Grudging Respect

I rarely have anything good to say about our mass commercial media. But I have to commend my former profession and vocation for one thing that seems to have been done well in this election - what we call in the classroom "second level" reporting. Reporters have gone beyond Level One - get the quote right, spell the names right. When Sarah Pitbull starts spewing racist vitrol, I have seen reporter after reporter check into the facts behind the claims - and state that they are simply wrong. Or when Obama makes a claim, someone checks to see if it's real or not.

Here's my take: Many of the people in newsroom management can remember being played by the first Bush administration with the "Willie Horton" ads. And ever since, the political relationship with the media has been an increasingly one-sided one. Politicians use the media to make claims that are about as substantial as ad copy, secure in the knowledge that few, if any, reporters will be given the time or resources to investigate those claims.

But there are a lot of working journalists right now, I suspect, who feel a deep, personal shame for every time they wrote the phrase "weapons of mass destruction," knowing that they didn't know if it was true, couldn't know if it was true, knowing only that they were being used as cheerleaders to lead the nation to a war that was laughable in its premise from day one. And those same journalists also knew that if Obama was nominated, the campaign battlefield would be littered with barely-concealed racist attacks, especially if the Republican candidate got behind. As I said to a class of students six months ago, at the end of this campaign, watch how many new ways you will learn to say "nigger" without saying "nigger."

Getting played on complex issues of foreign policy or economics is one thing - few reporters truly are knowledgable enough about such issues to make intelligent commentary. But members of the working press know racism when they see it. They know personal attacks when they see them. And this time through, they've called it what it is.

How can McCain actually say that "We don't know who the real Obama is?" The man's been running for office for two years - and if there was anything in his background that was unpleasant, it had been raised and raised. There's nothing new in the McCain camp's attacks. They are just another way of raising the same old tired issues, this time by a hick-talking pitbull with lipstick.

Maybe McCain really feels the ends justifies the means. Or maybe he's old, tired of losing, knows this is his very last shot at the Big Prize, and has simply told his handlers to do what's necessary to win, no questions asked.

The saddest part is that McCain is a bright guy who might actually have some ideas on how to improve the country. But he's chosen this moment, when the world's eyes are turned to him, to assasinate the character of a colleague, someone who McCain, deep down, knows isn't a "danger to America." But in politics, nothing is too low, too debasing, too shameful to do when it comes to winning.

McCain is the O.J. of this year's presidential campaign. He may win, but no one I know would want to shake his hand.