A Win for the Good Guys

I wanted to add my voice to those expressing pleasure at Chris Hayes being given a chance to host his own show on MSNBC.  Not only am I pleased, but a bit astonished -- Chris is just far smarter and far more to the left than just about anyone I could ever imagine being given such a chance.  The only comparable figure I can think of is Rachel Maddow, who shares with Chris a combination of intellect, charm, civility, and clarity of thought and expression, that is generally absent from cable news blathering.

I met Chris and had a chance to talk to him extensively at a fund raiser for Tom Geoghegan when Geoghegan made his somewhat Quixotic run to fill Rahm Emanuel's congressional seat.  Since then I've run into him a few times and have always come away impressed with both his very quick mind and his immense affableness.  You get the sense of someone who is really well grounded despite having had a pretty meteoric rise. 

When he began doing guest hosting duties on MSNBC I was really struck by how comfortable he seemed on camera -- not necessarily a skill I would expect from a guy who has basically been a pretty serious print journalist from a young age.  But it turns out that the focus of his college experience was really in the theater -- writing, directing, and acting in plays.  This seems to have given him a kind of polish that one wouldn't necessarily expect from a novice. 

I think the theater experience has stood him in good stead in another way too and that is his ability to describe political and economic matters in the form of compelling narratives.  I watched him make a presentation at Netroots last year and was really struck at his abilities at communicating with the audience, his skill at weaving cogent political stories, and at encouraging people to think of things slightly differently. 

In fact, in reading the linked interview with him, I was very impressed with his description of the conventions of political reporting in Washington, something that is a bit of a recurring theme on this blog, and one which invites a great deal of analysis and despair in lefty blog circles, often of the economic conspiracy variety, i.e. journalists write and say that which their corporate masters permit.  This latter point of view has always struck me as reductive and simplistic, even if it is undeniable that the economic and political reporting in the U.S. is reflexively uncritical of most aspects of later day capitalism.  In the linked interview with Hayes, he posits an insight about the nature of this reporting that is at once pithy and deadly accurate:

There are certain genre constraints of the murder mystery, of the detective novel, of the romance novel, of the sitcom.  Everything around covering politics of Washington has heavy genre restraints.  It has its own version of the laugh track, of the two sets, of the wacky neighbor . . . one of the most radical acts that you can do as a journalist right now -- the most important act you can do as a journalist -- is the simple act of explanation.  And you can see this on a micro scale in financial regulation on the Hill, where its like the complexity and the arcane details are friends of the entrenched powers.

These insights -- regarding the genre-constrained nature of most political reporting, the failure of reporters to take on the job of explaining things to the public, and the role of complexity in preserving power -- represent a kind of clarity of thinking that Hayes brings to his task.  That, and a willingness to go after received wisdom in his polite but determined fashion.

I think his addition to the airwaves will be an enormously positive thing.  And I'd just like to add, that if he needs a guy to speak to the issues of working people, I'm available.    

 

Comments

[oddjob]

the genre-constrained nature of most political reporting

Thanks for this. When I have time I'm going to have to read that piece. I've long been aware of what he refers to, but I never thought of it before in the way he has. I think his description (as you've quoted it) seems quite apt.

I've usually referred to it as inertia, and I sometimes talk about it by referring to the MSM cranking up the Wurlitzer. There are certain story lines that get told over and over (with whatever the latest relevant embellishment happens to be), whether they're still accurate or not.

[kathy a.]

agree with the description.

sorry for not closing a tag in the last thread.

[kathy a.]

that's a great interview. i think he is correct in viewing the complexity of matters affecting people's lives being an enemy of understanding, and in people feeling more comfortable with a simple-minded certainty than with not "knowing" exactly how things will play out. it sounds like he views his role as processing and perhaps translating these complex matters so they are more accessible.

the quote about genres made me think of the "fair and balanced" approach to reporting that many of us have bemoaned -- where if some crackpot proclaims "obama is an alien kumquat," it is reported as a "controversy" requiring "expert opinions" from "all sides," which in talking head format means there will be several defenders of the kumquat view (some hedging their bets by saying "we just don't know; why does the president refuse to give the people proof?") and someone else saying "he is not."

[Paula B]

That's what happens when you study journalism at places like University of Idaho at Moscow. Plus, this stupidity has been going on long enough that a whole generation of young (broadcast) reporters have grown up assuming that format is appropriate, especially if they lived in areas served by small-market television stations. They don't know from Bill Moyers, Robert MacNeil, Gwen Ifill and Dave Marash, some of my favorite television journalists (when they were still reporting). CNN wasn't bad when it was new, but now it's one of the worst offenders. Some days I want to strangle Wolf Blitzer.

[oddjob]

I never watch CNN and truly, I couldn't stomach Wolf Blitzer even if I was watching CNN.

In the tiny snippets of him I accidentally encounter once in a rare while it always seems to me as if he has absolutely zero understanding of anything, almost as if he was a male Sarah Palin without the sex appeal and who accidentally stumbled into a lucky gig on a major news network.

[Paula B]

HE and two other CNN reporters were trapped in a hotel in Baghdad during the Gulf War. They managed to get out pretty good reporting, in spite being holed up in the middle of a bombardment. For that, WB was given a desk job in Atlanta. One of the other guys has since died and the third was discredited on some story (i don't remember the details), and has faded from view. We're left with exactly what you described, OJ. I don't watch CNN, either, unless there's some breaking story I want to follow and nobody else is on it.

[Sir Charles]

Paula,

That was long time CNN Anchor Bernie Shaw -- who asked Dukakis the infamous "Governor, if your wife were raped and killed" question during the 1988 presidential debate.

The other reporter was Peter Arnett, who had done some well regarded reporting from both Vietnam -- he was the original reporter on the "we had to destroy the town in order to save it" incident -- and produced quite a bit of highly critical reporting for a 13-year period -- and in the Middle East.

Arnett was fired by CNN for allegedly shoddy reporting on a story critical of the U.S. military in Laos in the early 1970s, but many suspect that he was the victim of Pentagon ire at years of not playing ball. Blitzer, on the other hand, a former AIPAC staffer, proved to be a cheerleader for the military.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Arnett

[nancy]

SC--In the "politics and strange bedfellows" category--did you notice that Arnett's daughter is married to John Yoo? Holidays must be interesting indeed. ^^

[Sir Charles]

nancy,

Wow -- no!

At the Thanksgiving table:

Peter: And then he said "we had to destroy the town in order to save it" -- can you imagine?

Yoo: Yes. Yes I can.

[kathy a.]

omg. nancy wins the trivia contest.

[kathy a.]

here's something from rolling stone on climate change and denial, with a sub-theme about "scripts" and the infotainment industry. it's by a guy you might remember, al gore.

[Paula B]

Thanks, SC, I could picture the faces but couldn't remember the names. Nobody asks questions like that anymore. In fact, few television ask questions at all. They start to, then answer the questions themselves, while the interviewee nods his or her head until the interviewer shuts up. It's pathetic.