Born in the USA

One of my favorite quotes on journalism comes, unsurprisingly, from Hunter Thompson. As the good doctor was eulogizing his mortal enemy Richard Nixon, he lamented the idea of a completely objective press.

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"Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism -- which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful."
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It's a great point to keep in mind when writing. Of course the most important thing is to be factually accurate and fair, nothing else matters nearly as much. But Thompson's argument that some things are so preposterous that reporters need to shut off their sense of emotionless coverage is an interesting one.

That, in a nutshell, is how I feel about the birther movement. For those of you who have better things to do than follow such trivial matters, it's a little movement questioning whether Barack Obama was really born in this country. The then Senator Obama campaign produced a newspaper birth announcement and certificate of live birth -- not a birth certificate, if we're getting down to brass tacks -- but the outrage continues.

The media, however, have treated their arguments quite condescendingly. Rachel Maddow, Bill O'Reilly and, most emphatically, Chris Matthews (linked below) have all said this is a stupid story that only lives because it falls into the story that Obama is a socialist. Granted, these people give their opinions and are not journalists, but the fact that newspapers haven't really touched this story until recently shows their disdain for it. When Lou Dobbs heard Obama could be an immigrant, he went for the kill.

Of course this whole news story is ridiculous, it's probably not even news. The problem is that journalists have this Utopian idea of complete impartiality, but they're looking down on something that is a genuine concern for a large group of people. Does it give reporters -- not columnists -- the right to call out a movement as dumb and wrong? If so, it opens up a whole can of worms where maybe we could have pointed out Nixon like Thompson wanted. But then the New York Times looks even more liberal and ethics could be out the window.

It comes down to personal decisions by those up top, and to decide a certain theory is so dumb that it doesn't deserve attention and promotion in your newspaper, then that's fair. I still feel like media condescension toward a large group (idiotic and news-hating as it is) is far from constructive when we're trying to serve our audience.

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Great eulogy of Nixon by the Good Doctor

G. Gordon Liddy is a crazy man, believe it or not.