Cult of centrism, or rightwing media?
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")
Digby and I have both been emphasizing Krugman's point lately about the media's cult of centrism, the relativistic postmodern approach to truth that sees everything as mere "perspective" rather than factual reality.
But on second thought, that analysis may merit some questioning. Consider the following thought experiment:
Suppose there were a bill coming up to fund, say, money for troop pay. Or the existence of the base in Guantanamo. Or Pentagon black ops budgets for monitoring potential nuclear terrorism threats. Fairly essential things Republicans care about.
Suppose that bill came up fairly regularly and passed completely without incident under GOP and Democratic administrations alike.
Now suppose Democrats controlled just the Senate, but a Republican who won election in a landslide held the White House and the Speaker's gavel lay in GOP hands as well.
Now suppose Senate Democrats decided that they simply weren't going to allow the troops to be paid at all unless we returned to Reagan-era 50% marginal tax rates on the wealthy and a 35% capital gains tax rate. Suppose that the Republican President and the Speaker totally capitulated on the essence of these demands (I know, stop laughing for just a moment to read on) but said that they would only accept a 40% marginal rate and 25% capital gains rate. Suppose the Republican President put on the table wholly unrelated closures of other corporate tax loopholes and an end of oil drilling subsidies as a cherry on top in a "Grand Bargain", but only in exchange for some fairly minor and inconsequential cuts to discretionary spending that most reasonable people on both sides felt to be wasteful.
Now suppose that Senate Democrats rejected that deal, threatening to withhold pay for the troops/Guantanamo/nuclear terrorism funding on general principle, arguing that their not getting the money at all might be a good thing, because starving the beast might force the Republican President to defund the military-industrial complex entirely. Suppose Congress could not come to a deal as the Democratic Senate remained intransigent on this point, and the Senate Majority Leader's job were under fire as Democrats excoriated him for also daring to allow funding for troop body armor in the bill because after all, what do they need that for? (And yes, stop laughing again at the fact that in the real world, it's Democrats who work to give the troops body armor and Republicans who vote against it.)
How would the modern media treat that scenario? Would it be a postmodern "both sides do it" mishmash of weary journalistic malaise?
Of course not. Every "liberal" columnist from Joe Klein to Dana Milbank would spend every waking moment tut tutting the crazy, unreasonable Democrats. Regular newspaper articles would breathlessly characterize Democratic actions as hostage-taking, replete with stories about the danger being placed on America and how much regular folks in the heartland hate those awful Democrats. And the howling on the Right? Well, take the regular over-the-top screaming, and amplify the Drudge flashers and Fox News chyrons by tenfold. You would almost almost certainly see physical violence against Democratic legislators.
The point of this exercise, of course, is that we don't really have a cult of centrism in the media. We just have a right wing media. Period.
Some of it is right wing by choice. The rest of it is scared into the position by pressure from conservative advocacy groups, or fear of losing their jobs. But we should really call it what it is. "Cult of centrism" really doesn't do justice to what has happened to media in this country.