Christopher Moltisanti And Our Political Media

A few weeks ago I tried to grapple with the election of President Game Show Host with cultural artifacts from the Clinton years and I think it sort of worked. So inspired by Trump's political theory of just-doing-the-same-crazy-shit-over-and-over-again-and-hoping-it-works (it did!) I'll give it another go. But this time I'm going to talk about The Sopranos.

I think it's pretty obvious that much of our political media's behavior during the 2016 election cycle was pretty terrible. Sure there were many brave voices against the madness of EMAILS! (as we called it on Twitter) but much of the political media, especially "mainstream" outlets like The New York Times, cable news, the networks, and The Washington Post, chose to focus almost obsessively about things like email servers. All the while largely eliding bigger questions like, "what are the major differences between these two candidates' plans for the country?"

Matt Yglesias summed it up recently in an article aptly entitled "Fake news is a convenient scapegoat, but the big 2016 problem was the real news" where he points out that:

This coverage [of emails], though extremely extensive, did an extraordinarily poor job of explaining the actual legal issue at stake in the server matter. Network television newscasts from ABC, NBC, and CBS chose to devote three times as much airtime to Clinton’s email server as they gave to all policy issues combined. The Associated Press ran a major investigative story into Clinton Foundation influence peddling that treated a meeting with a Nobel Peace Prize winner as evidence of an insidious pay-to-play scheme. The New York Times did a Clinton Foundation investigation that treated Bill Clinton successfully rescuing American hostages from North Korea as scandalous. The fact that public health experts believe the Clinton Foundation saved millions of lives, by contrast, played extremely little role in 2016 campaign coverage. 

Which means that:

The sum total of this media coverage — real stories based on editorial decisions about how to weight and present real facts — was to give the public the impression that two similarly ethically flawed candidates were running against each other in an election with low policy stakes. The reporters and editors responsible for that coverage can reasonably (if a bit absurdly) consider themselves proud of the work that led the public to that conclusion, or they can consider themselves ashamed of it. But the idea that voters were moved by fake stories about the pope rather than all-too-real ones about email servers is a preposterous evasion. 

When many journalists are confronted with this complaint, they tend to just abruptly change the subject. Generally to why Hillary Clinton was a terrible candidate, or something about Bill. As in most things linking pathological Clinton hatred, destructive "leftier than thou" politics, and bad journalism Glenn Greenwald is the Platonic Archetype here, but other people like Andrew Sullivan have fired off some similar takes.

You can also see this going on 24/7 on Twitter as well.

The reality is that this sort of topic switching just simply won't do. Scott Lemieux put it this way when riffing off a similar column by Paul Krugman:

The effect of yadda-yaddaying the media’s malpractice, Wikileaks, and a rogue FBI is both to normalize Trump and to make Trumps more likely in the future. That Clinton’s campaign, like all campaigns, made mistakes is worthy of discussion but is also entirely immaterial to this question. 

For some reason Scott's point really reminded me a classic scene from The Sopranos. I'm not a huge fan of the show for a variety of reasons, but I will acknowledge that it certainly belongs in any list of "Great TV Shows" and I think it's really helpful here.

The scene in question is the one depicting Christopher "Chris" Moltisanti's intervention. Chris is an up and coming younger mobster with some profound substance abuse problems and (I assume) narcissistic personality disorder, who is also the protege (to the degree that they have those in the Mafia) of Tony Soprano played by the late great James Gandolfini.

It's a great scene that really shows The Sopranos at it's best. From mixing humor with very serious subjects to highlighting the themes of some of the shows best characters. From the fundamental tragedy of Adriana's life, to Carmela's willful blindness to the truth that's all around her, to Tony's almost desperate need for control, to the fact that Paulie Walnuts really is crazy and really believes in the whole "Cosa Nostra Code" bullshit, this scene has it all.

Chris responds to being confronted about his raging addictions by changing the subject and pointing out everyone else's problems. Silvio is a misogynistic womanizer! Tony is fat! Fuck you too mom! Then the Mafia guys beat him up. Good stuff.

So why does this scene remind me of so much of the aftermath of the political media's coverage of the 2016 election? Well it's not just because of the tactic of responding to your own crisis with rampant topic switching and going on the offensive against people who are pointing out inconvenient truths about you, although those parallels are pretty obvious. But also because of the great insight the scene provides into Chris' own psychology.

Chris is a vicious, murdering little shit, but he's pretty smart. Probably the smartest of all of Tony's henchmen, which is a big reason why Tony tries so hard to groom him for leadership despite his massive other failings. As I see it Chris is smart enough to have figured out how bad he really did screw up by going into the Mafia lifestyle and in no small part uses booze and drugs as away to try and escape this hard reality. Just consider his position. Sure he's in a crime family and has the boss's ear, but that really just means that he's chosen a career where there isn't any way to get out, other than cooperating with the government, going to prison, or dying (probably in a really horrible way). Meanwhile his "family" is filled with stone killers almost as narcissistic as him who he can never really trust. Meanwhile the organization he's chosen to dedicate his life to serving is getting weaker and more dysfunctional day by day. Meaning that even if he is able to succeed Tony, which is a big if, he'll end up being the boss of a dying organization with no way out.

Thus why Chris gets so angry, and begins attacking anyone who points out the obvious. He screwed up big time, he's stuck with it, and the top person to blame is himself.

Which strikes me as being similar to the thought process of a lot of people contemplating what "covering" the era of Trump is going to be like in DC. Like Chris the political media "won", in this case by finally driving the Clintons from the stage after an epic 25 year death struggle. But that's been rewarded with something much worse than Hillary's dissembling or legalizing which so many journalists found so annoying for so many years. Instead they've gotten Trump whose already claimed his first scalp of members of their profession.

Meanwhile nothing his administration says can be trusted because they lie all the time. No source is worth developing because they might turn on you at any time. And there's no way to write about him without pissing off huge sections of the country.

The political media screwed up big time, and they're stuck with it, and one of the biggest actors to blame is themselves.

When us angry liberals shout like Tony that, "We're here to talk about you screwing up the country by how you chose to cover this election, not Hillary Clinton's fucking personality!" it seems to me that far to many political journalists act like Chris and come back with really witty answers. She's terrible! Not enough events in Michigan! Neera Tanden should never email! And fuck you too liberal subscribers!

The problem of course is we're all about to suffer the beat down for the next four (or maybe more) years. I wish that more people could come to grips with this, or at least acknowledge the validity of our complaints. But some people aren't very good at self improvement, instead they decide to just kill their friends for no good reason.

How Journalists See The World Example #34712

Over at the normally really good Vox, Amanda Taub wrote an epic rant about why she thinks Obama is the worst person in the world really doesn't like the president's foreign policy.

I thought it was a good example of what goes wrong with a lot of foreign policy writing these days. That is to say she denies the existence of other groups' agency while massively overestimating our own agency and power to turn Yemen into some type of wonderful place. It's written in a sort of hysterical tone where making fun of people is seen as being the height of serious discussion. Furthermore she follows the foreign policy writing convention of treating current events in the Middle East as happening only in the context of what the current American president as done or not done as of late, while ignoring everything that came before. As Adam Curtis once observed, "What I find so fascinating about the reporting of the War on Terror is the way almost all of it ignores history - as if it is a conflict happening outside time."

And don't get me started on how she uses "foreign policy" as short hand for, "what's happened in the Arab world outside of Tunisia in the last few years."

In response I'd say something like this: yes Yemen is a giant mess, but it's been a chaotic and violent place for decades now, and that has to do with things like a lack of viable state institutions, poverty, ecological catastrophes, and a long running ethnic conflict that's been going on for over 20 years. All of which Taub ignores or glosses over in her piece.

Meaning the president has made mistakes, all presidents do, but it's not clear at all that the situation today is relatively worse than other potential outcomes. Indeed since American's aren't dying in Yemen I'd argue the outcome isn't that bad.

Furthermore it's not clear that any magical "policy" would have made anything better at all. Indeed she basically admits that she has no earthly idea what to do in her second to last paragraph where she lays out her alternative vision which consists of:

Obama seems to assume the only two options are either short-term thinking or hubristic, Bush-style attempts to remake the region in America's interests. But surely there is some middle ground available that takes underlying political problems into account, and accepts short-term costs in exchange for pursuit of long-term gains.

When it comes to these sorts of analysis I really still believe something that one of my professors on national security said when I was in college. It was something along the lines of, "if you have an analysis and no policy prescriptions, you don't really have an analysis." And this makes a lot of sense, after all it's easy to be critical and pessimistic when analyzing a messed up world, but that doesn't mean that you are actually analyzing anything, in many ways you are just complaining. And that's exactly what Taub has done here. She demands some other policy that gets "long-term gains" without having any earthly clue about what those policies or even those gains would be.

In other words Taub's analysis and a case of beer, will get you a case of beer.

But that's not why I'm writing this post. Rather it's this little gem she sticks in there while pointing out that Yemen is a mess (as it has been for a long time):

And that led to the bizarre spectacle, last Wednesday, of White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest flailing haplessly in response to questions about how Yemen could be considered a success. He lamely contended, "We have not seen that kind of — of — of progress in terms of strengthening the central government. I think you could make a pretty strong case that we've seen the opposite of that. But we do, you know, we do continue to enjoy the benefits of a sustained counterterrorism security relationship with the security infrastructure that remains in Yemen."

This is a classic example of how journalists see the world. That is the big problem here is Washington press optics. I know it's weird to think about, but jouranlists really do obsess over this stuff, and really seem to think that a press secretary not answering a question perfectly is the root of the problem. 

If I can get all  meta I would say this: journalists like Taub are trapped in the prison of their own experiences. Since they spend all day obsessing over press conferences, they then of course cite these press conferences as some sort of example of a failed foreign policy, while then later admitting they no earthly idea about what could be done better. 

Everyone is like that to some degree. Historians tend to be pessimistic because they have to show how the past of relevant today and thus how it repeats itself. Meanwhile politicians tend to be optimistic in their rhetoric because they want to mobilize support.

But this sort of obsession is fairly perverse in journalism, because they are the folks with the biggest bullhorns. Meaning they get to force their obsession with some press person not doing their job "the right way" on the rest of us as some sort of analysis. To paraphrase True Detective, this obsession and detachment from reality is the secret fate of all jouranlists.

Update: Vox just published a funny group piece about arguing about politics with your relatives over the weekend, one of it's authors is Amanda Taub. Here's the chunk about why Obama is terrible:

It's true that Obama has not gotten the US bogged down in any Iraq- or Afghanistan-style wars. And of course Obama has also had a more recent success with the new framework for the Iran nuclear deal. The terms of that agreement look very good, and preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon would make the US and its allies safer for years to come. 

So if your criteria for success are "no new wars that require boots on the ground" and "keep Iran from getting a bomb," then Obama is looking pretty good right now. He campaigned on those goals and has stuck with them in office, and that makes a lot of people happy.

But there have been a lot of changes in the Middle East since Obama took office — and he has struggled to respond well to them. 

Conflicts have exploded in Syria, Libya, and now Yemen. But Obama has stuck with the same policy of limited engagement each time, even though it doesn't seem to be working very well. He has partnered with local proxies, including dictators, and sent drones and small numbers of special forces troops to back them up, but those countries are still in chaos, and groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda are reaping the benefits. It's pretty hard to look at all of that and feel thrilled at how things are going.

I don't know about you but I can't read that any other way than being a massive refutation of Taub's own piece. Basically she now agrees that Obama is doing stuff around the whole "long-term gains" thing (something about Iran maybe?) and that from a hard nosed realist perspective the fact that Americans aren't dying in these terrible wars is the right choice. Sounds like a good foreign policy to me!

As for the last two paragraphs, well, I don't know what to say. Other than yes, war and revolutions are often chaotic and terrible events, and they are really hard for America to control. Every president since Washington has struggled with this reality and thus by Taub's logic they should all be characterized as failures.

Anyway I know this sounds petty and vindictive (area writer is wrong about something on the internet!) but so much of Vox's (and Taub's) other writing on foreign affairs is so good, it's really annoying to encounter this sort of stuff.

On Writing For Free

I guess I am really late to this conversation but I really want to throw my hat in the ring when it comes to debates about writing for free. As someone who writes for free a lot my views are pretty typical. Writing for free is great! It is obviously a huge boon for journalism and human society in general and if you are interested in doing it you totally should. If you refuse to do it out of some strange sense of solidarity with with privileged white professional journalists or because you'd rather watch TV or go for a bike ride, well nobody is forcing you to write for free and you can totally watch TV or go for a bike ride instead of writing that blog post.

The whole thing started after Nate Thayer, a professional freelance journalist, wrote an epic series of posts about how outraged he is that some junior editor from the Atlantic had written him an email asking him if he would like to showcase a blog post he wrote (for free) on the Atlantic. She also pointed out that she couldn't cut him a check because her freelance budget was all tapped out at that particular time.

I feel Nate's pain, it really is hard out there for freelancers, but I think his response was profoundly unprofessional and kind of jerky. It also will probably lead this editor to think that trying to work with professional freelancers is a fool's errand and lead her to stop showcasing their work and paying them.  From Nate's email: 

I am a professional journalist who has made my living by writing for 25 years and am not in the habit of giving my services for free to for profit media outlets so they can make money by using my work and efforts by removing my ability to pay my bills and feed my children. I know several people who write for the Atlantic who of course get paid. I appreciate your interest, but, while I respect the Atlantic, and have several friends who write for it, I have bills to pay and cannot expect to do so by giving my work away for free to a for profit company so they can make money off of my efforts. 1200 words by the end of the week would be fine, and I can assure you it would be well received, but not for free. Frankly, I will refrain from being insulted and am perplexed how one can expect to try to retain quality professional services without compensating for them. Let me know if you have perhaps mispoken.

Don't be afraid to tell us what you really think Nate!

Honestly I think the whole focus on writing “for free” or “unpaid labor” is a bit of a red herring. It’s not important to “be paid” so much as it is important to be paid enough to be able to support yourself if you want to be a full time freelancer. Looking back on The Great Nate Thayer Freakout of 2013, if that editor had replied with something like “oh Nate great news, I moved some money around and we can afford to pay you! Would you prefer a check for 12 dollars or 11 cents for every 1,000 unique visitor’s your piece generates here at The Atlantic?” Thayer probably would have gotten even more mad. Why? Because it’s not the principle that he’s not being paid anything, although I can see how someone who considers themselves a professional journalist could get upset by the principle here, it’s that Nate is not getting paid enough to, as he put it to New York Magazine “… pay my f@#$%^& rent. Exposure doesn't feed my f@#$%^& children. F@#$ that!”

So if I can be a white male privileged jerk here and get in some mansplaining: under the old “sell pieces of trees” model of journalism there was a niche for professional freelancers who would write for lots of places and get paid by the word. It was always a small privileged group, the gatekeepers were few and far between and a lot of people never made much money at it. Out of the model came much great journalism, and also a lot of garbage as well. But as publishing has moved online this particular economic watering hole if you will has basically dried up. So if you want to try and making a living as a freelancer you’ll probably not succeed and thus you should only do it if you are independently wealthy or have a spouse/partner who is willing and able to be the sole breadwinner for your family for long periods of time. You can however try and get a job as a staff journalist, or get a regular nine to five gig and write on the side. In fact, Nate even admits as much when he explains to the editor that, "Ironically, a few years back I was offered a staff job with the Atlantic to write 6 articles a year for a retainer of $125,000, with the right to publish elsewhere in addition..." Since Nate's screed about the evils of the Atlantic became a internet sensation, that even requited the freaking editor-in-chief to issue a statement defending the Atlantic, that offer probably doesn't still stand. But you sure showed that twenty-something junior editor Nate!

The new online model of journalism sucks and is cosmically unfair to professional freelancers who want to earn a decent amount for their writing, but it’s just the reality of how the new economics of the business work. As I see it freelancers should either go into this with both eyes open about this new reality or try another road. Or not, just make sure you can "feed your f@#$%^& children" in some other way.