America's
political and cultural divisions have become even more polarized in the
current media landscape. Pictured cloclwise, from upper left: Jeffrey
Toobin, …
THE
GREAT DIVIDE in America's political life is a topic we have explored
before, and if current events are any indication, it is a topic we'll be
returning to again ... and again. Our Cover Story is reported by our
Senior Contributor Ted Koppel:
A couple of months back, Stephen Colbert was checking out the makeup of his studio audience:
Colbert:
"Right-handers? (Cheers) Left-handers? (Cheers) Blondes? (Cheers)
Brunettes? (Cheers) Trump voters? (One man goes "Wooo!") Good for you!
Don't you change!"
It was actually kind of a sweet moment; because the Ed Sullivan Theater in the heart of Manhattan is definitely not Trump Country; and this single Trump supporter was being treated like some sort of endangered species.
Colbert: "Don't we love this guy? Thank you for your service!"
It was a rare, tiny moment of tolerance in what has become an increasingly intolerant media landscape.
In the immediate wake of last week's shooting in Alexandria, Va., in which Republican Congressman Steve Scalise was critically injured, there was a brief surge of "hands across the aisle."
"An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us," said House Speaker Paul Ryan.
"To
my colleagues, you'll hear me say something you've never heard me say
before: I identify myself with the remarks of the Speaker," said
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
But the shooter's immediate identification as a Trump hater stoked passions on the right … and the far-right.
Geraldo
Rivera called it "attempted partisan mass-murder." Alex Jones, of the
website InfoWars, called it "a terror attack coordinated not by ISIS but
by CNN, MSNBC, [and] the Democratic Party."
If
what you're hearing and reading and watching runs the gamut of what's
referred to these days as the "mainstream media" -- center-right to
partisan left -- then professor Yochai Benkler, at Harvard's Berkman
Klein Center for Internet and Society, has concluded that all of you are
consuming pretty much the same material.
America's
political and cultural divisions have become even more polarized in the
current media landscape. Pictured clockwise, from upper left: Jeffrey
Toobin, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity and Keith Olbermann.
CBS News
He recently completed a study of coverage of the Trump-Russia story throughout May 2017.
"If you look and compare the words that are typical of places like the
Wall Street Journal or Fortune or what we would normally think of as
center-right; sites that are the three networks, the Times, the Post;
all the way to Huffington Post and Daily Kos and things that are more
partisan left -- they all used very similar words.
"They all focus on Trump and Russia in very similar terms of what the complication is: Does it raise a question of impeachment? Doesn't it? Is it enough for obstruction or not?"
When
CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin referred to the "obstruction of
justice," radio and TV host Mark Levin described Toobin as a "left-wing
kook."
Benkler says media outlets on the right are offering much
less coverage of possible obstruction of justice. In addition, "you see a
completely different version of this; it is about a 'deep state' effort
to bring down Trump."
Or, as Sean Hannity referred to it, "the
deep-state Obama hold-over bureaucrats who are hell-bent on destroying
this president -- President Trump."
Crown
Let's
state the obvious: The Republicans control the Senate. The Republicans
control the House. Donald Trump has been our President just five
months. Talk of impeachment is probably premature, and certainly plays
right into the hands of the president's most ardent supporters, like
Rush Limbaugh, who said: "I marvel at the ability to drive these people
crazy. They think they're driving Trump crazy, and they may be. But I'm
telling you, they're losing it, too. They're literally out of their
minds now!"
Pat Buchanan, whose new book, "Nixon's White House
Wars," draws on his own experiences as an advisor to President Nixon,
told Koppel, "The battle between Donald Trump and the media, which is
very volatile and it's back-and-forth, it's every day, that really began
in earnest in November of 1969, when Nixon, after he gave his famous,
'Great Silent Majority' speech, was attacked by the networks
immediately."
Buchanan was the author of what would become a
highly-controversial speech, from November 1969, that he wrote for Vice
President Spiro Agnew, hitting back at the TV networks:
"My
friends, we'd never trust such power as I've described over public
opinion in the hands of an elected government. It's time we questioned
it in the hands of a small and unelected elite."
Sound familiar? It was a first draft of what 47 years later would become a full-throated attack on "fake media."
Sean Hannity: "Edited fake news!" Jack Posobiec: "Now he's admitting the New York Times is fake news." Mike Cernovich: "The fake news media has George Soros. They have Jeff Bezos. They have Carlos Slim!"
When
Buchanan ran for president himself, in 1992 and 1996, he crafted
several campaign themes that Donald Trump adopted almost word-for-word:
Buchanan: "Friends, there is nothing wrong with putting America first." Trump: "'America first' will be the major and overriding theme of my administration." Buchanan:
"Each year millions of illegal immigrants cross our Southern borders
into the United States. Most come without job skills. Crime explodes." Trump: "They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists." Buchanan: "If I can get a victory in California, you'll see this fence all the way across the Gulf exactly where I want it." Trump: "I would build a great wall -- and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me."
Then and now, these were themes designed to peel white, working-class Americans away from the Democratic Party.
And it worked.
Only the divisions now, says Buchanan, are far deeper than they were 20 years ago:
Patrick Buchanan.
CBS News
"And
so everyone turns, basically, to create their own newspaper, and their
own network, and that's what they read," Buchanan told Koppel. "But the
core of it, Ted, is that the country's divided as it's never been before
in my lifetime."
At both ends of the political spectrum, there is
a whiff of self-righteous high drama. In online videos, commentator
Keith Olbermann refers to President Trump as "our national
embarrassment, our international disgrace," while Mark Levin accuses the
media of hating America, saying, "They're every bit as evil as Donald
Trump says."
And with the Trump administration calling media "fake
news," and claiming that scientists are wrong about climate change,
Benkler says that "every system we have for saying there's a world out
there that's real, it's not all partisan politics, is being criticized
by this administration, [and] is being criticized by the propaganda
network that supports it."
A network, says Professor Benkler,
largely inspired by Breitbart.com, until a few years ago an obscure,
right-wing website which, under the leadership of Steve Bannon,
accumulated enormous national political influence.
Steve Bannon is now President Trump's chief strategist.
Yochai Benkler.
CBS News
"Breitbart,
connected to Fox News, amplifying AM radio, creates an alternative
narrative," said Benkler. "So they'll have a series of stories basically
saying, 'Deep state leaks for the first time,' this, that or the other.
This will then be linked to other websites, like Daily Caller. It will
be amped up on conspiracy sites like InfoWars. It will be generated on
TV on Fox News.
"And all of this network of propaganda sites is directly then tied to someone who's sitting inside the White House."
Koppel
said, "And if I tell those folks who believe all the things you've just
enumerated, 'There is this study conducted by a professor at Harvard
University, now he's an honest academician ...' you think they're gonna
pay the slightest bit of attention to your study?"
"No," Benkler replied.
Koppel
asked Buchanan, who watched Richard Nixon resign before he could be
impeached, whether he thinks President Trump will be impeached.
"You
know, I do not think … no, I do not know how we can sustain this level
of intensity and hostility that we've had for four-and-a-half months for
44 more months," he replied. "I don't know how it's going to end. But
my guess is badly."
Speaking with Buchanan before last
Wednesday's shooting in Alexandria, Va., Koppel raised the issue of
possible violence in the context of an impeachment.
"Would it come
to violence? I don't know. I wouldn't predict that," Buchanan
replied. "But I do think that this country would be even further and
irrevocably divided over this issue. And they would not forget it for a
long, long time. Because they would believe what, Ted? They would
believe that the establishment was out to get Trump from the first day,
and it wanted to take him down. And I think they would be right."
Which
brings us back to where we began: Stephen Colbert, sitting atop the
late-night ratings these days by being consistently, and often
outrageously, anti-Trump.
Colbert: "Donald Trump, if you're watching, first of all, you're a bad president. Please resign. (Cheers)"
The cheering went on … and on … and on … For more info:
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