In State of the Union, President Obama Criticizes “TV pundits” for “reducing serious debates to silly arguments”

From President Obama’s January 27 State of the Union speech
Hat tip to Media Matters
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Obama’s ‘Mistakes’: Way Too Early to Judge By Joe Klein

Opt-Ed by Joe Klein

Time—Over the past few weeks, Barack Obama has been criticized for the following: He didn’t go to Berlin for the 20th anniversary of the Wall’s coming down. He didn’t make a forceful enough statement on the 30th anniversary of the U.S. diplomats’ being taken hostage in Iran. He didn’t show sufficient mournfulness, at first, when the Fort Hood shootings took place, and he was namby-pamby about the possibility that the shootings were an act of jihad. He has spent too little time focusing on unemployment. He bowed too deeply before the Japanese Emperor. He allowed the Chinese to block the broadcast of his Shanghai town-hall meeting. He allowed the Chinese President to bar questions at their joint press conference (a moment memorably satirized by Saturday Night Live). He didn’t come back with any diplomatic victories from Asia. He allowed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 plotters to be tried in the U.S. criminal-justice system rather than by the military. He has dithered too long on Afghanistan. He has devoted too much attention to — and given congressional Democrats too much control over — health care reform, an issue that is peripheral to a majority of Americans.

And all this has led to a dangerous slippage in the polls, it is said, a sense that his presidential authority is ebbing.

As a fully licensed pundit, I have the authority to weigh in here … but I demur. Oh, I could sling opinions about every one of the events cited above — some were unfortunate — but it would matter only if I could discern a pattern that illuminates Obama’s presidency. The most obvious pattern, however, is the media’s tendency to get overwrought about almost anything. Why, for example, is the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall demolition so crucial that it requires a President’s presence? Which recent U.S. President has gotten the Chinese to agree to anything big? (In fact, Obama has secured significant diplomatic cooperation from the Chinese on North Korea, Afghanistan and Pakistan.) Was his deep bow indicative of anything other than his physical fitness? (My midsection, sadly, prevents the appearance of obsequiousness in such circumstances.)

Stepping back a bit, I do see a metapattern that extends over the 40 years since Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy began the drift toward more ideological political parties: Democrats have tough first years in the presidency. Of the past seven Presidents, the two Bushes rank at the top in popularity after one year, while Obama and Bill Clinton rank at the bottom, with Jimmy Carter close by. There is a reason for that. Democrats come to office eager to govern the heck out of the country. They take on impossible issues, like budget-balancing and health care reform. They run into roadblocks — from their own unruly ranks as well as from Republicans. They get lost in the details. A tax cut is much easier to explain than a tax increase. A foreign policy based in bluster — railing against an “axis of evil” — is easier to sell than a foreign policy based in nuance. Of course, external events count a lot: the ratings of Bushes I and II were bolstered, respectively, by the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the flattening of the World Trade Center. Reagan’s rating — 53% and headed south — was dampened by a deepening recession.

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Strong Start For Lopez Tonight

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Latina Magazine/Lee Hernandez—By George, I think he’s got it. Comedian George Lopez’s new late-night talk show, Lopez Tonight, premiered to a very healthy 3.1 million viewers Monday night on three Turner Networks: TBS, TNT and TruTV, says Variety.

1.7 million of those combined total viewers watched the show on TBS—a good thing for the show since that’s where it will air weekly at 11 p.m. But more importantly, the debut—which featured guests Eva Longoria Parker, Kobe Bryant and Carlos Santana—performed solidly among adults (1 million viewers) in the key 18-49 demographic that advertisers love. “That’s higher than the current season averages (though not the premieres) of the adult demo draws for talk shows like CBS’ Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. If you use the combined three-net number, the show was sampled by more adult demo viewers than Conan O’Brien or David Letterman’s average,” writes The Hollywood Reporter’s James Hibberd.

In even more good news for Lopez Tonight, the show, which aired in place of TBS’s usual reruns of My Name is Earl drew 70% higher household ratings than Earl. “Viewers are ready for a change, and George Lopez is an exciting addition to late-night television,” said Steve Koonin, president of Turner Entertainment Networks. “We are extremely proud of the success of last night’s premiere of Lopez Tonight and are confident the show will continue to be a big late-night hit.”

‘Lopez Tonight‘ offers surprising DNA test to Larry David

Orlando Sentinel—TBS’ “Lopez Tonight” is billing itself as the first late-night show to offer DNA testing of its guests.

The shows promises that its Thursday episode will be different: “Larry David (‘Curb Your Enthusiasm‘) will get the surprise of his life when his true ethnicity is revealed.”

And the show hosted by George Lopez made this questionable boast: “It’s sure to be as good as an episode of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm.‘”

Spoiler Alert: On the show last night, Larry discovered that he is 63 percent European, and 37 percent Native American.

Rachel Maddow, Voice of America

By cutting across the grain of US cable news, the sober-minded liberal pundit has become the best talkshow host in America

The Rachel Maddow Show

guardian.co.uk/Amanda Marcotte—Rachel Maddow first came on my radar in the spring of 2004, when she, along with Lizz Winstead and Chuck D of Public Enemy hosted an early morning radio show called Unfiltered on the newly minted Air America, an attempt to counter rightwing talk radio with liberal programming.

Radio has this ability to make the listener feel like they share a secret with the hosts and the few, hard-to-know listeners out there. I hoped people tuned in to listen to the hosts trade jokes and talk about politics and music, and mostly I wanted other people to learn about this Maddow character, who brought to every episode a dynamic mix of sparkling good humour, intelligent analysis and a broad view of what issues should matter.

Unfiltered didn’t make the first round of reshuffling at Air America, but Maddow hung in, hosting her own eponymous radio show and eventually moving to television, first as a guest pundit and now as a host of her own night time political talkshow on MSNBC.

Before it happened, most American liberals would have never imagined that Maddow could have her own programme on any cable network, much less the same network that had, just a few years before, tried to pull in a rightwing audience by giving hard right nut Michael Savage his own show (before pulling it after he told a gay caller to die from Aids).

It’s not just that Maddow is a liberal. After all, MSNBC had already given a spot to liberal commentator Keith Olbermann and his frequent, angry rants. It was mostly hard to imagine a cable news network rewarding a pundit for being sober-minded and nuanced in her analysis, as well as suspicion that homophobia would prevent it from promoting a lesbian who favours a more masculine way of dressing.

But 2008 was a year for re-arranging American expectations about who gets to have a voice in public. The Democratic candidate was not only black, but also overtly professorial, and this didn’t diminish his popularity with the public. Hillary Clinton and, yes, even Sarah Palin normalised the idea of more female authority in politics. In a very short period of time, the unthinkable became the reality, and Maddow had her very own MSNBC programme.

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Calling ‘Em Out: The White House Takes on the Press

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Obama aides say they can't rely on reporters to referee public debates

Time/Michael Scherer—There was never a single moment when White House staff decided the major media outlets were falling down on the job. There were instead several such moments.

For press secretary Robert Gibbs, the realization came in early September, when the New York Times ran a front-page story about the bubbling parental outrage over President Obama’s plan to address schoolchildren — even though the benign contents of the speech were not yet public. “You had to be like, ‘Wait a minute,'” says Gibbs. “This thing has become a three-ring circus.”

For deputy communications director Dan Pfeiffer, the more hyperbolic attacks on health-care reform this summer, which were often covered as a “controversy,” flipped an internal switch. “When you are having a debate about whether or not you want to kill people’s grandmother,” he explains, “the normal rules of engagement don’t apply.”

President Barack Obama marks veteran reporter Helen Thomas' 89th birthday

And for his boss, Anita Dunn, the aha moment came when the Washington Post ran a second op-ed from a Republican politician decrying the “32” alleged czars appointed by the Obama Administration. Nine of those so-called czars, it turned out, were subject to Senate confirmation, making them decidedly unlike the Russian monarchs. “The idea — that the Washington Post didn’t even question it,” Dunn says, still marveling at the decision.

All the criticism, both fair and misleading, took a toll, regularly knocking the White House off message. So a new White House strategy has emerged: rather than just giving reporters ammunition to “fact-check” Obama’s many critics, the White House decided it would become a player, issuing biting attacks on those pundits, politicians and outlets that make what the White House believes to be misleading or simply false claims, like the assertion that health-care reform would establish new “sex clinics” in schools. Obama, fresh from his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, cheered on the effort, telling his aides he wanted to “call ’em out.”

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GLAAD Study: More Gay Characters On Network TV, Fewer On Cable

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Jennifer Beals (L World), Charlie David (Dante's Cove), Eric Winter (Brothers & Sisters), Matthew Rhys (Brothers & Sisters), Roma Maffia (Nip/Tuck), John Barrowman (Torchwood), Gregory Michael (Dante's Cove), Reichen Lehmkuhl (Dante's Cove), Joely Richardson (Nip/Tuck). (Source GLAAD 2008)

Associated Press—The number of gay and bisexual characters on prime-time network TV is up slightly this season to 18 out of a total of 600 roles, according to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

The increase over 2008 fell well short of the more than twofold percentage jump in the ’08 season compared to 2007, according to the group.

And on mainstream cable channels the number of such characters continued to drop, slipping from a total of 32 in 2008 to 25 this year. The 2007 tally was 40.

Two channels that program for gay viewers, here! and Logo, add 27 gay characters to the cable total, GLAAD said.

The 14th annual “Where We Are on TV” report released Wednesday found that 3 percent of actors appearing regularly on network drama and comedy series in the 2009-10 season will portray gay, lesbian or bisexual characters.

That’s up from 2.6 percent in the 2008-09 season. In 2007-08, it was 1.1 percent.

Only four of the 18 characters this season are nonwhite, GLAAD found, and there is only one lesbian, on ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy.”

Using information provided by ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and CW, the group reviewed 79 scripted series announced to air this season.

The steady increase in gay characters is promising, as are story lines that are becoming “more reflective of current issues affecting our lives,” GLAAD President Jarrett Barrios said in a statement.

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For GLAAD’s complete list of LGBT characters on cable, click here.

About GLAAD
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) is dedicated to promoting and ensuring fair, accurate and inclusive representation of people and events in the media as a means of eliminating homophobia and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. For more information, please visit www.glaad.org.

Where Did We Go? By Thomas Friedman

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New York Times/Thomas Friedman

New York Times/Thomas Friedman—I hate to write about this, but I have actually been to this play before and it is really disturbing.

I was in Israel interviewing Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin just before he was assassinated in 1995. We had a beer in his office. He needed one. I remember the ugly mood in Israel then — a mood in which extreme right-wing settlers and politicians were doing all they could to delegitimize Rabin, who was committed to trading land for peace as part of the Oslo accords. They questioned his authority. They accused him of treason. They created pictures depicting him as a Nazi SS officer, and they shouted death threats at rallies. His political opponents winked at it all.

And in so doing they created a poisonous political environment that was interpreted by one right-wing Jewish nationalist as a license to kill Rabin — he must have heard, “God will be on your side” — and so he did.

Others have already remarked on this analogy, but I want to add my voice because the parallels to Israel then and America today turn my stomach: I have no problem with any of the substantive criticism of President Obama from the right or left. But something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination.

What kind of madness is it that someone would create a poll on Facebook asking respondents, “Should Obama be killed?” The choices were: “No, Maybe, Yes, and Yes if he cuts my health care.” The Secret Service is now investigating. I hope they put the jerk in jail and throw away the key because this is exactly what was being done to Rabin.

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