Anyone who watches the entire segment will see that there wasn’t anything loaded about Obama’s laughter. (Most commentators ultimately admitted as much.) And no one in his or her right mind would think, as the administration rolled out its bank rescue plan yesterday, that Obama was making light of the economy, or, really, any aspect of his job—from bailing out the auto industry to talking up the plan for the newly dubbed legacy assets to assuaging public opinion of the beleaguered Geithner. And that’s precisely what makes the spotlight on Obama’s laughter so frustrating. It may have been a politically louche moment, but no one actually thinks it’s consequential. The discrepancy between the headlines and the stories—“punch drunk”-heavy on top, more substantive down below—shows us as much.
And yet, keeping in line with the let’s-make-something-out-of-nothing state of mind, the NYT, prepping its readers for Obama’s primetime press conference tonight, asks, “Will he make any gaffes?” The laughter wasn’t a gaffe. But yes, that’s the way to ramp up for tomorrow’s story. Maybe he’ll even flash his pearly whites.
Funny, I do not EVER recall Steve Krofts or any other interrogator interviewing the Chimp who actually called the drooling, gibbering moron on a single thing he said, a single blatant lie he told, a single lame joke.
Somehow, the game has become presidential gotcha-ism, at its worst.
This was predictable (in the corporate state, corporate media are the state media, and all that). It's just that you'd think they'd try a little harder to disguise it...
#1 Posted by Woody, CJR on Tue 24 Mar 2009 at 05:44 PM
The problem is that fleeting rises and falls in this or that politician's or party's appeal have come to be seen as highly important events worthy of displacing most other stories. With that mindset, it makes perfect sense to focus on a Presidential "gaffe" that everyone agrees is meaningless, but nevertheless might hurt his image.
Many people, not only in the media, seem to have forgotten that politicians have actual powers. No amount of goofs and gaffes, no matter how embarrassing, will keep Obama from being the most powerful man in the world until 2013 and perhaps longer. What government officials do with their powers matters far more than how much the public likes them.
#2 Posted by D. B., CJR on Tue 24 Mar 2009 at 06:25 PM
Jay Rosen explains the underlying agenda behind this latest idiocy from the political press, the Fluff Reporters:
The more the administration ditches the self-obsessed clownish dimwits of the White House Press Corps, the better. The so-called "laughter" and the non-gaffe about his bowling scaore are ginned up as idle entertainment and Drudge linik-whoring by the clownish press, much like Cramer and Santelli, only in politics and not business. They are no less deserving of the pitchforks and tumbrils.
#3 Posted by Tom, CJR on Tue 24 Mar 2009 at 07:53 PM
These rocket scientists aka pundits also wonder why subscriptions are dropping and 18- to 24-year-olds watch Jon Stewart instead. I'd like to think the effects of their analysis are as irrelevant as the content.
#4 Posted by Ann, CJR on Tue 31 Mar 2009 at 06:13 PM