WaPo reporter and “close friend” of Von Drehle defends Beck profile; attacks me
September 18, 2009 12:06 pm ET – by Jamison Foser
Washington Post reporter Joel Achenbach leaps to his “close friend” David Von Drehle’s defense, calling my criticism of Von Drehle’s Glenn Beck profile “shrill,” and accuses me of criticizing the article “because one of the targets of Dave’s story is Media Matters itself. Which Foser doesn’t bother to note.”
Let’s take that part first: Ludicrous. Von Drehle makes only passing mention of Media Matters; here it is:
“[T]here are ancillary industries feeding on the success of Beck and others like him. Both left- and right-wing not-for-profit groups operate as self-anointed media watchdogs, and one of the largest of these — the liberal group Media Matters for America — has a multimillion-dollar budget. Staff members monitor Beck’s every public utterance, poised to cherry-pick the most inflammatory sentences. (Conservative outfits do the same for the likes of MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann.) These nuggets are used in turn to rev up donations to political parties and drive ratings for the endless rounds of talking-head shows.”
Really? That’s what led Achenbach to conclude that “one of the targets of Dave’s story is Media Matters,” and that I was motivated by a desire for revenge? Seems pretty weak.
Achenbach’s defense of his “close pal” David Von Drehle, and his attack on me, curiously avoids any discussion whatsoever of my central point: That Von Drehle failed to indicate a single falsehood Beck has ever told. That Von Drehle portrayed “liberal” estimates of the size of last week’s anti-Obama rally as no more valid than estimates from conservatives — estimates of 1 to 2 million people. Despite the fact that there clearly were not a million people at the rally. And despite the fact that the “liberal” estimates in fact came from news organizations and the DC fire department.
Since Achenbach ducked all that, here are some simple questions for him:
Paul Krguman compares his experience at the Post Office to that at FedEx and UPS:
Art Laffer (why is he, of all people, on my TV?) asks what it will be like when the government runs Medicare and Medicaid.
But I’d raise a further question: he warns that when the government takes over these, um, government programs, they’ll be like the Post Office and the DMV. Why, exactly, are these public functions unquestioned bywords for “something bad”?
Maybe I’m living a sheltered life here in central New Jersey, but I don’t find the Post Office a terrible experience — no worse than Fedex or UPS. (Full disclosure: I worked as a temp mailman when in college.) And nobody likes going to the DMV, but the one on Rt. 1 I go to always seems fairly well managed.
Maybe things are different in New Jersey, but my couple of experiences at the Post Office since moving to Brooklyn a few months ago have been really awful. The first time I went, to mail out my tax forms on April 15th, I had to stand in line for the better part of 20 minutes to buy a couple of stamps. The second time, when I had to mail out some forms for a passport renewal, the clerk “serving” me decided literally without warning or apology half-way through processing my forms that it was time for her break; it took a good 15 minutes, with most of my personal documents slid conspicuously under her window, before someone came to relieve her. The third time, when I had to send some corporate documents to Albany for my consulting business, things were going smoothly enough — until I actually had to fill out the shipping receipt, and discovered that there were literally no working pens available in the entire building. I had to go across the street and buy one.
There’s probably only one customer service experience that is routinely as bad as the Post Office: FedEx Kinko’s.
The last time I went to FedEx Kinko’s, the black & white printer was broken, the fax machine was broken, and the “high-speed” Internet connection — which I was being charged for by the minute — was about as fast as a dial-up line in Ulan Bator. And then I had to stand in line for 15 minutes to pay an arm and a leg for the privilege of having my time wasted. The clerks at the Court Street Kinko’s are actually quite sweet — but the location is chronically understaffed and undermaintained on one of the busier commercial thoroughfares in the Five Boroughs. There are also the simple things that FedEx Kinko’s doesn’t get right: why do I have to fill out shipping forms by hand — invariably transposing the ZIP+4 or something and having to start over again — instead of by computer, when the clerk has to key in everything I’ve written down anyway? This is the nineties 21st Century, damnit. FedEx does an admirable job of delivering packages — but the retail experience is a real black eye for the company.
And apparently, I’m not alone in these experiences. Yelp.com has compiled 237 ratings for a total of 67 distinct USPS locations throughout the New York City area. The average rating, on a scale of 1 to 5, is a 2.29. As Yelp raters tend to be fairly generous with most things, this is really bad. But the ratings for FedEx Kinko’s are even worse: an average rating of 2.07 (n=78). The UPS Store, at least, gets somewhat more decent marks (an avergae rating of 2.70), which matches my experiences, although UPS has a somewhat hipper brand and Yelp is notorious for having a pro-hipster bias.
All kidding aside, I do think the Post Office creates some small, residual level of disdain for the idea of government-run services. The level of funding seems manifestly suboptimal and probably ought to be increased. But if every private-sector business were run as badly as FedEx Kinko’s, we’d all be frickin’ Communists in no time.
HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: Thanks, John. It’s one of the oldest rituals of democracy. Election officials getting an earful from the voters, but a handful of high decibel critics at a spate of town hall meeting on health care reform have turned out to be a magnet for the media. You know how it works. The meeting might be dull, 99 audience members might be civil, but one screamer draws the cameras. You have probably seen some of this footage constantly replayed on television and across the Web.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The cash for clunkers program is —
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You’re lying to me!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That’s right!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What are you waiting for?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don’t have sophisticated language. I recognize a liar when I see one.
CROWD: Just say no! Just say no! Just say no! Just say no!
LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS HOST: When they could no longer ignore the anti-Obama voters, Democrats began to dismiss them and demonize them as the hired guns of the insurance companies or Brooks Brothers protesters.
KEITH OLBERMANN, MSNBC: When Hamas does it or Hezbollah does it, it is called terrorism. Why should Republican lawmakers and the AstroTurf groups organizing on behalf of the health care industry be viewed any differently?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KURTZ: Now the press trying to unravel allegations that the Republicans have planted some of these protesters and countercharges that the Democrats are trying to discredit legitimate dissent.
Joining us now to talk about the coverage of President Obama’s health plan and whether he’s getting a bit overexposed on television, in New York, Mark Halperin, editor-at-large and senior political analyst for “TIME” magazine, and author of the blog “The Page.” S.E. Cupp, blogger and the co-author of “Why You’re Wrong About the Right.” And here in Washington, Ana Marie Cox, national correspondent for Air America Radio and a columnist for “Playboy” magazine.
Mark Halperin, are the media playing up the loudest and the angriest of these protesters to the point where it distorts what’s what’s going on at most of these town hall meetings?
HALPERIN: Yes, it distorts it and it’s also bad for America. I’m embarrassed about what’s going on as an American. I’m not an advocate for any position on the president’s proposals, but I think this is, Howie, something you have written about and seen for years, the lowest common denominator, people taking video that is meaningless.
Yes, there should be discussion. Dissent is fine. I don’t care why the protesters are showing up, but this is a horrible breakdown of our political culture and our media culture to allow people who are going in with the intent to disrupt to become the story. The biggest issue in the health care debate, things like, should there be a public plan, completely ignored by all media and crowded out the discussion by stunts and gimmicks, and the White House has exacerbated it by attacking back on the same style.
KURTZ: Ana Marie Cox, Mark Halperin says this is a breakdown in the media culture, but we couldn’t not cover these people, and they do have a right to be heard, don’t they?
COX: Right, they do. And I actually do not think it’s a breakdown of democracy. I think that it’s a wonderful expression of democracy. I’m not sure if they’re AstroTurfed or not myself. I think they probably aren’t, but I think that’s almost a worse sign for the Republican Party.
I think this is actually the death throes of a dying Republican Party, or at least in this forum, and the not sort of the start of something new.
KURTZ: S.E. Cupp, you have to admit, if you want to look at the media’s performance here, that the various outlets, and particularly television, are giving these critics ample air time.
These are times that try a progressive healthcare blogger’s soul. It shouldn’t be a surprise that a political establishment that looks at the fact that the Bush administration, led by Dick Cheney in every venal step, decided to start torturing people picked up in Afghanistan to amass false confessions about connections between bin Laden and Saddam so that they would have their “justification” for their war on choice, with nothing more than a yawn can report as straight across “news” that Sarah Palin thinks Obama is coming to kill her baby. But it still astounds that this is the new “normal.” Just unfathomable. And that’s what last week was.
The image that will be indelibly linked in my mind I saw in one of the reports on the Rachel Maddow show with video from a townhall meeting held by Rep. John Dingell, and referenced in gdunn’s diary. There’s a young, disabled woman (pictured in the diary), speaking to the group propped up by her crutches, trying to explain what she’s been through since her insurance company dropped her last year and her inability to get coverage now because of her “preexisting condition.” She’s trying to tell her story, and an older woman stands a few rows back from her and screams, her face distorted and ugly in it’s anger and ignorance and selfish extremism, “I shoudn’t have to pay for your health care.” And these are normal, patriotic, “concerned” citizens? The ones abusing disabled people, hanging people in effigy, destroying property, making death threats. (Oh, and also insurance and pharmaceutical industry shills and Republican operatives.) This is political discourse now, and Cokie Roberts says it’s the liberals’ fault. I guess she and Rahm Emanuel have that in common.
That’s the week we had.
Other stuff happened, too. The obscene amounts of money was in the news again. Hmmm, suppose there’s a link between the $1.4 million plus spent per day by industry trying to kill this and the townhall screamers?
Max Baucus set deadline number 578 for when he’d be done with his bill, September 15. Jon Kyl took his turn as the GOP concern troll to say that there’s no way. And to add to the bipartsan fun, Chuck Grassley, in an extreme display of Senate comity and decorum, used his colleague Ted Kennedy’s illness to lie about the proposed public option. So Democrats want to kill granny, Sarah Palin’s kid, and Ted Kennedy, for those of you keeping score at home.
Bipartisan negotiations in the Baucus committee seemingly continue unabated.
Billy Tauzin created a stir when he leaked a White House/Baucus deal with PhRMA that would have blocked proposals in the legislation to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion through price negotiations or rebates. Then it got confusing, with some Dem Senators saying that the White House told them there was no deal, while at the same time the White House was reaffirming it. The week ended with the White House backing out of a chunk of the deal, and with many Dems (those not named Baucus) with a bad taste in their mouths. The most disturbing aspect of this story is the extent to which the White House is using Baucus, knowing what we already know about what is going to be lacking in the Baucus plan: namely, a public option.
This week, the primary media story is likely to continue to be the townhalls, since they’ll make good copy. The behind the scenes story will be the fight for a real public option, and not some watered down co-op system. Stay tuned.
The New York Herald Sun 