State of Change

Glenn Beck Faces Down General Tso's Sleeper Cells

By Leslie Savan

On Wednesday, Fox News talk-show host Glenn Beck and one of his guests, Nehru-jacketed, retired Marine colonel William V. Cowan, were chatting about how inadequately Semper Fi Obama's response has been to the pirates off the Somali coast. Suddenly the conversation veered into the (apparently real) news that Russian and Chinese spies have hacked into the U.S. electrical grid--Commies in the wall sockets! Perhaps encouraged by how Beck seemed to appreciate his cheerful, neo-Paranoid Style, Cowan (a Fox military analyst, who FNC calls an "internationally acknowledged expert" in terrorism and military special ops) shared some related intel: "every Chinese restaurant out there across the United States, every one is a sleeper cell."

Oh-kay. Beck--who's been trying to fend off charges that he encouraged alleged cop-killer Richard Poplawski with crazy talk about FEMA concentration camps and Obama coming to take your guns--laughed nervously and cut off the Strangelovian Cowan.

However, questions remain: Does this mean there'll be no Chinese tea at the April 15, anti-tax Tea Parties that Fox has been heavily promoting? (Beck will be "reporting" live from...the Alamo.) What does this episode tell us about the quality of the "experts" Beck invites on his show? Exactly how did a conservative blogger know ahead of time that "the liberal left" will try to "destroy" Beck over Cowan's comment? Hmmm.

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April 9, 2009

Beware Media Bearing Gift-gates

By Leslie Savan

The real question about how Barack and Michelle Obama are being received on their Rolling-G-20-Summit/Euro-Tour '09 has nothing to do with how the Europeans treat them, but all about the American mainstream media itself: What infinitesimal nit will they find to pick about the new president's conduct abroad that can be blown up into a two- to three-day pseudo-international incident?

You know the sort of story I mean. We're not talking about serious systemic issues, such as the different perspective a country like Germany (with universal health care, generous unemployment benefits, and a highly unionized work force) might have on the need for a global stimulus when compared to the U.S., where the party Obama just turned out of office has proposed effectively privatizing Medicare. That would be too much like journalism, and way too MEGO.

We're looking here for a truly small-bore, utterly irrelevant, content-free distraction, like the ones the MSM entertained us with during March Meme Madness. Stories like Obama laughs too much, teleprompters too much, or simply does too much.

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April 2, 2009

Zombie Media Still Fighting the Last Gotcha War

By Leslie Savan

Of all the bad questions at Tuesday's primetime press conference (and you can vote for your favorite here), the one that best illuminates why the White House press corps asks such bad questions came from a Washington Times reporter, who wondered how much President Obama has "personally wrestled with the morality" of funding stem-cell research.

It's a legit question. But given the range of overwhelming crises our country faces right now, it really seemed to be fighting the last gotcha war: What the Wash Times actually wanted to know was whether Obama agonizes over this issue as much as George W. Bush (with a notable lack of believability) claimed to do.

Like, who cares? Clearly, the stem cells from which this press corps was hatched have been genetically engineered to thrive only at Dubya's level, and therefore the media isn't advanced enough yet to ask questions that don't elicit pompous moralizing or misdirect the public interest--much less to challenge the intellect and resolve of a sitting president.

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March 25, 2009

Obama on Leno: Nero, Zero, or Hero?

By Leslie Savan

Oh, it's wonderful when conservatives and their media begin to tsk-tsk over what's "appropriate" behavior for President Obama. "He flies off to Los Angeles tonight to appear on the Jay Leno show," Senator John Kyl sniffed, as if Obama were running off to drown his troubles at the local bar. "He even has time to fill out his NCAA basketball bracket," Senator Lamar Alexander complained, making me wonder, Would they disapprove if they found out that on occasion Obama takes a 20-minute bath instead of a five-minute shower?

But no one does pretend puritanical as well as the New York Post, whose post-Tonight Show front page is headlined: "No Joke! O yuks it up on Leno as economy burns."

To assert that the president of United States shouldn't talk directly to the people in times of crisis is positively dippy. Not only do the tsk-tskers want him to look derelict in his duty, they want him surrounded and at bay, like Manuel Noriega: Ideally they'd keep Obama caged in the Beltway bubble, where they can torture him by blasting at high decibels the sound of their own voices, and no others, 'round the clock.

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March 20, 2009

Populism Is Not Fungible

By Leslie Savan

At first the political import of the AIG bonus scandal looked scary indeed, especially if you were watching the cable hysteria: President Obama was allowing the same moneymen who had driven the world economy off a cliff skip away with million-dollar bonuses after he'd already committed billions in taxpayer funds to prop up their rotten Ponzi scheme of a company. At last, a prairie fire of populist rage that would soon scorch the White House! Republicans redux!

But really: The idea that populist rage aimed at corporate greed is in any way a threat to Barack Obama is one of the funniest memes the mainstream media has promoted since the notion that he was a "socialist" or "palling around with terrorists," or that old knee-slapper that he "isn't black enough," all of which talk-show bloviators once rated as "serious problems."

Let's get a grip, and focus on the real politics of the AIG scandal and not the "optics," as the pundits love to call them. Today you have politicians of all stripes--from Barney Frank and Andrew Cuomo to Mike Pence and Chuck (Seppuku-san) Grassley--trying to commandeer grassroots anger over the exhorbitant bonuses white men at the top of American business have been paying themselves. That is, we have left, right, and center trying to outdo one another in opposing the fundamental inequities of the capitalist system.

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March 19, 2009

Stewart Asks Cramer: "Where's the D'Oh!"

By Leslie Savan

Whew! Stewart vs. Cramer--which might as well have been called journalism vs. the kind of bullroar that got us into this mess--was the most riveting TV since the Inauguration. Here's Part I; you can click through to see Part II and III:

Cramer was sitting like a Catholic schoolboy in trouble with the head nun--hoping that by sitting with superstraight posture, hands always visible on the desk, and mea culpa-ing her to death he'd get the lecture over with sooner. He was all animal fear, his every gulp and bead of sweat palpable through the screen: I felt I was inside his skin, my stomach turning over too, as if the experience was bringing us all down to the bottom of the human condition.

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March 13, 2009

CNBC's Credit and Fault Swaps

By Leslie Savan

Just like the politicians and the bankers, the financial news media has been playing a game of musical chairs for two decades, and the music just stopped: Every talking head who still has a job is terrified of becoming the face of the new Depression by getting tagged as the glibbest enabler of this deregulatory disaster. And deep down they know they're guilty, just as all the news division haircuts know they cheered as Bush plunged us recklessly into Iraq.

And that's why Jon Stewart's Daily Show critique of CNBC has shot through the Internet like a hamster video, and why it keeps generating sequels, like this from Tuesday morning, which in turn sparked Stewart's reply that night:

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March 12, 2009

Please Don't Squeeze the Old-Growth Forests

By Leslie Savan

Of all Charmin's wiping-challenged bear ads, this one stands out. It's less the stray pieces of wet tissue that have somehow become stuck across two-feet of bear butt than the strategically placed football--did Charmin's superwholesome parent company Procter & Gamble really animate a poop?

For several post-Mr. Whipple years now, Charmin ads have been demonstrating ever more detailed aspects of swabbing one's privates. Does paper migrate from the anus? They have the spot above or this slightly less graphic one for you. Are you torn between your desire for an extra strong or an extra soft tissue? They offer this ad (coming out before the election, it not so subtly suggests that red-staters crave strong and blue-staters, well, you know, they're soft on everything).

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March 2, 2009

Morning Yo-Yo

By Leslie Savan

It's early in the morning of America's economic collapse, and Joe Scarborough is trying to get to the bottom of it all by shouting, once again and several times over, "Erin Burnett, international superstar!"

Now that's a stimulus package--woogah-woogah, hubba-hubba-hubba!

Forget O'Reilly, Hannity, or even Fox and Friends. MSNBC's Morning Joe is the most entertaining expression of how far behind the curve the Obama election has left the mainstream media, whose cable personalities multiplied like toadstools in the damp darkness of the Bush presidency. Unable to adjust to the new sunlit era or match the president's suave wonkiness, they crawl back to what's familiar.

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February 17, 2009

Only One Super Bowl Ad Rolls Back the TARP

By Leslie Savan

Sure, a few Super Bowl ads gingerly touched on our recession, offering Cash4Gold here and a free Grand Slam breakfast at Denny's there. But only one spot, taking aim at the elephants in the boardroom, came anywhere close to explaining the matter.

These people may be buzzed, but didn't they just raise the possibility of cutting back on marketing and killing bonuses, and then, with Bank of America finesse, pointedly ignore the idea?

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February 2, 2009