concluding paragraphs from:
Harper’s September 2008
NOTEBOOK
Elegy for a Rubber Stamp
By Lewis H. Lapham
Many people loved Russert, and I don’t doubt that they had reason to do
so. I’m sure that most of what was said about him on camera was true:
that he was a devoted father, a devout Catholic, and a faithful friend,
generous in spirit and a joyful noise unto the Lord. I mean no
disrespect to his widow or to his son, but if I have no reason to doubt
his virtues as a man, neither do I have any reason to credit the miracle
of Russert as a journalist eager to speak truth to power. In his
professional as opposed to his personal character, his on-air persona
was that of an attentive and accommodating headwaiter, as helpless as
Charlie Rose in his infatuation with A-list celebrity, his modus
operandi the same one that pointed Rameau’s obliging nephew to the roast
pheasant and the coupe aux marrons in eighteenth-century Paris: “Butter
people up, good God, butter them up.”
With the butter Russert was a master craftsman, his specialty the mixing
of it with just the right drizzle of salt. The weekend videotapes,
presumably intended to display Russert at the top of his game,
deconstructed the recipe. To an important personage Russert asked one or
two faintly impertinent questions, usually about a subject of little or
no concern to anybody outside the rope lines around official Washington;
sometimes he discovered a contradiction between a recently issued press
release and one that was distributed by the same politician some months
or years previously. No matter with which spoon Russert stirred the
butter, the reply was of no interest to him, not worth his notice or
further comment. He had sprinkled his trademark salt, his work was done.
The important personage was free to choose from a menu offering three
forms of response— silence, spin, rancid lie. If silence, Russert moved
on to another topic; if spin, he nodded wisely; if rancid lie, he
swallowed it. The highlight reels for the most part show him in the act
of swallowing.
November 7, 1993: Question for President Bill Clinton, “Will you allow
North Korea to build a nuclear bomb?” A: “North Korea cannot be allowed
to build a nuclear bomb.”
February 25, 2001: Question for Senator John Kerry, “John Kerry, you
going to run for President in 2004?”
A. “I’m running for reelection in 2002.”
Q. “How about ’04?”
A. “I’m not making any decisions beyond ’02.”
April 13, 1997: Question for Louis Farrakhan, supreme minister of the
Nation of Islam, “Would you be willing to retract or apologize for some
of the things you said?”
A: “If I can defend every word that I speak and every word that I speak
is truth, then I have nothing to apologize for.”
February 8, 2004: Question for President George W. Bush, “In light of
not finding the weapons of mass destruction, do you believe the war in
Iraq is a war of choice or a war of necessity?”
A. “That’s an interesting question. Please elaborate on that a little
bit. A war of choice or a war of necessity? It’s a war of necessity.”
Having seen the original broadcast of the interview with President Bush,
I remember Russert’s attitude as that of a trend-setting restaurateur
anxious to please his best customer. The President delivered himself of
his customary bombast (“Saddam Hussein was dangerous, and I’m not gonna
leave him in power and trust a madman. . . . A free Iraq will change the
world. It’s historic times”); Russert was content to favor the harangue
with polite suspensions of disbelief.
The attitude doesn’t lead to the digging up of much news that might be
of interest to the American people, but it endeared Russert to his
patrons and clients. Madeleine Albright, secretary of state in the
Clinton Administration, expressed her gratitude to Olbermann: “Tim was
amazing because I can tell you that, as a public official, it was
really, first of all, a treat to get on the show.” Two days later, over
at NBC, Mary Matalin (former CBS and CNN talk-show host, former
counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney) seconded the motion,
attributing Russert’s profound knowledge of national politics to his
superb qualities as a rubber stamp. “He respected politicians,” Matalin
said. “He knew that they got blamed for everything, got credit for
nothing. He knew how much they meant. He never treated them with the
cynicism that attends some of these interviews. So they had a place to
be loved.” Remembering Russert on ABC, Sam Donaldson explained why too
much salt in the butter makes it harder to spread: “He [Russert]
understood as well as anyone, maybe better than almost anyone, that the
reason political reporters are there is not to speak truth to power . .
. but to make those who say we have the truth—politicians— explain it.”
Speaking truth to power doesn’t make successful Sunday-morning
television, leads to “jealousy, upsets, persecution,” doesn’t draw a
salary of $5 million a year. The notion that journalists were once in
the habit of doing so we borrow from the medium of print, from writers
in the tradition of Mark Twain, Upton Sinclair, H. L. Mencken, I. F.
Stone, Hunter Thompson, and Walter Karp, who assumed that what was once
known as “the press” received its accreditation as a fourth estate on
the theory that it represented the interests of the citizenry as opposed
to those of the government. Long ago in the days before journalists
became celebrities, their enterprise was reviled and poorly paid, and it
was understood by working newspapermen that the presence of more than
two people at their funeral could be taken as a sign that they had
disgraced the profession.
On television the voices of dissent can’t be counted upon to match the
studio drapes or serve as tasteful leadins to the advertisements for
Pantene Pro-V and the U.S. Marine Corps. What we now know as the “news
media” serve at the pleasure of the corporate sponsor, their purpose not
to tell truth to the powerful but to transmit lies to the powerless.
Like Russert, who served his apprenticeship as an aide-de-camp to the
late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, most of the prominent figures in
the Washington press corps (among them George Stephanopoulos, Bob
Woodward, and Karl Rove) began their careers as bagmen in the employ of
a dissembling politician or a corrupt legislature. Regarding themselves
as de facto members of government, enabling and codependent, their point
of view is that of the country’s landlords, their practice equivalent to
what is known among Wall Street stock-market touts as “securitizing the
junk.” When requesting explanations from secretaries of defense or
congressional committee chairmen, they do so with the understanding that
any explanation will do. Explain to us, my captain, why the United
States must go to war in Iraq, and we will relay the message to the
American people in words of one or two syllables. Instruct us, Mr.
Chairman, in the reasons why K-Street lobbyists produce the paper that
Congress passes into law, and we will show that the reasons are healthy,
wealthy, and wise. Do not be frightened by our pretending to be
suspicious or scornful. Together with the television camera that sees
but doesn’t think, we’re here to watch, to fall in with your whims and
approve your injustices. Give us this day our daily bread, and we will
hide your vices in the rosebushes of salacious gossip and clothe your
crimes in the aura of inspirational anecdote.
I don’t doubt that Russert was as good at the game as anybody in
Washington, but why the five-star goodbye? Why the scattering of incense
for a journalist who so prided himself on being in the loop that
off-camera he assured his informed sources that nothing they said was on
the record? For a second-tier talkshow host, his audience a fraction of
the size of Rush Limbaugh’s or Howard Stern’s, whose stock in trade was
the deftly pulled punch? Why a requiem mass for a pet canary?
The production values were so far out of line with the object of their
affections that the memorial services collapsed into absurdity. Unless,
of course, the mistake was to think of the proceedings as somehow
Christian in character and intent, a variation on the singing of a Te
Deum in the National Cathedral instead of as something more along the
lines of Homer’s Greek heroes sacrificing a milk-white bull to Apollo.
Seen as pagan ritual, even the highlight reels made sense. The
Washington news media worship at the altars of divine celebrity, and
maybe they begin to suspect that despite the promise of their ceaseless
self-promotions they are not immortal, their market share hitting new
lows, their audiences drifting away to Comedy Central and the blogs. How
then to regain the favor of the god in whose image they believe
themselves created? With the offering of a precious gift, and what could
be more precious than “the ideal American journalist,” a “basic old
American patriot,” and the “friend to millions of people”? Before
leading the animal to slaughter, the old Greeks dusted its horns with gold.
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
