"Ignore the columnists, ignore Calvin," e-mailed Rowdy, "what I want to know right now is the features. And have you considered tracking that with the magazine's desire to be The Elector? You all only thought that was written in humor."
The Elector was our parody of independent media print division. (Rowdy's correct, we were going for humor, who knew The Nation would attempt to turn it into reality?) Calvin is Calvin Trillin, the poet of the magazine. Rowdy further suggested, "Lose the magazine's meaningless editorials, too. They never stand by them and AlterPunky has declared war on the unsigned." Along with Rowdy, a Nation friend of C.I.'s had already suggested something similar and, on Monday, The New York Times ran "Voters Excited Over '08 Race; Tired of It, Too" -- front paging the issue of burnout.
Mike was thinking (Monday) of writing about it on Tuesday but then he saw Danny Schechter's
"Enough Already: With Heat of Summer, Time To Turn Down Political Temperature" from which we'll note:
Judging by the intensity of the coverage and the overheated debate in the blogs and among advocacy groups, you would think that we were going to the polls tomorrow. There's a presidential candidate spieling everywhere you turn. What's worst, there’s an endless telethon of pundit speculation on the basis of the thinnest polls and wonkiest projections.
Why is this happening? Is there really nothing else to report on? Has the glare of constant media attention become such an irresistible obsession for pols? Is the excitement of running for office so powerful in its gravitational pull on politicians that they have nothing better to do? Does our media have to manufacture excitement so much that it relies on constant coverage of what was once called the "permanent campaign" to lure audiences?
Has what TIME magazine once called "ELECTOTAINMENT" become a permanent feature of our TV diets only to be interrupted by even more empty-minded celebrity scandals?
Already, the public, outside of a primary states like Iowa and New Hampshire where candidate events are a stable of recreational interest, and free food, is getting weary of all the political noise all the time. It is as if real life is finally catching up with an imagined satirical poll that appeared in l998 in the ONION with the headline: "73 percent of Americans Unable To Believe This Sh*t."
Electoral overkill is producing a tune out among voters even as it seems to be exciting the "base" which seems to be on uppers while the rest of the country is clearly on downers.
With all that in mind, what did The Nation run in the first six months on Iraq or Iraq-related and what did they run on the horse races?
From our eyeballing
Iraq:
1) "About Face" (1-8-07)
2) "Surge for Peace" (2-19-07)
3) "Lincoln's Antiwar Revolt" (3-12-07)
4) "Iraq: Who Will Get the Oil" (3-19-07)
5) "Conscience and the War" (3-26-07)
6) "Bush's Shadow Army" (4-2-07)
7) "Antiwar Students Rising" (4-2-07)
8) "Looking Out For Veterans" (4-9-07)
9) "Thanks For Nothing" (4-9-07)
10) "How To Get Out Of Iraq" (4-25-07)
11) "Training Iraq's Death Squads" (6-4-07)
12) "Exodus" (6-11-07)
13) "The Secret Air War in Iraq" (6-11-07)
Thirteen pieces on Iraq in the magazine's first six months for 2007. Note, we're not commenting on the quality. There are some included that we all wouldn't agree on. (Ari Berman's 4-9-07 piece that runs on pages 4 and five uses "Iraq" 3 times, "Afghanistan" once, references past unnamed conflicts -- see Tim Walz -- and mentions Vietnam once. It is not an Iraq or Iraq related piece. It is a Congressional piece.)
So the horse races?
1) "Kucinich Tries Again" (1-01-07).
2) "Johnny Populist" (1-22-07, subject is John Edwards)
3) "Obama's Challenge" (2-5-07)
4) "Obama's Media Maven" (2-19-07)
5) "Rushed Primaries" (2-26-07)
6) "Where's the Idea Primary" (2-26-07)
7) "Obama and the American Dilemma" (3-05-07)
8) "McCain Mutiny" (3-05-07)
9) "Bloggers on the Trail" (3-12-07, Edwards campaign)
10) "Senator Inevitable" (3-26-07, subject is Hillary Clinton)
11) "The Coming Party Realignment" (4-30-07 -- voters are realigning!)
12) "Laboring for Edwards" (5-09-07)
13) "Dems Tangled In the Netroots" (5-21-07)
14) "Hillary Inc" (6-04-07)
So, in the first six months of the 'weekly' Nation magazine, 14 articles on or related to the horse races were run and 13 on or related to Iraq. To underscore, the 2008 election got 14 articles in 2007 while the ongoing illegal war got only 13. The 2008 elections will take place in November 2008, not this year. Not even 12 month from now. But already The Nation magazine has indicated that the 2008 elections are the most important thing of 2007. We're still attempting to track down the veracity that they intend to use 2008 to focus on George Lucas' Star Wars TV series (live action) intended to begin filming no earlier than 2009.
The most important issue to The Nation in 2007 is the 2008 elections. Hillary Clinton has been the subject of two negative articles and, curiously Lamshke, they were both written by men. Possibly, you can swipe that idea for your next story if you've got nothing to rip off from Susan J. Douglas in the near future. Kucinich, the anti-war candidate, got coverage in the first issue and no article since. (That's why the editorials strike so many as laughable. We saw the same thing play out in 2006 with the Congressional election coverage by The Nation.) John Edwards' campaign got play in three articles while cover boy Obama saw three valentines. The Nation's yet to seriously address the issue of his corporate donations, his ties to scandals (including the current one where he barely knew someone -- someone kind enough to buy up a lot of land for Obama and his wife and then sell it to them at bargain basement prices -- What a stranger!).
In The Elector, Ava came up with the idea for the tag by the illustration (and notes it was reworked by others "credit where it's due"), "Our special issue that continues our non-stop 2006 election coverage that we'll only drop in a few weeks when we gear up for the 2008 elections." If you're missing the truth in that joke, you need only grab the November 20, 2006 issue of The Nation, flip to page five where "The 'Off-Year Primary'" begins (it ends on page six). If you're blanking, in 2006 the general election took place across the country on November 7th. And lest you think The Nation was sleeping on the horse race, the article was available online November 3rd. Yes, before the 2006 election had taken place it was already time to announce "If there's a winner in the 2006 version of that contest, it's Senator Barack Obama" (!), to offer up Hillary Clinton's negatives (Lakshme, take note, this piece was written by a male -- we look forward to your piece on why left and 'left' men, who may or may not have supported Hillary as First Lady, have trouble with her as a presidential candidate all this time later), tell you George Allen was out of the 2008 presidential race (when was he in?) and include some "good news for McCain". All before the 2006 election had taken place, this piece on the 2008 election was written and run online.
If voters are suffering burnout -- and they are -- independent media's hands are far from clean as they have offered up little more than horse racing for the first half of 2007.