Category Archives: Media

The hypocrisy of professional liberals keeps growing

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By that I mean the left wing of our political class and their hangers-on in the media (a group which constitutes most of the MSM, which is why the Left is now preparing to try to destroy all other forms of media).  As the Anchoress sums it up,

Seems increasingly like all the “Fascist Bush” caterwauling was the usual fake, dishonest theater meant as a means to an end—the end being to destroy the hated “election stealer” and his legacy, and not much more.But you know, for someone who “did everything wrong,” his policies suddenly seem wise and right to some surprising people. . . .So, the FISA stays, Gitmo (despite all the righteous-sounding rhetoric) is not so bad, after all. Terrorist-suspected detainees do not enjoy constitutional rights, after all. Patriot Act, stays. Whether succeeding presidents will abuse the powers Bush put in place to protect us is rather less a question than a surety. Not an “if” but a “when.” And that is troubling, oh yes.

Read the whole thing; as usual, she has a lot of links to some very interesting things.  The interesting thing to me about all this is that the hypocrisy she decries is, as I said in the title, that of professional liberals—by which I do not mean liberals who are professionals, but rather people who earn their money by being liberal and representing liberal positions in some way.  What we’re seeing here on the part of those folks is the betrayal of a lot of liberal positions and a lot of liberal beliefs—not all, by any means, but a fair number of them—and all the strongly-worded unequivocal promises Barack Obama offered to go with them.Now, from my point of view, there are real benefits to that.  One, as a foreign-policy realist, I believe that our country will be the safer for it; the chances of a nightmare scenario are much lower than they would be had President Obama actually kept the promises made by Candidate Obama.  Two, this will help (and indeed, seems to be already helping) rehabilitate President Bush, because it is in effect an admission by many of his loudest critics that they were wrong; not just for history but even in this era, folks are unlikely to be able to argue with any credibility that President Bush was bad for doing things that President Obama was good for doing.The interesting question to me in all this is, will the vast majority of American liberals sell out on this the way that the vast majority of American conservatives sold out on other issues during the last eight years?  Doug Hagler has argued repeatedly in comments on this blog that there effectively is no conservative party in our economic policy; he’s been absolutely right about that because the conservative core of the GOP essentially sold out those issues (and others) in order to support the president on the GWOT and judicial nominees.  The result, ultimately, was electoral catastrophe for the party.  Some folks are now arguing that conservative Republicans should have gone into opposition years ago in order to preserve their own integrity and avoid being lumped in with the GOP Establishment types who were setting so much of the government’s policy (and doing so quite poorly).It is, of course, too early to argue that liberals in this country should do the same with respect to the Obama administration; I’m not even sure there’s a good case that conservatives should have done so, though I agree that at the very least, there should have been some strong conservative challenges to some of the Bush administration’s policies.  It’s too early to predict whether blind adherence by the Left to the Obama administration will end as badly as the Right’s blind adherence to the Bush administration did.  But it isn’t too early to predict that if the liberal movement makes the same mistake in the coming years as the conservative movement did in the years just past, they will likely come to the end of this administration feeling the same way the conservative movement has been feeling:  like they’ve lost their soul.Remember, put not your trust in princes.  No matter how often you kiss them, they’re all still frogs at heart.

Marketing the gospel?

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There are some real disagreements in the church over the whole question of marketing and advertising.  On the one hand, you have the folks who are firm believers in marketing the church just like any other business, who are completely comfortable in talking about the church in terms of “product,” and “customers,” and “market share”; on the other, you have the skeptics and those who don’t believe the real work of the church is advanced by marketing.In a lot of ways, you can put me down with the skeptics; in particular, as Tyler Wigg-Stevenson recently articulated well in Christianity Today, I think there’s a real and significant theological danger to our understanding of the church in treating “church” as just another product to be marketed to consumers.  This is a road we go down at our peril.  On the other hand, though, we have the responsibility to communicate the gospel message—and in this day and age, with so many competing voices, if we don’t use the media for that purpose, we’ll probably find ourselves drowned out by all the noise.  In a sense, then, we have to use the tools of marketing and advertising just to make ourselves heard.The question is, then, how do we do that without allowing the medium to distort our message?  There are a lot of bright people thinking about that question these days, and I can’t claim to be an expert on the subject; but I recently ran across this post by a fellow named Seth Godin that I think sheds some light on this.  He’s writing about the Super Bowl ads, but I think this applies to the church, too; in particular, I think it helps us understand marketing in a way that’s actually constructive for the mission of the church.

Putting on a show is expensive, time-consuming and quite fun. And it rarely works. . . .Marketing is telling a story that sticks, that spreads and that changes the way people act. The story you tell is far more important than the way you tell it. Don’t worry so much about being cool, and worry a lot more about resonating your story with my worldview. If you don’t have a story, then a great show isn’t going to help much.(And yes, every successful organization has a story, even if they’ve never considered running an ad, during the Super Bowl or anywhere else.)

Certainly, the church does; we have the greatest story of all.  Telling that story, by whatever means are available, is what we’re supposed to be on about.

A thought or two in response to Culture11

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There’s been a fair bit of chatter recently in certain conservative circles about the demise of the website Culture11. I have to be honest, I read this with a certain amount of bemusement, since (as Mencken might have put it) I must confess I never knew Lord Jones was alive to begin with; I’m not sure if that makes me un-hip, or what—but then, as a mainline pastor in small-town north-central Indiana, I’m probably un-hip by definition anyway, so I’m not too worried.In any case, I’ll confess that what strikes me about the conversation over the demise of this website is all the heavy breathing over the word “conservative.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one to get all bent out of shape over the use of labels; they’re useful shorthand. I’m perfectly content to be called a conservative, because in this context, that’s the label generally used for people who believe what I believe; if “liberal” still carried its classical meaning, I’d be perfectly content to be called that, too. It saves lengthy explanations, and that’s useful.
The conversation over Culture11, though, has a different quality, with lots of talk about the “alternative right,” what it means to be a “true conservative,” the deriding of “neocon echo chambers” and the like.  What I see here, besides infighting and back-stabbing, is a concern for the label as such, and an almost Jacobin impulse to ideological purity—manifested, since the guillotine isn’t actually an option, by loud declarations of excommunication of the heretics.  I see, quite frankly, a great deal of narrowness of perspective, marked by chronological snobbery (“that’s so 2001-04”) and snobbery of provenance (if it comes from Person X, or Group X—such as “the 2nd and 3rd generation neocons who rule the roost on FOX,” who are “bereft of all discernible signs of culture”—then it must be bad), and a vast ugliness of attitude.  There’s precious little grace shown here toward those with whom people disagree, only the attitude that “if you aren’t my definition of conservative, then you’re the enemy just like everyone else.”Now, granted, none of these folks know me from a hole in the ground (I think I commented on Joe Carter’s blog once or twice, but that’s about it), so my reaction to this spat doesn’t really matter any; but I know what I’d say to these folks if I could, or to anyone else who finds themselves arguing in this sort of spirit.Grow up. Search for truth as best you can, come to the best conclusions you can reach, and don’t worry about who else holds them, or whether they’re sufficiently contemporary, or any of that junk. That kind of thing is, to be blunt, juvenile.  Argue your positions with respect for those who disagree, and with openness to learn from them—and remember that politics and culture are pragmatic arenas, and that to get anything done, you have to build alliances and forge coalitions; hyper-puritanism leads finally to self-isolation, and the only door out of that trap is the abandonment of all the principles for which you fought in the first place.  Don’t pronounce anathemas on those who agree with you on most things—that, too, is juvenile; find common ground, and work with them.  Remember, you too are imperfect; that’s why we all need grace.

Political psychopathology

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That wasn’t the title of Peter Berkowitz’ recent column on “Bush hatred and Obama euphoria,” but it might have been.  (Although “pneumatopathology,” a pathology of the spirit, would really be more to the point.)  This is not speaking, of course, to opposition to one and support of the other, or even to intense dislike of the policies of one and strong approval for the policies of the other, but to something which goes beyond both.  As Berkowitz writes,

Bush hatred and Obama euphoria—which tend to reveal more about those who feel them than the men at which they are directed—are opposite sides of the same coin. Both represent the triumph of passion over reason. Both are intolerant of dissent. Those wallowing in Bush hatred and those reveling in Obama euphoria frequently regard those who do not share their passion as contemptible and beyond the reach of civilized discussion. Bush hatred and Obama euphoria typically coexist in the same soul. And it is disproportionately members of the intellectual and political class in whose souls they flourish.To be sure, democratic debate has always been a messy affair in which passion threatens to overwhelm reason. So long as citizens remain free and endowed with a diversity of interests and talents, it will remain so. . . .In surveying the impediments to bringing reason to bear in politics, it was not [Alexander] Hamilton’s aim to encourage despair over democracy’s prospects but to refine political expectations. “This circumstance, if duly attended to,” he counseled, “would furnish a lesson of moderation to those, who are ever so much persuaded of their being in the right, in any controversy.”As Hamilton would have supposed, the susceptibility of political judgment to corruption by interest and ambition is as operative in our time as it was in his. What has changed is that those who, by virtue of their education and professional training, would have once been the first to grasp Hamilton’s lesson of moderation are today the leading fomenters of immoderation.Bush hatred and Obama euphoria are particularly toxic because they thrive in and have been promoted by the news media, whose professional responsibility, it has long been thought, is to gather the facts and analyze their significance, and by the academy, whose scholarly training, it is commonly assumed, reflects an aptitude for and dedication to systematic study and impartial inquiry.From the avalanche of vehement and ignorant attacks on Bush v. Gore and the oft-made and oft-refuted allegation that the Bush administration lied about WMD in Iraq, to the remarkable lack of interest in Mr. Obama’s career in Illinois politics and the determined indifference to his wrongness about the surge, wide swaths of the media and the academy have concentrated on stoking passions rather than appealing to reason. . . .By assembling and maintaining faculties that think alike about politics and think alike that the university curriculum must instill correct political opinions, our universities cultivate intellectual conformity and discourage the exercise of reason in public life. . . . They infuse a certain progressive interpretation of our freedom and equality with sacred significance, zealously requiring not only outward obedience to its policy dictates but inner persuasion of the heart and mind. This transforms dissenters into apostates or heretics, and leaders into redeemers.

Kentucky as test case: the rhetoric/reality gap widens

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Of course, the storms that passed to the south of us last week didn’t only affect Kentucky, but that seems to have been the worst-hit state, so it stands in for the whole mess (just as Katrina hit Mississippi, too, but you didn’t hear nearly so much about that because unlike Louisiana, Mississippi had a competent [GOP] state government that managed the disaster effectively); and that mess, it seems to me, is important for understanding what we can expect from the Obama administration in times of crisis—and this is definitely a crisis, with over a million people suffering, and a number of deaths.  For those not used to dealing with ice storms, J. G. Thayer explains:

The problem with ice storms is magnitude. They cover vast areas, and the damage is systemic. They can wreak havoc on electric grids. Utilities can find themselves having to deal with thousands of broken lines and hundreds of broken poles. . . .It’s been about a week since Kentuckians got pounded, and they’re still digging out. Half a million people were still without power as of Saturday night, and almost half that many have no water. Emergency shelters are still open, and the governor has mobilized every single member of the National Guard to assist.

Now, by way of comparison, here’s Barack Obama in May 2007:

In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died—an entire town destroyed.

Actually, the death toll was 12, so then-Sen. Obama overstated the magnitude of the tornado’s damage somewhat, but that’s still a tragedy; he certainly didn’t apologize for using it as an opportunity to bash the Bush administration for sending the Kansas National Guard to Iraq:

Turns out that the National Guard in Kansas only had 40 percent of its equipment and they are having to slow down the recovery process in Kansas.

Now, here’s this from the Obama White House website:

President Obama will keep the broken promises made by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He and Vice President Biden will take steps to ensure that the federal government will never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur.President Obama swiftly responded to Hurricane Katrina. Citing the Bush Administration’s “unconscionable ineptitude” in responding to Hurricane Katrina, then-Senator Obama introduced legislation requiring disaster planners to take into account the specific needs of low-income hurricane victims.

OK, so the point appears to be clear:  the Bush administration didn’t care about disaster victims and didn’t do enough to respond to their needs.  Can we do better?  Yes We Can!  Which offers a not-so-implicit promise:  We will.In Kentucky, we have the first test of that promise, and so far, Barack Obama is failing.  Miserably.  Under the Bush administration, FEMA was savaged for its poor response to Hurricane Katrina; so, did they respond quickly and effectively to help those suffering from this storm system?  No.  Why?  Because it might be dangerous and difficult.  According to FEMA spokeswoman Mary Hudak, “We have plenty of folks ready to go, but there are some limitations with roads closed and icy conditions.”  I’m sorry, but that’s just pathetic.  For crying out loud, it’s a natural disaster—of course there will be limitations.  You find a way to overcome them, or you aren’t doing your job.  That’s the standard to which FEMA was rightly held in 2005, and it’s the standard to which they need to be held now.Also, the White House website trumpets the fact that in 2005, Sen. Obama visited the area hit by Katrina several times; has he bothered to go to Kentucky?  No, though he did find time to throw a Super Bowl party (with strips of $250 a pound Wagyu steak).  He did get around to declaring a federal disaster area—two days after the storm went through, and only after he’d been asked to do so by Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear.  Compare that to the way the Bush administration and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal handled Hurricane Gustav, essentially pre-positioning the federal response.  For all that the current administration brags that they “have learned the lessons of Katrina,” they clearly haven’t learned them as well as the Bush administration did.  Their rhetoric, as always, is fabulous; their follow-through, however—as is the emerging pattern—doesn’t measure up.And then, of course, there’s the press.  Have they been on top of Barack Obama on this the way they were on top of George W. Bush?  Well, as the Anchoress writes,

Americans are freezing and dying but I guess I’ve missed Anderson Cooper flying to the midwest and crying and Geraldo shouting, “where is the help?” I guess I’ve missed members of the press demonizing President Obama for eating steak and having cocktails with the press while people are freezing and without food.When a million people in flyover country are suffering, and 42 people have died, we don’t hear much about it. If this was New York, Washington, Boston, (or if the president had an R after his name) you’d see non-stop reports, and the press would be roundly criticizing FEMA’s absence, and the White House’s disregard. Right?

Right.  Or as John Hinderaker put it,

Is Barack Obama an insensitive lout who serves $100 per pound steaks to his elite guests and turns up the heat in the White House high enough to grow orchids while a million of his countrymen are without power and dozens are freezing to death? If not, why not?Solely because that is not the story the media want to tell. Many on the web—but no one in the mainstream media—have commented on the fact that Obama has not even pretended to do anything about the massive ice storm that has disabled much of Kentucky and neighboring states. It took days for FEMA to swing into action. Why is that not a scandal? Days went by before Kentucky’s governor called out the National Guard. Why did no one blame Obama for failing to call out the Guard sooner? Probably because he lacks the constitutional power to do so; but the Constitution hasn’t changed since 2005. . . .A basic reality of our time is that our mass media are monolithic, and what they choose to report (or not report) depends on what fits the narrative they are pushing on the public. If our reporters and editors wanted to portray Obama as clueless and out of touch with ordinary Americans, he has given them ample opportunity to do so. But because they are Democrats and he is a Democrat, they have no desire to tell that story. So “let them eat steak” is not a theme you’ll be seeing on the evening news.

J. G. Thayer sums it up well:

If George W. Bush’s handling of Katrina was really such an executive catastrophe, then President Obama’s indifference to the suffering of Kentuckians is unforgivable. But since no one is objecting this time around, what does that say about the motives behind the outrage over Katrina?

Memo to Kentucky from the MSM:  we don’t actually care about your suffering, we care about its political value.  Since it has no political value, never mind.The fact of the matter is, this won’t be President Obama’s Katrina moment (whether or not it should be), because the MSM won’t let it be, and it’s just not big enough or horrifying enough for those not directly affected by it.  But if he and his administration aren’t shaken up by their poor response to this storm and its aftermath, and if they don’t learn the necessary lessons from it, they will have one.  Something will come along from which their media lapdogs can’t save them, and whether they believe it possible now or not, the Obama administration will be broken just as the Bush administration was.  Right now, they’re sowing the wind; if they don’t make some major changes, the time will come when they reap the whirlwind.

The state of the media and the sphere of legitimate debate

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I read an interesting article yesterday on why the Internet weakens the authority of the press (thanks to a link from JMHawkins in the comments on this post on the probable closure of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and why that matters; the post deals specifically with sports coverage, but the points it makes are broader in application).  The article, posted by Jay Rosen on PressThink (which looks like it might be a blog for the blogroll), deals with the following diagram from the 1986 book The “Uncensored War”:  The Media and Vietnam by Daniel C. Hallin:Rosen describes these three spheres in this way:

1.) The sphere of legitimate debate is the one journalists recognize as real, normal, everyday terrain. They think of their work as taking place almost exclusively within this space. (It doesn’t, but they think so.) Hallin: “This is the region of electoral contests and legislative debates, of issues recognized as such by the major established actors of the American political process.” . . .2. ) The sphere of consensus is the “motherhood and apple pie” of politics, the things on which everyone is thought to agree. Propositions that are seen as uncontroversial to the point of boring, true to the point of self-evident, or so widely-held that they’re almost universal lie within this sphere. Here, Hallin writes, “journalists do not feel compelled either to present opposing views or to remain disinterested observers.” (Which means that anyone whose basic views lie outside the sphere of consensus will experience the press not just as biased but savagely so.)
Consensus in American politics begins, of course, with the United States Constitution, but it includes other propositions too, like “Lincoln was a great president,” and “it doesn’t matter where you come from, you can succeed in America.” Whereas journalists equate ideology with the clash of programs and parties in the debate sphere, academics know that the consensus or background sphere is almost pure ideology: the American creed.3.) In the sphere of deviance we find “political actors and views which journalists and the political mainstream of society reject as unworthy of being heard.” As in the sphere of consensus, neutrality isn’t the watchword here; journalists maintain order by either keeping the deviant out of the news entirely or identifying it within the news frame as unacceptable, radical, or just plain impossible. The press “plays the role of exposing, condemning, or excluding from the public agenda” the deviant view, says Hallin. It “marks out and defends the limits of acceptable political conduct.”Anyone whose views lie within the sphere of deviance—as defined by journalists—will experience the press as an opponent in the struggle for recognition.

Rosen analyzes the work of the press in terms of these categories, and makes some interesting points:

That journalists affirm and enforce the sphere of consensus, consign ideas and actors to the sphere of deviance, and decide when the shift is made from one to another— none of this is in their official job description. You won’t find it taught in J-school, either. It’s an intrinsic part of what they do, but not a natural part of how they think or talk about their job. Which means they often do it badly. Their “sphere placement” decisions can be arbitrary, automatic, inflected with fear, or excessively narrow-minded. Worse than that, these decisions are often invisible to the people making them, and so we cannot argue with those people. It’s like trying to complain to your kid’s teacher about the values the child is learning in school when the teacher insists that the school does not teach values. . . .Deciding what does and does not legitimately belong within the national debate is—no way around it—a political act. And yet a pervasive belief within the press is that journalists do not engage in such action, for to do so would be against their principles. As Len Downie, former editor of the Washington Post once said about why things make the front page, “We think it’s important informationally. We are not allowing ourselves to think politically.” I think he’s right. The press does not permit itself to think politically. But it does engage in political acts. Ergo, it is an unthinking actor, which is not good. When it is criticized for this it will reject the criticism out of hand, which is also not good.

This is, I think, essentially correct, and is a more helpful way of understanding media bias than simply using categories of left and right; among other things, it’s a more nuanced model, allowing room for what he refers to as “complications,” such as the point that these spheres cannot be understood monochromatically:

Within the sphere of legitimate debate there is some variance. Journalists behave differently if the issue is closer to the doughnut hole than they do when it is nearer the edge.

That said, to make use of this model it is necessary to map it to the political spectrum in this country; and that, of course, is where disputes arise.  Rosen is clearly a man of the left, and those who engage with him would seem to be even more so; for him, and for them, it seems to be axiomatic that the media’s understanding of the sphere of consensus is wrongly shifted in a conservative direction—and thus, to put the matter in standard terminology, that the media is biased against liberals.  From where I stand, that seems nonsensical.  But then, as Rosen might say, this isn’t really a dispute about the media at all:  it’s a political dispute based on the differing understandings of conservatives and liberals about what properly belongs in each sphere.  As such, it is in fact an inevitable political dispute over the most basic part of any political discussion:  the definition of the terms of that discussion.  This is why Markos Moulitsas (the Kos of Daily Kos, for anyone who might not know) said in his response to Rosen’s post,

The person who controls the [conventional wisdom] controls the terms of the debate. Modern activism is in large part a battle to capture that CW.

Of course, the ultimate purpose of Rosen’s article is to apply this analysis to the rise of the blogosphere, about which he makes an interesting point:

In the age of mass media, the press was able to define the sphere of legitimate debate with relative ease because the people on the receiving end were atomized—meaning they were connected “up” to Big Media but not across to each other. But today one of the biggest factors changing our world is the falling cost for like-minded people to locate each other, share information, trade impressions and realize their number. Among the first things they may do is establish that the “sphere of legitimate debate” as defined by journalists doesn’t match up with their own definition.

I think he’s right about that; but in truth, I think he doesn’t go far enough.  It’s not just that journalists’ definition of the sphere of legitimate debate doesn’t match up with “their” definition—it’s that there is no one “they,” and thus that we may wind up with the national conversation being atomized instead as different groups insist on their differing definitions of the various spheres.  We have people, for instance, working very hard to define “Sarah Palin is an idiot” into the sphere of consensus for purposes of political expedience, and others working very hard to move that statement into the sphere of deviance on the grounds that it’s objectively untrue.  The danger of this sort of conflict is that it may tend to replace legitimate debate over issues with arguments over whether issues are legitimate—a sort of meta-debate which is not likely to prove productive.  Disputes over definitions are, as I said, inevitable in any political conversation; but when they’re used as a proxy to avoid actually having the conversation, that’s unhealthy for democracy.  The great advantage of the political blogosphere is that bloggers, unlike journalists, are open about their partisanship, thus putting the inevitable biases in the foreground and allowing readers to take them into account.  The great disadvantage is that one can always use one’s partisanship as an excuse to treat one’s opponents solely on one’s own terms, rather than putting in the hard work to consider them on their own terms, and thus to give them credit for their good intentions.  Doing so may not be the best thing we can do for our own political agenda—but it is the best thing we can do for the health of our country.

He’d better get used to this

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Politico‘s Johnathan Martin and Carrie Budoff Brown report,

President Barack Obama made a surprise visit to the White House press corps Thursday night, but got agitated when he was faced with a substantive question.Asked how he could reconcile a strict ban on lobbyists in his administration with a deputy defense secretary nominee who lobbied for Raytheon, Obama interrupted with a knowing smile on his face.”Ahh, see,” he said, “I came down here to visit. See this is what happens. I can’t end up visiting with you guys and shaking hands if I’m going to get grilled every time I come down here.”Pressed further by the Politico reporter about his Pentagon nominee, William J. Lynn III, Obama turned more serious, putting his hand on the reporter’s shoulder and staring him in the eye.”Alright, come on” he said, with obvious irritation in his voice. “We will be having a press conference at which time you can feel free to [ask] questions. Right now, I just wanted to say hello and introduce myself to you guys—that’s all I was trying to do.”

Candidate Obama got away with treating the media like that; President Obama, though, is going to find that that sort of behavior isn’t going to wear well.  If he doesn’t want to make enemies of the media, he’d best get used to answering their questions.HT:  The Weekly Standard

Channeling Dubya, Part II

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Even Jon Stewart has noticed:
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As John Hinderaker sums it up, “I think a great many liberals are hanging on to the idea that they can trust Obama because he is a liar and doesn’t mean what he says. Time will tell whether that interpretation is correct or not. In the meantime, it doesn’t speak very well of either Obama or his supporters on the Left.”

Reality has entered the arena

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Juan Williams has an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal titled, “Judge Obama on Performance Alone,” calling on the media to start treating President Obama fairly instead of favorably.  Williams writes,

It is neither overweening emotion nor partisanship to see King’s moral universe bending toward justice in the act of the first non-white man taking the oath of the presidency. But now that this moment has arrived, there is a question: How shall we judge our new leader?If his presidency is to represent the full power of the idea that black Americans are just like everyone else—fully human and fully capable of intellect, courage and patriotism—then Barack Obama has to be subject to the same rough and tumble of political criticism experienced by his predecessors. To treat the first black president as if he is a fragile flower is certain to hobble him. It is also to waste a tremendous opportunity for improving race relations by doing away with stereotypes and seeing the potential in all Americans.Yet there is fear, especially among black people, that criticism of him or any of his failures might be twisted into evidence that people of color cannot effectively lead. That amounts to wasting time and energy reacting to hateful stereotypes. It also leads to treating all criticism of Mr. Obama, whether legitimate, wrong-headed or even mean-spirited, as racist.This is patronizing. Worse, it carries an implicit presumption of inferiority. Every American president must be held to the highest standard. No president of any color should be given a free pass for screw-ups, lies or failure to keep a promise. . . .To allow criticism of Mr. Obama only behind closed doors does no honor to the dreams and prayers of generations past: that race be put aside, and all people be judged honestly, openly, and on the basis of their performance.President Obama deserves no less.

Williams is right, and his point is a critically important one—even more important, perhaps, than he contends.  The sort of “affectionate if not fawning treatment from the American media” that Senator Obama received during the campaign was helpful to him as a candidate, because as a candidate he was insulated from the broader reality of the American situation.  He didn’t have to put anything on the line to deal with the challenges this country faces, nor did he have to accept responsibility for anything that went wrong, because he wasn’t in the arena where those challenges are actually faced—that fight belonged to President Bush, leaving Senator Obama free to critique from the stands without having to deal with it himself.  He had a different campaign to fight, one in which perception is what matters most, and the adulation of the media could affect that in meaningful ways to his benefit.Now, however, the situation is very different; it is now President Obama’s task to be “the man in the arena,” and he is no longer free merely to comment, criticize, and suggest—he must act, and his actions will have direct and significant consequences.  As Jennifer Rubin writes,

The economy will either improve or it won’t. President Obama will either control and focus the multiple voices in his administration and prevent too many cooks from spoiling the soup (or deadlocking the administration) or he won’t. And he will either continue George W. Bush’s record of post-9-11 U.S. safety and post-surge progress, or he won’t. Those events can only be spun so much. But unemployment rates, Dow Jones averages, al Qaeda terrorists and even Congress don’t much care whether he is the embodiment of the mainstream media’s hopes and dreams.In the end, what matters most is what the President does—and what results he achieves.

This is truth, and it means that from here on out, the media aren’t really going to be able to do Barack Obama any favors; they can do a lot to destroy a president, as they did with George W. Bush, by skewing their reporting toward bad news and spinning things in negative ways, but they can’t create good news that isn’t there, and they can’t keep bad news from getting out.  No matter how hard they try, “the MSM has to get around to reporting what everyone else knows to be the case sooner or later (as they did on Iraq).”  They can only delay that point—they cannot keep it from arriving.That being the case, the one real effect they could have by continuing to fawn over Barack Obama is to foster and feed a feeling of overconfidence in the White House—which couldn’t possibly be good for the president or his administration, and could quite possibly be fatal.  Far better for them to start asking the tough questions and digging out the hidden stories now, when there’s much less on the line.  I don’t expect them to attack President Obama the way they attacked President Bush—indeed, I’m glad they won’t; what they did to our 43rd president was dishonorable and repulsive, and I would not care to see it repeated to anyone—but they need to get back to being what they claim to be, “a proud, adversarial press speaking truth about a powerful politician and offering impartial accounts of his actions.”  As Juan Williams says, President Obama deserves no less.