How Was I to Know

She was with the Russians, too?


In today's episode of "Who's letting driftglass down now?" I find myself very disappointed with Ms. Kathleen Hall-Jamieson.


Very, very disappointed, especially because there is so much that is unimpeachably admirable about Ms. Hall-Jamieson's body of work, so allow me to back up a few hundred miles and explain by my disappointment by way of briefly (since I am told that the posts of Successful Bloggers should never exceed one paragraph and I am way over my limit already) explicating Fake Centrism's Iron Triangle.


To start with, here is the audio from her appearance on Neal Conan's Centrist Tent Show that hacked me off:




The juice starts at around the 8:00 minute mark with host Neal Conan first going out of his way to "be fair" by chastising a caller for suggesting that ludicrous, destructive "Conservative" ideas are in any way related to the Republican Party.


No, I am not kidding (from NPR's transcript with emphasis added):

CONAN: Kathleen Hall Jamieson, "Looking for an Honest Politician." Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. Why is it politicians have so much difficulty being candid? Let's begin with Bob, and Bob's on the line with us from Suffern, New York.


BOB: Yes. And the reason politicians have so much difficulty being candid is we do not want to hear the truth. What we want to hear is rhetoric that conforms to our prejudice because no politician gets elected in America by telling the people the truth. And you have organized opposition to the truth in the form of the Republican initiatives against global warming, the Republican initiative about teach the controversy between creationism and evolution. I mean, it's all nonsense, but you got significance segments of a population that sign on to it because they just do not want to hear the truth.


CONAN: It might be fair to characterize some of those groups as conservative, Bob, but to say they're Republican...


BOB: No, no. It's not just...


CONAN: To say the Republican is - they're not associated with the Republican Party...

Then, through the magic of awkward, on-air lying, Mr. Conan simply redefines the caller's very reasonable point (the "organized opposition to the truth" being waged by Republicans) as a "values issue" (Darwinism!) and then further transmogrifies it into something about "gay marriage" before sprinting at top speed away from the scary and unacceptable idea that one side -- the Republican side -- is wrong.


No kidding.

CONAN: Well, to be fair to Bob...


JAMIESON: (Unintelligible) the alternative.


CONAN: To be fair to Bob, our caller, he was calling about more values issues. He was talking about, well, Darwinism. We can argue about that, but let's take the issue of gay marriage.

No, Mr. Conan. Global climate change is a fact.  Widespread Conservative lying about global climate change is a fact.  Republicans porting "Conservative" lies about global climate change directly into the language and policies is a fact.


At this point, Neal Conan should have been taken off the air, but as regular readers of this blog know, that will never happen because leaping feet-first into any discussion that strays into suggesting that Both Sides Don't Do It is what NPR pays Neal Conan to do (these infamous example of Mr. Conan's Emergency Orthodoxy Control from 2009 ("The Wanktastics") and 2007 ("The Big Lie") make the point.).


So how does Ms Hall-Jamieson suggest the average citizen navigate the pointy rocks and blithering undertow of partisanship and public lying?


By trusting the Elite Consensus of our Beltway ruling class of course!

JAMIESON: That's a really important. One of the things we know about how the public in general learns is that when an expert consensus emerges, the public doesn't have to understand all of the ins and outs of how the conclusion was reached. If the public comes to understand that it is an expert consensus, the public does tend to accept it. I think we've got an expert consensus with Rivlin-Domenici and Simpson-Bowles.
...

I must have missed that memo.


And if you are shopping for a regular source of trustworthy, expert opinions, where does Ms Hall-Jamieson suggest you look?


At the Sunday Morning Mouse Circus of course!


No, I am not kidding.

JAMIESON: ...But also, there's one other source of very valuable information, and in general, it translates well into English. If you watch the Sunday interview shows, whenever a candidate or a candidate's surrogate is on, you see some of the nation's best journalists holding them accountable and also trying to make sure that the alternative point of view is clearly articulated. We can then trace viewership of those shows, viewership of debates, the single most useful information vehicle we have in campaigns, and increase the viewership of media that tries aggressively to still maintain balance and fairness...

That is when my jaw hit the floor, and it has taken me a couple of days to explain to myself (and now to you) exactly why I find this this exchange so insidious.


Because Ms. Hall-Jamieson always struck me as an intelligent, thoughtful academic dedicated above all to truth in journalism. She also touches all the right Liberal bases, appearing regularly on thoughtful, long-form programs like Bill Moyers and "Up with Chris Hayes". 


So there's that. 


There is also the fact that Ms. Hall-Jamieson also frequently speaks passionately about the way things should be. Journalists should ask hard, relevant questions and our country's real, complex problems. Politicians should be pressed to answer in detail how they would solve those real, complex problems, and voters should hold politicians accountable if they refuse to do so. 


Yes!  That is the world I would like to live in too! 


However, other than repeating that this is the way things should be, on pain of torture Ms. Hall-Jamieson consistently refuses to pull the fucking trigger and explain in detail exactly how she proposes to get from here to there. Refuses to confront the ugly reality to which her own, meticulous analysis has led her. 


And here is why that is so infuriating.


You see, in Chicago, where I lived until recently, there is a gen-u-ine, Progressive radio station. Granted some of its programming sucks hard, and the weekends are mostly a wasteland, and for some reason (which no one has ever managed to explain without losing me in a bewildering thicket of winks, eyebrow semaphore and Significant Pauses) this station -- which has 188 hours of weekly airtime to fill and is located in the big, Blue heart of third largest city in the American empire -- cannot get its shit together enough to create more than one-and-only-one locally-produced program...but it exists.


Where I live now, there is no progressive radio.


There is a delightful, welcoming Liberal tribe and a terrific left-leaning weekly alt press newspaper powered by the seemingly limitless energy of its publisher, but when it comes to progressive radio -- that little, conversational voice in your ear that can travel with you anywhere you go -- there is none at all.


Local radio runs about 30% Conservative talk, 20% Christian religious, 30% sports and 19% music.


The remaining 1% is NPR (know to you all as Nice, Polite Republicans) which, downstate, means 75% classical music, with the rest given over to a variety of non-controversial, NPR staples.


This place -- this small corner of the three million square miles of America outside the range of the fragile archipelago of Liberal radio, teevee and print -- is where most of your fellow citizens live.


So imagine yourself as that modestly informed "independent" voter that every cable teevee pundit drools over: the one who lives down the street, or across town or two counties over from me.


On teevee and radio, you are awash in red state white noise, and the editorial pages of your local newspaper (assuming you still have a local newspaper) are a steady shriek about the horrors of Liberals, Union Thugs and "illegals". This is the default media setting of your world, but you want more. You want to be informed or (since that requires all kinds of heavy lifting with sharp edges) you want to at least appear informed.


And, just as important, you are really not in the market for any opinion that sets you completely at odds with your neighbors -- the ones who love, love love ol' Rush and whose opinions fill up the editorial pages of your local paper. Instead, you're shopping for a point-of-view which will permit you to disagree with them with "Good point, but...", not "What sort of imbecile would believe something that fucking ludicrous..."


And thus do you, Mr. or Ms. or Miss Independent, follow the spoor of Very Serious People to the Fake Centrism's Iron Triangle.


Part 1: You read the New York Times. You do it for any number of reasons, but nesting comfortably and predictably on its editorial page (which is so much more sophisticated and thoughtful than your own, local yahoo shoutycracker page) you find Very Reasonable Conservatives like Mr. David Brooks talking just like you talk and thinking like just you think. Not only is he always so polite and respectful, but (just like you!) he is very uncomfortable with Conservatives like your neighbors while at the same time agreeing that hippies are pretty terrible!


Part 2: You watch the Sunday Morning interview shows where you are repeatedly reassured that the Extremes on Both Sides of any given issue are equally wrong. Usually the Right Extreme is clearly identified while the Left Extreme is merely stipulated to exist, but you know you can trust this framing because it is often proffered (either in-person or in writing) by that very nice Mr. Brooks you already know and trust from the New York Times. Sure, it may look as if the Right is almost always heavily over-represented, but any lingering suspicions you might have about the Left being misrepresented are allayed by the presence of, say, Harold Ford, Jr. or Tom Friedman laughing it up with the other panelists and generally getting along very pleasantly.


Like lodge brothers almost.


Part 3: You listen to NPR and watch The News Hour on PBS. And right there, waiting for you every Friday on the radio and on the teevee, is that very nice Mr. Brooks you already know and trust from the New York Times...and from the Sunday Morning interview shows. He and one of the Reasonable Liberals with whom he gets along so well laugh and joke and cruise through the weeks' news, reassuring you for the third time that there is no crisis so grave that this country cannot overcome it if ONLY the Extremes on Both Sides would just shut up, get out of the way, and let Serious People do their job.


And in this way -- through the repetition of the same Big Lie multiple elite institutions the veracity of Fake Centrism claim that "Both Sides are Wrong" is gently reinforced in the mind of Mr. or Ms. or Miss Independent.


Week after week.


Year after year.


Or, as Lewis Carroll wrote in "The Hunting of the Snark":

"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.




"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true."

Which bring us back to Ms. Hall-Jamieson.


Straight-up Conservative lies from  Birtherism to "Obama apologizes for America" to "Reagan never raised taxes" to the Sekrit Plot to Steal Mah Gunz! survive and prosper because they have no moving parts.  They are simply false on their face, which means that they depend solely on the credulous bigotry of the Pig People for their efficacy, and that no amount of fact-bombing is ever going to shake the faith of the true believers in the infinite conspiratorial evil of the Dirty Hippies.

On the other hand, the Big Lie of Centrism does have moving parts. Centrism relies on Lies of Comparison -- setting Extreme Liberal position X and Extreme Conservative position Y against each other and declaring them both equally and oppositely false -- and that is its Achilles' Heel. It is weak point at which bullshit, Centrist vanity projects like "The Rise of the Center" and "No Labels" come apart at the seams. It is the weak point where scrappers like Paul Krugman have concentrated much of their firepower.

And it is the weak point at which I have concentrate the bulk of my energies these last seven years, because unlike straight-up Conservative lie delivery systems like Hate Radio which react to any attempt at rebuttal by automatically dismissing contrary evidence as proof of the larger media conspiracy of the evil of the Dirty Hippies, the Big Lie of Centrism depends on appearing Serious and Reasonable which is why it is vulnerable at any point where new information can be pushed upward into the feedback loop.

Which bring us -- really and truly this time -- back to Ms. Hall-Jamieson and her appearance this week on NPR's "Talk of the Nation".

Because small interludes like Mr. Conan's reaction to "Bob" represent those rare moment where you can see straight through all Centrism's bullshit about reasonableness and spot its enforcers aggressively patrolling the border, baring their teeth and batting down any attempt by anyone to challenge any of Centrism's most sanctified Lies of Comparison.   


It is why, no matter how many thousands of serious, fact-based challenges to David Brooks' Centrist bullshit may pile up in the blogosphere or in his own comment section every week, every one of them is uniformly ignored by America's Newspaper of Record. 


 It is why real Liberals are virtually never allowed within shouting distance of any of the Sunday morning gasbag shows. 


 And it is why Neal Conan has a job at NPR.