The Worst Show on Television: An Election Night Diary
By Matt Taibbi
Created Nov 11 2006 - 9:04am
When I woke up in my hotel in Pittsburgh the morning after the elections
there was a yellow legal pad and a Pittsburgh Pirates novelty pen ($4.95 in
the Sheraton gift shop) splayed on the bedspread, the pad containing about
nine pages of single-spaced notes. The night before, after coming home from
Rick Santorum's concession speech downtown, I'd flopped in bed, popped a
sleeping pill and started frantically taking notes from the various
cable-news election spectaculars.

There is a lot of garbage and nonsense in these notes (i.e. "10:47 p.m.
Chris Matthews' mouth always looks like it just had a cock in it/something
about the way he moves his lips/creepy") but on the whole it is a fairly
accurate representation of the long arc of depression I followed before
finally falling asleep late in the morning:

10:25 p.m. CNN showing Joe Lieberman's victory speech. Lieberman bearing
leprechaunish grin, thanking everyone on planet earth. "And I thank," he
shouts, "the firefighters of the state of Connecticut!" Lieberman looks at
firefighters in room and smiles, like he really likes firefighters. Then he
looks back at the camera triumphantly with a look that says it all -- "Nice
try, you fuckers! Get ready for six more years of ME!"

After that Lieberman starts blathering about his "Lieber leaders," drawing
more cheers; he does the closed-fist/thumbs-up thing at the word "Lieber."
Three years ago in New Hampshire, it was "Liebermaniacs." What's next?
"Lieber-holes?" "Lieber peepers?" Worse? And I want to thank all the
Lieberfuckers in the audience tonight, without whom this wonderful victory
for all our Connecticut citizens would not have been possible...

To me, this ruins the whole evening. I can't see any way to describe any day
in which Joe Lieberman wins an election as a good day, but here's the good
news: Six years from now, both the Republicans and the Democrats will run
serious candidates, and Joe Lieberman will be scrambling for the last eleven
percent of Connecticut's half-in-the-grave vote, running on a ticket of "the
terrorists support both of my opponents." It'll be worth staying in
journalism just for that.

There's a strange footnote to the Lieberman coverage; on virtually all of
the networks, both Lieberman and Bernie Sanders of Vermont are listed in the
Democrat column in the Senate, and all discussions about the balance of
power in the Senate count both men on the blue side, even though both are
independents and the real count is 49-49-2. Lieberman, though he considers
himself a Democrat, is ideologically distant enough to have had to run
against a centrist millionaire Democrat in the general election. And
Sanders, though he won the Democratic nomination, is a true independent,
beholden to neither party and much closer to Ron Paul than Rahm Emmanuel. I
get the sense two things are at work here: Lieberman is being rehabilitated
as a Democrat in the media, and the "socialist" background of Bernie Sanders
is being kept under the rug a little bit.

This is too bad because the Sanders Senate win was one of the few truly
interesting and novel things that happened on this election night --
probably the farthest advance up the face of the two-party mountain we've
had in the last fifty years or so. Sanders proved that it is possible to win
a major office in this country without having to make a deal with the usual
financial interests who control the two parties. True, he did so in a tiny
state, on the strength of genuinely anomalous name-recognition numbers and
something very close to a personal relationship with every voter in the
state, but it was a major win all the same. But for the sake of narrative
consistency both the networks and the Democrats are happy having Sanders in
their column for tonight, anyway. I'll be interested to see how fast they
throw him overboard once Bill O'Reilly does his first show about Vermont's
Communist senator.

10:46 p.m. Barack Obama on CNN; becomes the fourth Democratic politician on
air this evening to mention the "anxiously awaited" Baker-Hamilton report on
Iraq. The talking points for both parties have been abundantly clear since
shortly after 8 p.m., when the first whiff of a Democratic sweep filled the
air. The Republican politicians (win or lose) all start off thanking the
Lord in their post-race speeches, then move to thanking (in order) their
wives, their kids, and then, if they are senatorial losers, the senior
Republican senator from his state who provided him with "the best friend I
ever had" during this difficult race.

The Democratic talking points, meanwhile, are "a new direction," "change"
and the anxiously awaited Baker-Hamilton report. Obama appears to be
standing on his tiptoes while he talks in an effort to look Lincolnesque,
much like John McCain will seem to be doing later this evening when he
appears draped in flags and practically wearing his Straight Talk '08 bumper
stickers, drooling for power like a fruit bat with rabies.

11:00 p.m. CNN calls the Connecticut fifth congressional for Chris Murphy,
with incumbent Republican Nancy Johnson fucking the dog. This is the
Democrats' 10th pickup of the evening and Anderson Cooper mentions that the
"magic number" is now five. All of the CNN panelists and over half of the
MSNBC panelists will be dead from sports cliches by morning.

The worst episode would probably be a nasty interview on MSNBC the following
morning with Tom DeLay, who was surprisingly ubiquitous after the election
wipeout, popping up on several channels to remind America that he hadn't
been convicted of anything yet, not exactly. In his post-race assessment the
following morning DeLay would spit out one sports cliche after the other.
"The Democrats didn't win, the Republicans lost," he began, explaining that
the Republicans had faltered by being too timid. "If you play not to lose,
you'll lose," he said. Asked if he still thought Karl Rove was a genius,
DeLay scoffed. "Of course," he said. "Just because you lose one ballgame,
doesn't mean you're not a genius anymore." A prolonged discussion of the
"ballgame" ensued.

With each passing election season the format for political coverage on TV
morphs even further in the direction of sportscasting. Most of the networks
on this election night quite baldly copied the NFL Countdown format, with
one Max-Headroom/Chris Berman celluloid host figure (Anderson Cooper, Chris
Matthews, etc.) set off to the far left on a set with four "expert
analysts." On CNN the roles of Tom Jackson, Michael Irvin, Steve Young and
Ron Jaworski were filled by the likes of Candy Crowley, James Carville, Bill
Bennett (a dead ringer for Peter King) and J.C. Watts, and the general
topics of discussion -- who would win the big game, whose prospects for next
year were better, which coaches needed to be fired, what halftime
adjustments needed to be made -- were virtually indistinguishable from the
real football shows. Jeff Greenfield to Wolf Blitzer, just before midnight
on CNN, sounded like a man talking wild card possibilities for the Jaguars
three weeks short of the playoffs: "They need three of these four states to
take the Senate," he says. And choose your cliche, Wolf. Inside straight?
Run the table?

Wolf: "Whatever it is, we'll be here, we'll be watching until it's clearly
resolved one way or another."

Any reporter worth his AFTRA card can see that this is the same job, that
there is absolutely no difference between pointing out that Indy has a soft
second-half run defense and that the Knoxville and Nashville precincts, if
they come in late, will come in hard for Harold Ford.

The thing that people should be concerned about isn't that the news networks
are choosing to cover politics like a football game. It's the idea that both
televised football games and televised politics might represent some
idealized form of commercial television drama that both sports and politics
evolved in the direction of organically, under the constant financial
pressure brought to bear by TV advertisers. Both politics and sports turned
into this shit because this format happens to sell the most Cheerios,
regardless of what the content is. If you work backward from that premise,
and start thinking about what the consequences of that phenomenon might
actually be, your head can easily explode.

There were really only a few genuinely interesting things that happened on
this election night, but all of them were blown off by the TV goons because
they didn't fit into the winning-and-losing sports narrative. The Sanders
win was one story, but another very interesting one was the Kent
Conrad/Dwight Grotberg Senate race in North Dakota. This one was never in
doubt, as Conrad completely wiped out Grotberg, but what was interesting was
that both candidates agreed not to run negative campaigns and went to great
pains to comport themselves like gentlemen in their public appearances. In a
world where social responsibility actually played a role in editorial
decision-making both candidates would have been extolled at length on the
networks and celebrated for their positive contributions to the political
atmosphere -- but given what a catastrophe a return to dignified campaigning
would be for the TV news business, it's not at all surprising that these
guys didn't even get their own blurb in the CNN baseline crawl.

11:08 p.m. CNN calls control of the House for the Democrats. Cheering and
orgiastic glee in Washington; correspondent Dana Bash, at Dem HQ in
Washington, looks like she's having a flashback to some long-gone Girls Gone
Wild: Sarah Lawrence Nights days.

Wolf Blitzer, Dana Bash... where do these CNN newspeople get their names? I
keep waiting for the next standup: From the Pentagon, this is Cunt Millstone
reporting...

Meanwhile, Jeff Greenfield on the Democratic talking points (change, new
direction, Baker-Hamilton): "They look to be very focus-group-tested for
maximum appeal." He says this approvingly. An ancient fantasy rises from my
subconscious: I start looking for the "Instant Leatherface" button on the TV
remote that will trigger the entrance onto the CNN news set of a crazed
chainsaw-wielding figure...Would pay any mount of money to see Greenfield
drop his earpiece and run off the set away from a screaming Leatherface,
loafers sliding on the studio floor as he races away in panic. No luck,
though.

A friend of mine a few weeks ago wrote me a letter suggesting that reporters
come up with a list of press behaviors worth banning before the 2008
elections. One good one, I think, would be commending candidates for
successfully manipulating voters and the media with crude fakery and
bullshit. In other words, anytime a panel expert like Greenfield says
something like "McCain's handlers have clearly done a great job at getting
their man to sound more genuine in rural areas," he should have to do thirty
hours of community service, ladeling out soup somewhere to paraplegics or
something. "They look to be focus-group-tested for maximum appeal" seems
worth a double sentence. Anyway, anyone who has ideas for other press traits
worth canning, please drop me a note -- maybe some of us reporters can draw
up a voluntary treaty to sign.

Just before midnight Candy Crowley weighs...well, let's not ever use the
phrase Candy Crowley weighs in, if we can avoid it. Let's say Crowley chimes
in on the "new direction" issue:

"You still have a government that is divided," she says. "So I think if
people think that they voted for change and suddenly there's going to be
this new direction will be disappointed come January."

11:58 p.m. Rahm Emmanuel, who has seemingly been on six channels
simultaneously since about 8:30 p.m. (an impressive magic trick: Is he
trying out for Criss Angel's Congressional Mindfreak?), is back on CNN. I've
stopped filling in some of the specific nouns in my notes, leaving only the
essential gist, but it turns out you don't lose much in translation. "The
old era of something is over," says Rahm, "and the new era of something else
has just begun!"

12:09 a.m. Exit Rahm Emmanuel, enter Harry Reid, who says: "All across
America, from the deserts of somewhere to the streets of somewhere else,
there is in the air the winds of change!" Roars, cheers from the crowd.
"We're headed in a new direction!"

12:16 a.m. Nancy Pelosi on CNN: "Never have we made it more clear that we
need a new direction...Mr. President, we need a new direction!"

12:24 a.m. Obama back on CNN, explaining what he thinks the election results
mean. "Well," he says, "it confirms in my mind that the American people are
eager to move in a new direction." Again the tiptoes thing; Obama thinking,
"I'm taller than that bitch McCain!"

Listening to any Democrat rattle off his talking points tonight is like
having a jerk-off session with a chat room robot:

HI HONEY R U FEELING LONELY???

I'm good :) U?

I'M 18 AND TAKING OFF MY BRA AND PANTIES

I'm rock hard and looking for a new direction!

CUM ON MY TITS at www.newdirectionXXX.com [1]

Are there really people out there who get off on this shit? Have we sunk so
low that people actually respond emotionally to these robo-speeches?

The worst thing is that it's the same code words every single election.
Fifty years from now people are going to be sitting in front of their
holo-screens listening to Paris Hilton's grandson promise "a new direction
for America." And Jeff Greenfield's great gay-grandson is going to leap to
his platform heels and applaud him for being "focus-group-tested for maximum
appeal." Does time even pass in this country? What the hell is wrong with
us?

12:42 a.m. Wolf Blitzer on the Virginia Senate race: "It doesn't get a whole
lot more closer than that." Hearing the words twist awkwardly out of his
mouth, he frowns and scans the room looking like he wants to hit someone.
Best moment of the whole evening.

1:12 a.m. Diane Feinstein, on CNN, weighs in with her original assessment of
the election results:

"My view," she says, "is that it a signal for a change in direction."

1:36 a.m. McCain appears on CNN, broadcasting live from his Arizona office.
He's got American flags on either side of him and you can almost see his
boner straining against his pants. His smile is unseemly. He's talking about
Republican losses and trying to look sullen, but he's not fooling anyone.
He's like the bachelor who starts trying to fuck the widow before the
funeral convoy even reaches the cemetery.

For what it's worth, the dual appearances of McCain and Obama on TV tonight
marked the unofficial beginning of the 2008 presidential race. Campaign
trail fixture Crowley would even say it out loud the next day: "The game is
on." Panels on several networks noted the Riefenstahl-esque imagery of
McCain's appearance and noted that it was a volley fired at the presidency.

It's not a coincidence that the early White House hopefuls were all herded
on the air the instant the polls closed. Once the last vote is counted, the
next story is the next race. All politics has to be contained within the
parameters of that who's-winning narrative.

What the Congress actually does, how it actually spends its money, what
happens in its committees -- it's all irrelevant, except insofar as that
activity bears on the next presidential race. That's why the "experts" on
these panels are so unanimous in their belief that the Democrats should lay
low for the next two years and not push their subpoena powers. They all
think pushing it in Congress would negatively affect the Democrats' White
House chances. In other words, it's bad strategy for the next football game,
just like Howard Dean's crazy antiwar stance was deemed "too liberal" for
the gridiron by the same geniuses a few years ago -- even though history
ultimately proved Dean right on that score, for all his other flaws.

Our national political press is narrowly focused, schooled in inch-deep
analysis, and completely results-obsessed. It's a huge and expensive
mechanism bedecked with every conceivable bell and whistle (did anyone else
catch the giant cyber-globe display frantically spinning behind Anderson
Cooper's head? I thought I was going to have an aneurysm) and designed to
roam the intellectual range of a chimpanzee. It also has no sense of humor.
When the Daily Show spoofed the networks with its "Midterm Midtacular,"
dragging the venerable Dan Rather out and coaxing a scripted piece of
instant "homespun" analysis out of him (he said Hillary Clinton ran away
with her race like "a hobo with a sweet potato pie"), the real journalists
freaked out. Joe Scarborough led a panel of experts who denounced the show
as not that funny; one guest compared Rather's bit to Muhammad Ali's crudely
scripted appearances on Diff'rent Strokes, saying it was "awkward."

The reality is that Stewart's array of grotesquely pointless special effects
and intentionally buffoonish commentary is an improvement on the real thing,
and the real thing is an accurate reflection of our actual politics. Which
means, basically, that we're fucked, stuck in an endless cycle of retarded
lottery coverage -- 300 million people watching a bunch of half-bright
millionaires in ties guess the next number to come out of the chute. I hope
we're all insane. Otherwise, what's our excuse?

1:53 a.m. When Missouri's Claire McCaskell comes on the air to claim
victory, I take one of the steak knives from my room-service tray and hold
it to my throat, vowing to slice myself open and pull my tongue through my
neck-hole if the words "new direction" escape her lips.

"We have heard the voices of Missourians," she says, "and they've said, we
want..."

I tense up, holding the knife tighter.

"...we want change," she says.

Thank God. Bring on 2008!
_______

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson