Stars Fell on Barack Obama

I will go to Korea, Ike said. He campaigned during an unpopular Asian war.
And America elected Dwight David Eisenhower as president.
I will go to Iraq, Barack Obama said, campaigning during the latest unpopular war.
Now the star system in American journalism is burning, burning bright to light up the Democrat’s presidential campaign.
If the candidate doesn’t make a major foreign policy goof, the media celestials will brightly backlight his election profile. They’re going too.
You get the impression of a royal progress by an oriental potentate. Newspaper poobahs and magazine satraps and TV sultanas will climb aboard decorated dromedaries to form the entourage. The U.S. military will assist the Secret Service in Janissary duty.
Headliners from national newspapers and magazines are going.
So are all three network news anchors – Charles Gibson of ABC, Katie Couric of CBS and Brian Williams of NBC. They’ll be doing primetime interviews with the candidate.
Clang the cymbals. Blow the trumpets. Beat the tabla. The cavalcade comes.
Obama couldn’t buy this kind of publicity.
Neither could Republican opponent John McCain. Coverage of his international trips fit into the routine category.
The old hat McCain is getting the “also running” treatment stingingly felt by Hillary Rodham Clinton in her party nomination campaign against Obama.
“He’s the new guy, though,” rationalize media executives to Jim Rutenberg in The New York Times. The reporter documents the ongoing imbalance of TV coverage in favor of Obama. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/us/politics/17anchors.html?ex=1374033600&en=00fc706cfaedd8e9&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
My own political reporting for The Courier-Journal years ago had to measure up – literally – to the standards of the Louisville managing editor, a stickler for fairness and ethics. He used a yardstick to make sure every candidate got exactly the same number of column inches.
The M.E. also said you have to rise above your ethics sometimes. So he would excuse a lack of balanced coverage for news reasons.
Barack Obama traveling to get his foreign policy ticket punched does not excuse blatant unfairness.
Neither does the “new guy” argument after a long “rock star” campaign by the now familiar candidate.
Nor does the Ike analogy. This isn’t history. It’s politics. And the star system.
Media celebrities recognize a fellow luminary when they see one in politics. So they give chase like Magi going to Bethlehem.
Stardom is an addiction constantly to be fed. Journalism egos are not too big but too little, too insecure, too threatened not to conform with the pack. They can’t stand the idea of being left behind when the court travels abroad.
And network newscasts look enviously at ratings by cable outlets for political coverage. So on caravan they will go.
They’ll need a little music.
Here’s my parody on a Mitchell Parish, Frank Perkins lyric familiar to Alabama:

We lived our little drama, we kissed in a field of white.
And stars fell upon Obama last night.
I can’t forget the glamour, your eyes held a tender light.
And stars fell upon Obama last night.

I never planned in my imagination, a situation so heavenly
A fairy land that no one else could enter
And in the center, just you and me, dear
My heart beat like a hammer, my arms wound around you tight
And stars fell upon Obama last night.

The radio icon's channel comes clear

Good for Rush Limbaugh. His $400 million deal for an eight year contract extension fazes me not.
Yet I don't care for the gentleman and don’t listen to him.
That seems to me sensible instead of getting into a swivet over outlandish pay for outlandish people.
Rush comes across as the cigar-reeking, bad habit, loud-of-mouth passenger lumbering down the airplane aisle toward the empty seat next to mine.
His opinions soar with a lot of his fellow travelers. I’d have to consider a later flight if I were forced into his company.
I don’t even think it’s a liberal vs. conservative thing. My taste simply is substance over image, reason over rhetoric, meaning over controversy. Give me an open mind over an open mouth anytime.
In fact I flow from the left full circle again into conservatism and completely defend any commentator’s First Amendment right to become the unwanted flight partner.
Ah, I hear you say. How can you judge Limbaugh if you don’t listen to him?
Well, you don’t have to eat the whole egg to know it’s rotten. I’ve heard enough.
I've also read enough in Time and Newsweek and elsewhere to know their coverboy is a national phenom who isn't going away. Americans made him what he is, phenomenally.
NYT Magazine writer Zev Chavets called the guy an American icon. Yes, well, icons are one dimensional religious images.
This one's veneration comes from being "confrontational, deliberately insensitive and funny," Chavets wrote.
And his single dimension?
Well, Rush himself told The New York Times Magazine it isn't his conservatism but his business ability: "My first goal is to attract the largest possible audience so I can charge confiscatory ad rates." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/magazine/06Limbaugh-t.html?ex=1373083200&en=96d69779ce7c0fb1&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
Sounds like sham, a case of entertainment profit and not movement standard bearer.
Is he worth what Clear Channel is paying him? Sure, if the market will bear it. Commercial radio is like every information platform, grabbing at gold-plated straw men to cope with the digital and demographic revolt by audiences.
Media salaries at upper echelons took off into the wild blue yonder long ago.
The merger of the information industry with entertainment is like gay marriage will seem 20 years from now. What once appeared strange and perverse to some people turns ho-hum in time.
That means, of course, the Rush Limbaugh star will flame out too.
Newspapers started the star system long ago when they began running photos of their top columnists and having them speak at the Rotary and booming them in house ads.
Those promos seem primitive now. But TV news built on the concept to the point Katy Couric became CBS-TV's astronomically paid evening news anchor with $15 million a year. Now there's talk she'll be pushed out.
Katy doesn’t even mouth cigars or pop an excess of prescription drugs like ol’ Rush.
Then again, for all her personality attributes, The CBS celebrity can’t match the radio man for his familiarity with audiences.
Talent? How much does it take?
It’s that connection that matters.
Instead of getting jealous at Rush Limbaugh, we should all study how he does it.
Trouble is, then we’d have to listen to him.
Clear Channel would have to pay me the $400 million.

What to do when the headhunter calls

Some big jobs are open in journalism. More will come. Revolving doors churn faster with the industry in economic upheaval.
A city editor once advised me I was “on the up escalator, because management had its eye on me.”
My wife and I got a big laugh out of that. Still do.
Ambition is normal, however. No one should apologize for wanting to be considered.
The turmoil in management is so rampant and widespread across media platforms, the next call a news executive gets may be from a search firm.
Leonard Downie, Jr. is retiring from The Washington Post after a fabled run as executive editor. He’s making way so a new publisher can have her own person to meld print and online coverage.
Everyone in and out of media has a favorite candidate to succeed the late Tim Russert as NBC’s Washington Bureau Chief and moderator of Meet the Press. Actually, that could take two appointments.
How wise of the network to ask Tom Brokaw, its dean of broadcasters, to preside on the Sunday morning show in the interim.
It’s tough to take a saint’s place on a permanent basis. And Russert certainly received media canonization so rapidly, the Vatican must wonder if it could speed its own process for beatification.
Note to the halo hungry: Try to follow a sinner or at least allow some time to lapse before your own succession to magnificence. And more advice...

• Make sure you have something to add to the civic conversation.
• Journalists are content providers, so don't go too techno crazy.
• It’s a cliché to want to make a difference; choose that attitude anyway.
• Forget about the kingdom and the power and the glory; just do the news.
• Keep family uppermost as Tim Russert did; we have enough misplaced priorities.
• Don't get snowed by the perks and the bucks.

Journalism is a public service and a Constitutional privilege with responsibility attached to protect The People with information.
If that job description doesn’t fit the offer, thank the headhunter for the call and go back to work.

A comfort level with some frequency

I didn’t quit listening to radio. Radio quit me.
I steal that line from Ronald Reagan, who said it about Democrats. He was a guy on a mic before going into another kind of make believe as an actor and politician. He used to phony up sports broadcasts to make them sound live.
And that’s it with pop radio isn’t it? Hype, whistle, wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.
There was a time when radio played it natural. I liked it like that, as comfortable as a movie matinee. Then came TV, audience and ad competition, and marketing and the Top 40. Bummer.
I knew something was wrong years ago when Del Rio, Texas sold autographed pictures of Jesus on the air.
National Public Radio is winning me back. I guess it’s a demographic thing.
Sanity is reclaiming the airwaves. I may not be alone in my opinion, at least in my fan class.
The local university station plays NPR the first half of the day for the faculty and off-campus neighborhoods. The students don’t start listening until the second half when rock starts. Hard.
When the kids graduate, they may not take the frazzling frequency along.
College grads are not big fans of commercial radio, turns out. Edison Market Research shows non-college grads listen more. But listeners who have a diploma tend to count themselves in the NPR audience.
Part of the explanation may be the increase of workplace radio listening, which is significant among college graduates. Thirty percent of those choose the Internet for listening, compared with 12 percent among non college graduates.
Hey, I think we’re sick of obnoxious radio, which is impossible to work by. It helps that NPR is slightly boring to the young, so it is attractive to the rest of us, cultural instead of counter-cultural and not demanding of our full attention while we are otherwise occupied.
Radio needs to be more like the later Ronald Reagan. A milder delivery plays gentle on the mind. The message seems credible that way, or at least more than sham sports or religious relics with counterfeit signatures.

Keep Tim’s name at work

Tim Russert deserves a living memorial from journalism.
The testament should endure much longer and more meaningfully than the on-air shrine of NBC’s coverage about his passing.
Despite the network’s backlashing critics, no one honestly can be surprised by the broadcasters’ excess on behalf of their Washington bureau chief and moderator of the best political talk show.
Instead of, “If it’s Sunday, it’s Meet the Press,” the slogan could be, “If it’s NBC, here’s another tribute to Tim.”
There’s a simple reason for the immoderation about the moderator. NBC did it because it could. And his many friends and colleagues did it, because they wanted to.
So let the longest running wake on television play itself out. By general agreement the Russert name is too good for his colleagues to wear out.
I know I don’t let the first day of the week pass without watching Meet the Press. I also watch ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos for contrast. And I finish the Sunday papers-on-the-air with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer who claims the best political team in the business.
Maybe the cable crew does deserve ranking in the group category.
Tim Russert was the tops in singles for good reasons: He asked questions. He asked them well. He asked them only after research.
Perhaps that’s not a lost art in journalism.
But the nation blundered into the Iraq War behind our unquestioning press corps. The Bush-Cheney cat got the tongue of White House reporters on all sorts of policies that will take long years to reverse. And community print and broadcast media lack the chutzpah of the blogosphere when seeking the bottom of local, state and regional issues that matter.
I’ve witnessed reporters read a press release and pose an inquiry on the text so the utility, business, police or public official could ever so politely parrot the official statement back for camera or steno pad.
Fear of appearing rude, contrary or uninformed intrudes: Don’t stand out in the crowd.
Well, Tim Russert must have cared about country, about the civic conversation and about the future more than he cared about smooth talk. He wasn’t abrasive as ABC’s Sam Donaldson in his heyday or as rantingly partisan as the skulk from the Fox hole or as blandly scattershot as Jim Lehrer’s NewsHour on PBS or as politically poetic as Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation.
He was the studious case detective armed with the facts and merely asking the politician to account for the record so different from the latest statement. He had the tape or the film clip or the transcript as back-up.
Tim Russert was the master of the question.
So we should honor him by putting his name into the professional language.
From now on a question shall be called a “Tim.”
And the act of questioning with factual support shall be called “Doing a Russert.”
It’s a fitting memorial.