians’ proposals for tax relief or health care or education always involve a healthy dose of calculation, absurdity, and melodrama. But — should we even have to say it? — when one of those politicians (however ridiculous) is elected, his proposals (however cynical) may have a real effect on their lives. Joe Sixpack knows this, and duller stories in the dailies outline it clearly: Polls and focus groups show that voters are very worried about the economy, the quality of public schools, and the cost of health care — and they’re frustrated by the apparent inability of politicians to get serious about those issues. Yet even when explaining the national disgust with glib politicking, the popular yearning for discussion of real issues, Dowd can’t resist singsonging: “They say they want leaders with candor, not leaders who pander.”
The most unbelievable example of this assault on sincerity and its attendant lassitude appears on the very same Post Style section page as the aforementioned pieces by Stuever, Haygood and Richards. Louis Bayard opens his review of Dan Brown’s new book, The Lost Symbol, with this one sentence paragraph: “Welcome to the least relevant review you will read all year.” Whatever Bayard writes about The Lost Symbol, you see, will be lost in the tsunami of hype and sales that attend any Dan Brown book. Bayard’s review just doesn’t matter. Bayard admitting as much is supposed to come off as mirthful self-deprecation, but it’s actually very sad and pathetic — not to mention dishonorable. It’s like an NFL team coming out to play a far superior squad, setting up for kickoff, then just walking off the field and back into the locker room. A writer with a sense of honor — not to mention cojones — might set out to produce a debunking of Brown so dazzling, ferocious and irrefutable that it would outlast the paper it was printed on. Instead, Bayard flops over and dies at the opening bell. One is reminded how, in 1919, H.L. Mencken wrote a devastating criticism of the socialist thinker Thorsten Veblen. At the time, Veblen was hugely popular among the elites, but Mencken’s surgical defenestration is what remains in print, and, I dare say, even read, decades later. It was hilarious, yes, but also deadly serious. Mencken was debunking a socialist whose ideas had infected the intelligentsia and the public. He was providing a public service.
Shortly after dispatching that day’s Post to the recycle bin — not to worry, the same type stories will appear tomorrow — I turned to the Irish Times. In it was a serious, humane, and beautiful article by John Banville about the new Welsh film sleep furiously (lower-case letters in original). It begins thus: “At the close of his recent and superb collection of essays, Gray’s Anatomy, the political philosopher John Gray urges upon humanity a new quietism. ‘Other animals,’ he writes, ‘do not need a purpose in life. A contradiction to itself, the human animal cannot do without one. Can we not think of the aim of life as simply being to see?’ It may seem an overly simplified exhortation, given the dire predicament we have got ourselves into, yet would it not make at least a good start on the road to recovery from our present soul-sickness if we were to stand back and just look?”
Call it the antidote to creeping Dowdism.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (33) | Leave a comment
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Karibou Kid| 9.16.09 @ 7:52AM
When I was in college back in the '70's it didn't take me long to figure out that the only major that required less intellectual activity than education was journalism. I have never seen anything to disabuse me of this observation.
Louis Jenkins| 9.16.09 @ 8:24AM
ancestral Jack Paar and Johnny Carson cave etchings.…
But those two guys had class. Something that a lot late night show hosts lack.
Michael L. Hauschild| 9.16.09 @ 8:26AM
"Creeping Dowdism," hardly. What you are witnessing is the circulation based taming of the shrew. Their audience is shrinking, their revenues are plummeting, and most significantly their influence is on the wane. The current crop of stars in the MSM is not cream rising to the surface; most (especially Dowd) are nothing more than a high fiber turd briefly flashing during the final flush.
Kevin Dunn| 9.16.09 @ 8:36AM
A valuable piece. One remembers, by way of contrast, Robert Louis Stephenson's demolition of the Rev. Mr Hyde, who had traduced the leper missionary Father Damien. Stephenson expected to be sued for everything he possessed, but for him telling the truth mattered more than that. It's on the internet and I do plead with everyone who may not have read it to do so - THAT's how to write! It even, if I may say so, anticipates and out-Menckens Menken.
Dee W. | 9.16.09 @ 8:59AM
This line came from behind like a boot to the rear: "undeserving of being 'taken seriously.'" Of course. In a culture of shlubs where few take matters seriously at all, how can anyone expect to be taken seriously? Let us start with ourselves.
Doorgunner| 9.16.09 @ 9:26AM
Speaking of "Dowdism"... have you ever tried to read a Dan Brown book? No smellier an indictment of America's collective intellect could exist than a report of his sales figures.
owyheewine| 9.16.09 @ 9:39AM
Amen to Karibou.
Anyone else wonder that the NYT smug queen's name may also be the origin of the word "dowdy"?
Bob Alou| 9.16.09 @ 10:24AM
No one was happier the day Molly Ivins passed on than Ms. Dowd. My question is: Why when any objective reviewer knows that anything printed in the NYTs is completely devoid of any semblance of balance or fairness are decent people even concerned with this? The woman is a beast, and proud of it. Why is she treated otherwise?
Tom| 9.16.09 @ 11:11AM
Good Lord - today's young people think Jon Stewart hosts a new show!
Tom| 9.16.09 @ 11:16AM
Good Lord - today's young people think Jon Stewart hosts a news show!
Northern Rebel| 9.16.09 @ 11:32AM
Could you imagine being married to a woman with this windset? Ugghh...
She is single for this reason, that, and her photo is about 20 years old.
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The American Spectator : Lingua Crapa – The Facebook News links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
JP| 9.16.09 @ 12:24PM
Alan,
I would agree. For a number of decades the J-Schools were overflowing with young people who had visions of Pulitzers dancing in thier heads. They learnt everything but the art of writing. Our newsrooms are filled with them now -as are the unemployment offices, I might add.
Niether Hemingway nor Mike Royko ever attended J-School (they didn't have them back then). Hemmingway put in his time with the newspapers in Kanasa City and Toronto, while Royko did his apprenticeship covering the night desk for several Chicago papers.
Both were excellent journalists (when sober).
Marc Jeric| 9.16.09 @ 1:21PM
Ms. Dowd - teaching us undeserving peons the truth as found in communism, socialism, nazism, fascism; except she calls it liberalism.
Truthteller| 9.16.09 @ 1:47PM
Maureen Dowd?
I'd do her.
Anthony| 9.16.09 @ 2:41PM
Dowd and the rest of the leftist media elites have been practicing their syle of journalistic nihilism for decades. For these bored, pampered and just plain empty souled human beings, whose lives are pathetic empty shells, devoid of meaning, nothing is ever good enough and everything is fair game for destruction, especially us conservatives, who wallow in our quaint bourgeois valued world.
But as we've witnessed lately, they have become more unhinged by the day; their insanity fueled by our daily mocking of them. So now, MoDo, with an empty vile of Prozac on her desk, engages in auditory hallucinations as she "hears" Joe Wilson mouth the word "boy" when addressing Obama. Not content with her usual vile tendentious, now she must project what her hate fueled mind thinks Joe Wilson is thinking. The woman is sinking and sinking fast, but right behind her is Friedman, Krugman and Rich.
I look forward to her journalistic demise and that of her fellow elites. Oh by the way, yes Charlie Gibson, there is an ACORN.
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dannichols: Texas Deer Hunting Techniques: http://ping.fm/lBzRM | Hunting Leisure Kno links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
John II| 9.16.09 @ 4:13PM
I couldn't agree more with Mr. Judge's general points, but his own expression, and even parts of the quotes he refers to as good writing, intermittently exhibit the rusty nuts and bolts, so to speak, of the creaky mechanism he deplores.
Examples: (1) the lame use of "self-deprecation" for the correct "self-depreciation"; (2) the tired "feel compelled to," which Orwell cited as a representative "operator" 63 years ago; (3) the vagrant use of the editorial "we" in a passage intended to be critical of folks other than the writer.
There are other examples, but no offense. My point is, the culture is first and foremost intellectually lazy. And the relatively new undergraduate major which goes by the name "Communication" is, like Sociology before it, almost universally recognized as a haven for ignorant, politicized dimwits as well as the standard preparation for journalism school. In fact, the "communication" majors in the university where I teach are reliably, year after year, among the very worst of my literature students. Their writing is without depth or concreteness, and they exhibit no serious interest in the world around them.
Dowdism: Well, that's as good a word as I've seen to advert to the mental universe of today's journalists--a spooky mixture of sluggishness and smugness.
Donny| 9.16.09 @ 4:56PM
Can we please get away from the senseless and inaccurate use of "MSM"?
It is the “far left media,” if anything.
By using the dinosauric term “MSM,” their reporters and editors actually believe they represent the “main stream” of American viewpoints. Nothing could be further from the truth, and Charlie Gibson gets this week’s Star of the Week Award for proving it once again. These people are out of touch with average, normal Americans, so let’s not give them falsehoods and fodder or anything else that reinforces their idealistic pretensions of mid-road normalcy.
Thank you, one and all for deleting “MSM” from your lexicon.
ccc| 9.16.09 @ 5:07PM
Thorsten Veblen are developing a broader acceptanc in economics, particularly his concept of conspicuous consumption. Conspicuous consumption was the idea that Menckin aggressivly attacked but is quite useful for explaining today's culture.
Gill O’Teen ✝✡| 9.16.09 @ 6:55PM
I thought I’d posted this at 12:42 PM, but it’s not here, so I guess I erred. So here’s a second strike:
Mr. Judge, save the three quarters you spend on this bilge every day, probably lots more on Sundays. At the end of the year, take your savings and buy silver. You will be a much richer person in more ways than one by so doing. Our local newspaper was once considered one of the best in the nation. It cost a dime. Now, like yours, it cost 75¢. It contains about 5% of the content it once did and even dropped “Prince Valiant”, my favorite comic since Walt Kelly died. There is less relevant reporting in this Major paper than in the newsprint that gets tossed in my driveway or shows up magically and unsolicited in my mailbox. I can’t stand what passes for humor these days. Most of it is nothing but cruel and vicious laugh tracked descriptions of something pertaining to sex. Keep in mind that super newsman Charlie ‘Glasses Down the Nose” Gibson feigned he was totally ignorant of the breaking acornut scandal, so much for bringing us the news we need to know in order to make informed decisions. I noticed, years ago, that local news was only interested in covering stories related to sex, the more explicit the more newsworthy. This past year, I have only watched the major networks because NBC owns the broadcast rights to the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes and ABC (might be CBS) owns the rights to the Belmont. I get my news from FNC, Drudge, TVG and HRTV. I am better informed than I would be if I still watched or read the Bigs. When I was younger, so much younger than today, our major newspaper was used by writing teachers to illustrate proper grammar and spelling. Today, the thought would never occur to me. I’m not sure if the decline is due to lowered standards to graduate high school or college, the advent of the spell checker which has replaced memorization or the demise of the old fashioned editors to cut costs or a combination of factors. But it is undeniable. I do not want to read another piece of illiterate leftist propaganda.
I also think referring to these hacks as Main Street Media, or MSM, is way off the mark. Declining sales and ratings prove that there is nothing main-street about them anymore. In order to ram abortion down our throats, I remember being subjected to lies about how unless that vile practice became legal, our poor defenseless young women would be forced to avail themselves of the shady practices of some back alley Tiller. I think that what has been done to journalism in this country is akin to what we were told was happening to these poor victims of evil rapists and sex-crazed male relatives. That’s why I call them Back Alley Media, or BAM, as in oBAMa news. (Note: since what I thought was my original post, I heard Glenn Beck call BAM the Fringe Media.)
Gill O’Teen ✝✡
gill.Oteen07041776@gmail.com
Don’t Tread on Me!!
HD| 9.16.09 @ 7:32PM
Most of the "writers" infecting newspapers and magazines across our great land couldn't write their way out of a wet paper sack.
Alan Brooks| 9.16.09 @ 8:18PM
to spend, what, half a trillion, on education per to teach so many students to write like Dowds?
what purpose public education?
Alan Brooks| 9.16.09 @ 8:20PM
how much per year was spent in the last four decadent decades for teaching students bad writing 'skills'? Those of us who went to school before the '70s were lucky.
what a waste of property taxes these days!
John II| 9.16.09 @ 8:48PM
Alan: True, but my own property taxes probably aren't wasted on police and fire protection, and especially on a well functioning sewage system. Too bad the last service doesn't include the proper disposal of local politicians.
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roberta williams| 9.28.10 @ 10:57AM
there is a growing issue in American culture wherein public figures and private are being constrained in their expressions for fear of legal action. the number of people who are made to resign for what they say is ungodly. yet in the Maldives and other supposedly 'underdeveloped countries' and through efforts by UNESCO, anti defamation laws are being set aside in the interest of free speech and freedom of the press: http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en.....=201.html.
if we are getting 'bland pap' from the press, it is because we do not understand the implications of people who are forced to resign or whose political careers are terminated by adverse press when they say what they say. The "N" word is a Word, just like alcohol was alcohol in the 1920s and it is not the word or the alcohol but the use to which persons put it, and the context in which it is used. to criminalize either, or to proscribe either as not Politically Correct is an attainder on Freedom of Will.