Looking at the front page of this morning's New York Times, a song comes to mind:
Say, it's only a summer scandal
Bully Boy will soon have the handle
He's the king of the make-believe
Do you believe in me?
Yes, it's only a scandal de sum
Reporters move on if we play mum
King George of the make believe
Do you believe in me?
. . .
It's a Bully and Cheney world
Just as phony as it can be
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me
The above was noted yesterday and is noted again at Susan's request. (It's a bad rip-off of Harold Arlen & Ted Koehler's "It's Only a Paper Moon.") If you read yesterday's entry (or The Daily Howler from Tuesday), you know that Gwen Ifill referred to the outing of Plame as "a summer scandal."
Ifill and Rice will no doubt [be] singing with the Bully Boy because Robert's nomination pushes the outing of Plame off the front page. Now Bully Boy hasn't addressed the Plame outing, nothing's been resolved. But they knew the press wouldn't be able to juggle two stories. And it'll be interesting to see how long it takes them to get back on track.
(That's not suggesting that the Court doesn't matter. That is suggesting that pieces of the sort in the Times today are both embarrassing and irrelevant.)
Todd S. Purdum weighs in with "President's Choice of Roberts, 50, Ends a Day of Speculation."
Feel for Purdum who has to turn an announcement into a story. Why the Times does this, I don't know. They are a daily paper. Roberts needs to be noted. It is news. That he's been announced. But that's all the news that there is at present. Purdum does the usual some say and others says dance. (And credits along the way, that's not a slap at Purdum.) Is this really a story that needs to go beyond three paragraphs in today's paper?
Reporters should cover this. They should be looking into Roberts history and other issues. However, that requires more than instant analysis. Until the work's done, there's not much to say beyond, "Roberts was announced and these groups support, these oppose." It's three paragraphs tops until the paper has something to write about. It's as though a wedding announcement got teased out for two pages.
(That problem goes beyond the Times but it's one that should be addressed by the Times.)
Adam Nagourney does the instant analysis in "Bush's Strategy for Court: Disarm the Opposition." It's labeled a "news analysis" -- and possibly it is to someone taught by Cokie Roberts. There's nothing in the article (other than his concluding paragraphs which seem less "analysis" and more conventional wisdom -- a student of Cokie's) that's not already in Todd S. Purdum's story.
I'm all for flooding the zone on important stories but there's not enough to justify one story on this topic currently though the Times teases it out into two. If there is a story here, it will come later. When reporters have something to dig into. There's nothing here today.
But it did succeed in pushing the Plame issue off the front page and that was the sole purpose for the announcement.
It's also infected the main section, so much so that even Elisabeth Bumiller feels the need to weigh in. Truth, like pornography via snail mail, comes in surprising packages. Today it comes in, of all things, the form of Bumillie:
Both Republicans and Democrats said that the speeded-up timing - administration officials had at one point told reporters to expect an announcement in the last week of July - would have the effect of pushing news of Karl Rove and the federal investigation into who leaked the name of a C.I.A. officer off the front pages, at least for a time.
But they can't resist. They know it, they know they're being played as suckers, but that doesn't prevent two front page stories on "the news" and two inside stories.
Online, Linda Greenhouse is stuck with "news analysis" as well. Like Purdum, she's got to pimp an announcement as some sort of investigative report. In print, Neil A. Lewis is also left to attempt to wring a full blown story out of announcement (on the front page, no less).
I honestly think they should have just used Bumiller. Not just because she got the truth into the paper. (You could argue that she fluffed that right by them.) But also because her overheated prose "style" is more suited to turning these announcements into "events." In fact, if you're going to read one of the four articles (there's no need to read any), read Bumiller's. Purdum's trying to turn it into a story. (And were he not required to do multiple paragraphs, he'd be fine.)
Nagourney's channeling Cokie Roberts (can't they wait until she passes for that!). Greenhouse is inside the paper so you've already read everything she could have told you.
But Bumiller digs in to the fluff. She lives for this stuff. You honestly feel embarrassed for Purdum, Lewis and Greenhouse. (With Nagourney, you just wonder if he put on pearls to really get the Cokie-feel?) Bumiller's the person seated at the table next to you that can't shut up about what happened on The Bachelor last night while everyone else is concerned with news from Iraq.
As squad leader of the Elite Fluff Patrol, she's earned the right to [tell] this non-tale.
Note: Online, Adam Liptak also covers this topic. He's the only one with actual information in his story. It doesn't rise to the level of front page news but he's the only voice singing something other than the same melody that repeats over and over in the other four stories in this morning's Times. Online, David D. Kirkpatrick reports on what proponents for and opponents to Roberts are saying. And if that's not enough to cover your jones (that I'm sure you don't have) in print, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Carl Hulse cover ballroom dancing in the Senate.
Now sing along with Condi & Gwen (the Times does):
Say, it's only a summer scandal
Bully Boy will soon have the handle
He's the king of the make-believe
Do you believe in me?
Yes, it's only a scandal de sum
Reporters move on if we play mum
King George of the make believe
Do you believe in me?
. . .
It's a Bully and Cheney world
Just as phony as it can be
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
[Note: This post has been corrected. Words mispelled or left out are now in brackets: "[]."]
