All You Need Is Love

Every now and then I read a piece and ask myself why would someone write something so silly?  For example, Michael Tomasky's column in The Daily Beast on the 60 Minutes interview with President Obama and Hillary Clinton.

The interview was sort of embarrassing.  Two of the most powerful people in the country, involved in numerous controversial policies, and all Steve Kroft could do was lob softballs. And what's Tomasky's take?

It was softbally, and Steve Kroft’s one real question—to Clinton, about whether she felt any guilt or remorse over Benghazi—she totally didn’t answer. But here, conservatives, is what you are missing and what you need to reckon with. Americans—except you—like these two people. Most Americans look at the pair of them—this black man who is still remote in some ways and this so-familiar woman who is now aging before us and allowing herself to look just a little frumpy—and feel reassured. Most Americans are cheering for them, and hence, most Americans probably wanted a softball interview. We have thus passed an important portal in American politics: Democrats are now the regular guys. Conservatives are the weirdos.

Bizarre for so many reasons.

First, why is he addressing himself to conservatives?  Any American should have been embarrassed that 60 Minutes was laying down on the job.

Second, just how popular are they? According to Gallup, Obama's popularity is in the low 50s, lower than traditional for a President starting his second term--certainly no more popular than Bush was at a similar point.  As for Hillary, perhaps she's popular because she's mostly been out of sight for the past four years and has gotten the kid gloves treatment from the media.  She wasn't so popular in 2008 when Obama was attacking her.

Third, why would anyone, much less a journalist, claim how popular you are should effect how you're treated by the media?  It's the job of reporters to ask tough questions, not smile in admiration at our wonderful leaders.

Fourth, "Democrats are now the regular guys"?!  The media have been painting Democrats as the "regular guys" and Republicans as "weirdos" for quite a while now, no matter which side the voters seem to prefer.

Tomasky goes on to teach Kroft what real ass-kissing looks like.  Here are some selections, and let me remind you, this is not a parody:

...they were both wholly believable and ingenuous when they were talking about their own political relationship. When Obama said, in reference to repairing the ruptures of 2008, “I think it was harder for the staffs, which is understandable, because, you know, they get invested in this stuff in ways that I think the candidates maybe don’t,” I thought: that rings really true. And I’d bet most Americans did too.

Obama and Clinton talked, in other words, like mature adults, and they sold it as genuine because it was genuine. And I’d contend that it made most people watching feel something like: Well, these are very smart and self-assured people, and they’re mostly pretty likable, too, and agree or disagree with this or that decision they make or action they take, I feel like my country is in pretty good hands with them.

[....] Kroft and his network were actually in touch here with the pulse of the country, which wants Obama to succeed and Hillary to go have a nice long rest (and, maybe, get ready for 2016).

But even Tomasky gets tired of praising Democrats and goes back to what he likes best, bashing Republicans.

[Obama and Clinton are] the real Americans now. It’s not that they have changed, but that America has. The measures for real Americanism are no longer clearing brush, hunting elk, hopping on top of various animals, dropping one’s g’s (in speech, I mean), and speaking in intentionally ungrammatical apothegmatic frontier “wisdom.”

[....] The Republicans? It’s not just the extreme ideology. Of course it’s that, but it’s more. The whole shtick is old.

[....] Paul Ryan [...] said: "[....]The way I see it, our defeat is all the more reason to lay out our vision with even more specifics—and with a broader appeal.” What he’s saying there, and throughout the speech, is that the GOP isn’t going to change its stripes a bit. “Broader appeal” means I suppose better (read: more dishonest) packaging for a bunch of reactionary policies that Americans don’t want.

Imagine if the entire mainstream media were made up of people like Tomasky.