[Marxism] Glenn Greenwald on the ABC "debate"

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

(Glenn Greenwald is one of our more trenchant liberal pundits.)

AMY GOODMAN: ABC News is coming under intense criticism for its 
handling of Wednesday night's Democratic debate in Pennsylvania. It 
was the last before next week's primary.

During the first forty-five minutes of the debate, the moderators 
Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos focused on Obama's comments 
that some voters in Pennsylvania were bitter, the Rev. Jeremiah 
Wright controversy, Clinton's Bosnia "sniper fire" story, a flag pin 
and the Weather Underground. Here are some of the questions.

       VOICEOVER: The candidates await. Charles Gibson and George 
Stephanopoulos.

       CHARLES GIBSON: You got talking in California about small-town 
Pennsylvanians who have had tough economic times in recent years, and 
you said they get bitter, and they cling to guns or they cling to 
their religion or they cling to antipathy toward people who are not 
like them. Now, you've said you misspoke; you said you mangled what 
it was you wanted to say. But we've talked to a lot of voters. Do you 
understand that some people in this state find that patronizing and 
think that you said actually what you meant?

       GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, let me pick up on this. When 
these comments from Senator Obama broke on Friday, Senator McCain's 
campaign immediately said that it was going to be a killer issue in November.

       CHARLES GIBSON: Senator Obama, since you last debated, you 
made a significant speech in this building on the subject of race and 
your former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

       Senator, let me follow up, and let me add to that. You have 
said that he would not have been my pastor, and you said that you 
have to speak out against those kinds of remarks, and implicitly by 
getting up and moving, and I presume you mean out of the church. Do 
you honestly believe that 8,000 people should have gotten up and 
walked out of that church?

       GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator, two questions. Number one, do 
you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?

       Senator Clinton, we also did a poll today, and there are also 
questions about you raised in this poll. About six in ten voters that 
we talked to don't believe you're honest and trustworthy. And we also 
asked a lot of Pennsylvania voters for questions they had. A lot of 
them raised this honesty issue and your comments about being under 
sniper fire in Bosnia.

       And you yourself have said she hasn't been fully truthful 
about what she would do as president. Do you believe that Senator 
Clinton has been fully truthful about her past?

       CHARLES GIBSON: It's a question raised by a voter in Latrobe, 
Pennsylvania, a woman by the name of Nash McCabe. Take a look.

       NASH McCABE: Senator Obama, I have a question, and I want to 
know if you believe in the American flag. I am not questioning your 
patriotism, but all our servicemen, policemen and EMS wear the flag. 
I want to know why you don't.

       GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: A follow-up on this issue, the general 
theme of patriotism in your relationships. A gentleman named William 
Ayers, he was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They 
bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol and other buildings. He's never 
apologized for that. And in fact, on 9/11 he was quoted in the New 
York Times saying, "I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do 
enough." An early organizing meeting for your state senate campaign 
was held at his house, and your campaign has said you are friendly. 
Can you explain that relationship for the voters and explain to 
Democrats why it won't be a problem?

       CHARLES GIBSON: The crowd is turning on me. The crowd is turning on me.


AMY GOODMAN: Just some of the questions in the first half of last 
night's presidential debate on ABC. The prime-time debate was seen by 
10.7 million people, according to Nielsen Media Research. That's the 
most of any debate this election cycle. According to the Associated 
Press, nearly 17,000 comments were posted on ABC News's website by 
Thursday evening, the tone overwhelmingly negative.

Tom Shales of the Washington Post said Gibson and Stephanopoulos 
"turned in shoddy, despicable performances." The media critic Greg 
Mitchell said it was "perhaps the most embarrassing performance by 
the media in a major presidential debate in years." Salon.com said, 
"I'm not sure if we've seen anything quite as train-wreck, 
cover-your-eyes bad as the spectacle on ABC last night." Will Bunch, 
a Philadelphia Daily News writer, posted an open letter to Gibson and 
Stephanopoulos on his blog telling them, "you disgraced the American 
voters, and in fact even disgraced democracy itself." And the group 
MoveOn said it would air an ad protesting ABC if 100,000 people 
signed their petition.

Glenn Greenwald is a former constitutional law attorney, now a 
contributing writer at Salon.com. He is the author of a number of 
books. His latest is called Great American Hypocrites We welcome you 
to Democracy Now!, Glenn Greenwald.

GLENN GREENWALD: Great to be back. Thanks, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: You've been blogging a great deal about this debate. Can 
you talk about what happened on Wednesday night in Pennsylvania?

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, in one sense, it was an extreme and rather 
transparent act of journalistic malfeasance. I mean, that's just 
obvious. Take a look at just some of the stories that you reported on 
in the prior segment, virtually all of which were completely absent 
from the debate. Instead, the first half of the debate focused almost 
exclusively on the type of petty, insipid personality-based attacks 
that dominate our political discourse and determine our national elections.

But in another sense, I think it's important to note that this debate 
is not in any way aberrational. I mean, in heaping all this scorn on 
what George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson have done, I think it's 
important to acknowledge the fact that really all they're doing is 
what is done continuously throughout our election cycles for decades 
now. This was sort of a more transparent act, because all of these 
vapid questions were bunched together at the beginning.

But it's worth recalling that over the past couple of weeks, the news 
cycle was dominated by the scandal that Barack Obama wants to be 
president of the United States even though he doesn't bowl very well, 
which was followed by the comments that he made in San Francisco, 
what Maureen Dowd in the New York Times called the capital of 
elitism. And prior to that, there was the lapel pin controversy, the 
never-ending fixation on Jeremiah Wright's video, the comments made 
by Barack Obama's wife Michelle, all of this culminating in this 
theme that Barack Obama is this exotic, bizarre elitist, out of touch 
with mainstream American values, subversive, anti-American.

And these are the themes which over and over and over and over again 
are used to demolish and destroy the character and personality of 
Democrats and progressives, going all the way back to Jimmy Carter, 
Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, and on and on, to the point where 
none of the substantive issues and the weighty crises that our 
country faces in every realm are really a part of our national 
elections. And I think Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, 
though a bit more extreme and really more transparent, I would say, 
in just how vapid they are, were really doing what the establishment 
media does pretty much without exception, in terms of how it covers 
our political culture.

full: 
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/4/18/great_american_hypocrites_glenn_greenwald_on


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