What the Left Should Learn From Fake President Maddow
by: Lauren Reichelt on June 22nd, 2010 | 5 Comments »
Too bad there isn’t a Nobel Prize for news reporting.
If there were one (and nominations were accepted from people like me), I would nominate Rachel Maddow. She has reinvented broadcast news, and completely redefined reporting.
In the days of my youth, news reporting was “objective,” meaning that it was reported from the perspective of a middle-to-upper class white, male, American elder. Reporting was not intended to inspire activism, but rather to support the status quo. Great reporters, such as Walter Cronkite, and Huntley and Brinkley, brought us horrible footage from the Vietnam War, but they largely refrained from overt editorializing.
In the last two decades of media consolidation, “objective” corporate reporting has veered farther and farther from the experience of middle income Americans, finally bursting the surly bonds of our shared gravity, and careening into its own obviously hyperbolic orbit. The corporate news looks an awful lot like propaganda.
Rachel Maddow has changed the news by dispensing with feigned objectivity (and focusing on actual research). She flatly states her own point of view in every broadcast, spicing her reports with deliciously tart personal observations regarding the hypocrisy, inconsistency and “truthiness” (or lack thereof) of people in the news, along with the actual impact of their policies on our lives. Maddow is frequently the first T.V. broadcaster to bring attention to an important issue. While all other news stations covered BP’s attempts to plug its catastrophically failed well, Maddow made the rounds of respected but uncelebrated scientists to explore non-existent funding streams for research into oil spill clean-up and recovery. She examined ineffective efforts to place (but not maintain boom) and the pitiful funding allotted to the training of recovery workers.
You can bet your bippy that funding will begin to flow into these grossly neglected waters! Maybe not as quickly as oil is flowing into the Gulf but far more quickly than it has over the previous four decades.
Maddow’s reporting verges on interactive. By explaining the historical reasons that the clean-up effort has been inadequate, she turns on the floodlights for activists, helping us to channel our energies as effectively as possible. Despite its snark, Maddow’s reporting is thoroughly uncynical. She obviously believes change is possible. She empowers her listeners to act without denigrating their efforts up to the current moment.
We have grown accustomed to the deeply cynical efforts of right-wing broadcasters such as Limbaugh, Beck and Rove, who dispense with research, and direct false, hateful accusations at our leaders in an attempt to block reform of the “free market” corporate monopolies that stifle healthy communities and a healthy world economy. Beck, Limbaugh, Rove, Palin et al aim to intimidate the left with threats of violence. Like other historical demagogues, they promote ignorance and hatred to block change.
Too many left-wing bloggers employ the same tactic. Rather than illuminating new paths so that we can move forward, they craft poorly researched diatribes blanketing Obama and other democratic leaders in verbal buckshot. They are cynically trolling for traffic and are not adding anything constructive to the national dialogue.
My children are growing older. My youngest just became a Bar Mitzvah while my eldest is beginning to think about college. As a mother, it is my role to begin to cede to them a platform from which to speak and act which is why I posted my son’s D’Var Torah unedited on this site several months ago. After all, in a few years, the current generation will be assigned the parallel tasks of fixing our mistakes and maintaining our successes, as we did for our parents before them. As spiritual progressives, we should be perpetually empowering Joshua.
We cannot fulfill our responsibility to younger generations by tearing down the leaders they have chosen. We fulfill our responsibilities to youth by suggesting ways they can help their chosen leaders to lead.
When Rachel Maddow was disappointed by the President’s Oval Office address, she didn’t rant about “failure” or “weakness.” She did not post a poorly researched rant attractive to individuals who think we should explode thermonuclear devices in the Gulf or make veiled, unsubstantiated references to the President’s “character.” She very creatively dubbed herself “Fake President Maddow,” pretended she was sitting in the Oval Office, and gave the speech we all wished the Commander-In-Chief had given.
Brilliant!
Cross-posted at BPICampus.com
Laura Reichert’s short article on Rachel Maddow’s approach to the news is well-taken, as it applies what Maddow does. But since her article is entitled, “What the Left Should Learn from Fake President Maddow,” we also need to evaluate what she says about the Left.
Without naming any names (in contradistinction to her mentioning the right-wingers Limbaugh, Beck, Rove and Palin by name), her article is rather damning of some anonymous left-wing bloggers.
Here are her four final paragraphs:
1. Too many left-wing bloggers employ the same tactic [as the aforementioned right-wingers]. Rather than illuminating new paths so that we can move forward, they craft poorly researched diatribes blanketing Obama and other democratic leaders in verbal buckshot. They are cynically trolling for traffic and are not adding anything constructive to the national dialogue.
2. My children are growing older. My youngest just became a Bar Mitzvah while my eldest is beginning to think about college. As a mother, it is my role to begin to cede to them a platform from which to speak and act which is why I posted my son’s D’Var Torah unedited on this site several months ago. After all, in a few years, the current generation will be assigned the parallel tasks of fixing our mistakes and maintaining our successes, as we did for our parents before them. As spiritual progressives, we should be perpetually empowering Joshua.
3. We cannot fulfill our responsibility to younger generations by tearing down the leaders they have chosen. We fulfill our responsibilities to youth by suggesting ways they can help their chosen leaders to lead.
4. When Rachel Maddow was disappointed by the President’s Oval Office address, she didn’t rant about “failure” or “weakness.” She did not post a poorly researched rant attractive to individuals who think we should explode thermonuclear devices in the Gulf or make veiled, unsubstantiated references to the President’s “character.” She very creatively dubbed herself “Fake President Maddow,” pretended she was sitting in the Oval Office, and gave the speech we all wished the Commander-In-Chief had given.
I’d like to take these paragraphs and evaluate them. In paragraph 1 she says that: “left-wing bloggers employ the same tactic [as the aforementioned right-wingers]. Rather than illuminating new paths so that we can move forward, they craft poorly researched diatribes blanketing Obama and other democratic leaders in verbal buckshot.” I took a look at some of the left-wing blogs I read. CounterPunch has a number of articles, few of which seem to fall into Reichert’s “poorly researched diatribes.” Its first article by Kathy Kelly, entitled “Witnessing Against Torture: Why We Must Act” is neither poorly researched nor a diatribe, though it is critical of the present administration. Another strong article by Laura Carlsen, “Lethal Force on the Border: The Killing of Sergio Hernandez Guereca also does not gibe with her criticism. The same is true of many (though not all) of CounterPunch’s articles, past and present.
0-1.
0-1. I then turned to Common Dreams. Since its two lead articles are reprints, I’ll skip them, though I would say in passing, that they, too do not deserve Reichert’s criticisms. The next article, “Obama & Insubordination: Is He Truman or Mr. Milquetoast?” by Ray McGovern, while critical of Obama, is also well-researched and incisive. The next two, Norman Solomon’s “From Great Man to Great Screw-up,” and Amy Goodman’s “Another World is Possible Another Detroit is Happening,” likewise fail to live up to Reichert’s charges. The same is true, by and large, for Antiwar.com, Portside and several other blogs I read. And I’m just one person; I’m sure there are many blogs who do not deserve Reichert’s opprobrium.
I’ll skip the next paragraph except to mention that Joshua may be the hero of the spiritual “Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho,” but according to the Bible, after he finished with Jericho, he did a murderous job on many other cities as well.
In the third paragraph, Reichert says, “We cannot fulfill our responsibility to younger generations by tearing down the leaders they have chosen. We fulfill our responsibilities to youth by suggesting ways they can help their chosen leaders to lead.” By definition, the “younger generations” cannot have chosen their leaders, since, like Reichert’s own children, they’re too young to vote. This leaves two other issues hanging: 1) Is the nature of the choosing process in the United States one which offers a real choice to ordinary people? 2) If leaders mislead, should we pull our punches so as not to “tear them down”? Reichert needs to address them.
In paragraph 4, Reichert, in praising Maddow, condemns by implication those bloggers who allegedly “rant about ‘failure’ or ‘weakness’” or who. “post a poorly researched rant attractive to individuals who think we should explode thermonuclear devices in the Gulf or make veiled, unsubstantiated references to the President’s “character.” Reichert has thus made “veiled, unsubstantiated references” to unnamed left-wing bloggers. We desreve better in an article appearing in Tikkun.
Finally, it seems to me that Reichert’s real complaint is about the mounting criticisms of Obama. I think it would be worthwhile for Tikkun to inaugurate a dialogue on what is the appropriate reaction to an administration which came into office bearing the high hopes of many, and which has dashed those hopes – from continuing governmental secrecy, to escalating the war, to paralysis on single-payer health insurance, to refusing to investigate Bush-era crimes (to name only a few issues) — so thoroughly.
Thank you for your well-thought out criticisms of my post. It is true that I am not referring to the articles in CounterPunch or Common Dreams that you cited. It is a commonly accepted courtesy on community blogs such as Daily Kos and ePluribus Media, that one blogger does not call out another or groups of others by name. I have thus refrained from naming specific writers.
Tikkun is an online magazine rather than a community blog, so perhaps that is not the practice here. I still tend to follow the custom because I think it promotes constructive dialogue and a sense of community to focus on practices and policies rather than personalities.
I am not opposed to constructive ciritiques of specific policies or stances of Obama’s. I can think of many things he has done with which I disagree. I don’t know why we continued to rubber stamp every wish of the energy industry, why we are pursuing a counter-insurgency policy in Afghanistan, why we haven’t ended “too big to fail.” In every instance, it seems that the Bush policies that Obama has continued have blown up in his face. This is a valid line of inquiry.
I am objecting specifically to posts which offer no constructive solutions to problems, but simply ramble on vaguely about Obama’s character or his latest “failure.” I don’t like personality cults and think it is a mark of intellectual laziness to focus on denigrating a personality rather than identifying policies which can be improved upon. I find it difficult to discern this sort of writing from the diatribes of Beck and Limbaugh. In general, the right has been unwilling to focus on policy because its policies have failed. The luminaries of the right attack Obama’s personality, and indeed the personal attributes of everyone to the left of Mussolini. I despise this tendency and become extremely irritated when a few of us engage in it.
There are many brilliant left-leaning writers. I chose Maddow as an example of great journalism because her style of critique is to pose solutions. Her “Fake President Maddow” Oval Office address was the most effective critique of Obama’s speech I have seen. And it was delivered in a fashion that energizes young people, activists and idealists to get out and work harder for change. I am not a morning person. Every morning, my husband wakes me up by blasting Maddow’s podcasts at 5 am. It works better than coffee! I wake up in an uncharacteristically good mood. We need journalism and critiques that motivate us to move forward despite obstacles, not diatribes that will encourage young voters to stay home. CounterPunch and Common Dreams are terrific blogs. And Left Blogistan can boast of many creative solution-oriented sites and writers. Creativity and diversity are the strengths of the Left (assuming there is such a monolithic entity).
There are also quite a few posts I have read at Daily Kos, Firedoglake and even a few at Tikkun that offer little more than tired, hashed over cliches that sound like they were lifted from the tea-party. There aren’t many here at Tikkun but there are a few and they irritate the bemoses out of me! I believe that in order to have a strong left, we must work together to solve problems. In fact, It is central to my understanding of Spiritual Progressiveness that we try to build our movement to heal the earth rather than to tear that movement down.
bebés divertidos
Glickman-Reichelt dialog is a smart, good-willed exchange. Thanks to you both.
Es bueno encontrar un sitio como el de ustedes. Muchas gracias.