On Tuesday night's Charlie Rose show on PBS, New Yorker editor (and former Washington Post reporter) David Remnick equated Team Obama's attempt to demonize and "freeze out" Fox News Channel with a campaign to create civil discourse. Demonizing equals civility?
CHARLIE ROSE: Do you think that the president had an opportunity that he did not seize in order to make a real contribution to the civil discourse that we`re talking about and to exhibit those things that he spoke about and those things he believed in?
DAVID REMNICK: He was laughed out of court. Remember the attack on Fox News? I mean, it might not have been as smoothly done as one would have liked but there was an attempt by the Obama administration -- a very concerted attempt with Anita Dunn, David Axelrod, and even the president, to either freeze out or do a critique of the rhetoric of Fox News and whether, in fact, they're news at all and all the rest of the critique that you see elsewhere in the media. And it was laughed out of court by a lot of people.
ROSE: But that`s no reason to stop because it`s laughed out of court.
REMNICK: Well, politics is a reason to stop. Now you see on Super bowl Sunday the big interview for the president of the United States will be conducted by Bill O`Reilly.
ROSE: For a reason. Fox is carrying the Super bowl.
REMNICK: Yes, indeed, but he can give an interview to anybody he wants or not give an interview to anybody he wants, and, of course, O`Reilly compared to Glenn Beck is Eric Sevareid.
Rose laughed, but Remnick was clearly upset that the "freeze-out" is over, and now Obama would stoop to legitimizing Fox News by submitting to an interview before one of the largest television audiences in any year. He might see the benefit for Obama (if O'Reilly honors the access granted with deference), but he can't stand the idea that the words "Fox" and "News" are put together by reasonable people -- if not the "unreasonable" people who see The New Yorker and think "arrogant, ultraliberal, Bush-hating snobs."
This anti-Fox snobbery very much sums up the way the Charlie Rose show and other PBS venues seem to think any conservative who appears on Fox News has a very infectious disease or very offensive odor, and cannot be admitted to their high-minded TV salons -- the ones paid for by the red-state "riff raff." Remnick attacked Fox (and MSNBC) earlier in the segment, just not by name, in demanding more "dot connecting" after the Tucson shooting:
ROSE: Should the country have a serious conversation about the nature of political rhetoric here?
REMNICK: We absolutely have to. And, you know -- but very often when that conversation is introduced -- and, by the way, this was a very powerful theme of Obama`s about tone and rhetoric. And if you read both of his -- especially his second book, which is kind of derided as the sort of lesser of his two books, that`s a predominant theme both in his book and a lot of the interviews he gave during the presidential race about the fallen nature of political conversation. It`s a theme at this table. It`s a theme on Jon Stewart`s show every night.
REMNICK: And I think it should be discussed and -- because the, again, the confluence of political division and anger with technology and speed has caused this kind of excel rating hysteria. And I don`t think civility is the only virtue in discourse. I think we have to have a rigorous discourse, sometimes an insulting discourse, sometimes a rhetoric that even goes to too far to go far enough.
But the level of excess among responsible people, politicians first and foremost but also the cable news networks and all the rest of it -- generically not CNN, is out of control. And it`s ridiculous and it degrades political thought and discussion.
And we absolutely should have that conversation, again, not at the cost of rigor and analysis and passion, and it`s not necessarily the only order value in conversation, but it`s got to be one that is present.
At least Rose balanced this show a little with moderate New York Times columnist David Brooks, who has bluntly condemned the dot-connecting gonig on. But he also returned to talking
ROSE: David Brooks, do you agree with that? The column you wrote today was too many people were too quick to point the finger and that that was wrong and to point the finger at Sarah Palin or point the finger at someone else, not because they were connected to this incident but because they were part of a rhetoric that went beyond.
BROOKS: Well, my sort of moral anguish was caused by the fact that so many people immediately used this instance as a way to attack Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement. And it became an occasion for partisan attack, not quite the opposite. While people were claiming to criticize viciousness they were themselves being vicious.
I do think if you divorce this case, obviously this is Barack Obama`s great strength and why people more on the conservative side like me were tremendously drawn to him, because he personally enjoys the conversation with people who disagree with him, and that`s one of his great strengths.
Brooks even claimed: "I ran into a freshman just a few days ago, first day of Congress, had just been sworn in. And just in casual conversation he spoke about the members of the other party as if they were subhuman and literally said these people couldn`t seriously care about children, they`re just faking it. And this is a freshman coming in on his first day."
