An Update
On July 27th, Tim Grieve followed up at Salon with a link back to HGP1. Being a Real Reporter, however, he did one better than that: he went and asked Tucker Carlson what he thought about the controversy:
After Salon chronicled Carlson's comments -- and the overall GOP war on Edwards as a "personal injury trial lawyer" -- the blog world ranted hard. One dailyKos diarist wished this upon Carlson: "I hope you wake up tomorrow and find yourself in hell, with succubus Ann Coulter sucking your insides out through a straw inserted in your a--, while John Ashcroft belts out 'Nearer my God to Thee' from a nearby Karaoke stage."
We saw Carlson in the halls of the Fleet Center this week, and we asked him about the flak he's taking. He said he hadn't heard about it, and he offered a testy defense.
"My contention is not that the girl wasn't grievously injured or deserves compensation, nor is it that he doesn't have the right to make $8 million off her suffering. My only point is that if you're going to make 7 or 8 or 6 or whatever million dollars off her suffering, don't claim it's an altruistic act," Carlson said.
Right, but isn't calling it a "Jacuzzi case" -- without further explanation -- somehow dismissive of what actually happened? "Are you going to lecture me? Are you going to ask me a question or lecture me? My point is not that it's a wine-and-cheese thing, and I'm not against Jacuzzis. That's not my point at all."
Carlson said calling the Lakey tragedy a "Jacuzzi case" is just a "shorthand" way to ask whether Edwards should really be seen as acting altruistically for the "little people" when he made so much money off the case. "I'm merely saying that, if you're going to make all that money, don't turn around and tell me that you're better than I am," Carlson said.
Does "Jacuzzi case" really convey that point? Couldn't he call it something else? "Maybe I could, but that's an evasion of the point I'm making. You're getting into whether I should call it a 'pool case.' OK, fine, call it a 'pool case.' I'm sorry I called it a 'Jacuzzi case.'"
So you're sorry? You won't call it a "Jacuzzi case" anymore? "No, I'm not sorry I called it a Jacuzzi case. I'm sorry that you're unwilling to answer what I think is a pretty serious question I'm posing."
Sorry, but I just have to pause for a minute. I love that exchange. It captures Tucker Carlson, pissy, vapid, uninformed pundit, perfectly.
Ahhh. OK, better now.
It is always difficult to know exactly how much influence the blogosphere has on what, for the sake of argument, we will call "the real world." But in this case, we definitely had an effect. While Tim Grieve was getting Tucker's up-close-and-personal reaction to becoming the momentary bane of the liberal blog world, Kossacks were demonstrating that blogspace does not exist in a vacuum. What happens on sites like this one, we can make happen in Real Life.
In addition to letting both CNN and PBS know exactly what they thought of Tucker's well-worn talking point -- by writing letters and telling them -- several Kossacks had an unabashedly brilliant idea; let the Jacuzzi corporation know what Tucker was saying, on national television, about their products. Ouch.
You can see the various letters that were sent on the comment threads of the previous posts, and at the follow-up post here. (There are also quite a number of other excellent diaries on the topic, more than I can link to here.) Many people reported getting responses from the Jacuzzi company; perhaps the most entertaining one was reported by mattman:
Of course, I wrote CNN about the Jacuzzi smear by Tucker and OF COURSE, I got no response except the usual autoreply BUT I also wrote the company and this is what I got:
The unit Mr. Carlson was referring to was NOT a Jacuzzi unit, product, or part of any kind. He used the term Jacuzzi like someone saying "I'm going to Xerox a copy on the copying machine." It was in fact a commercial concrete wading pool with an unapproved suction drain on the bottom of the pool. With the powerful suction created by the large pump on this unit, when the girl sat on the flat drain cover, the suction was so strong, well you know the rest. Our whirlpool baths and spas have an anti vortex drain cover that is approved by all safety codes for use in any bath or spa. The difference being that it is raised and has holes on the top and around all four sides so there is no way to completely block it off and is mounted on the vertical wall of the bath or spa, not on the bottom floor. Our attorney's have been made well aware of the comments made by Mr. Carlson and I'm sure they will be pursuing this further, but we assure you that you and your children have nothing to worry about.
As for the outcome of the little girl we have heard she is still alive but her life style will be changed for ever. If you have any additional questions or concerns, please contact our company at 1-800-288-4002. Thank you, Dave Webb (Technical Assistance)
Sometimes, karma happens. Tucker Carlson, we can presume, has by this point been contacted directly by the Jacuzzi corporation, or more specifically by lawyers representing them, and been told something to the effect of shut the hell up with the "Jacuzzi case" crap, or we'll cram so many legal filings up your a-- that you'll be crapping Duraflame logs for the next two years. Paraphrasing, of course -- I'm sure the Jacuzzi corporate lawyers would use more prosaic and official-sounding language than that.
In any event, searching the transcripts on CNN.com shows that Tucker Carlson has apparently not uttered the words "jacuzzi case" since we last documented it, on July 15th, in spite of having ample opportunities to do so. Here's an exchange from Crossfire, Aug 4th:
CARLSON: Very quick question.
There -- I understand that John Edwards is a trial lawyer and that John Kerry takes a lot of money from trial lawyers.
ROGERS: He tried.
CARLSON: And maybe tried to be a trial lawyer.
But the fact is, most Americans understand there's something wrong with this tiny elite profiting from the suffering of others. And, actually, trial lawyers have a pretty negative effect on our economy and our culture. Will at some point John Kerry take even a tiny, minor stand against trial lawyers? Do you think he'll have the courage to do that, Mr. Courageous?
(LAUGHTER)
MCMAHON: Here's what -- here's what John Kerry is going to do. He is going to try to bring America together, not divide it.
(CROSSTALK)
MCMAHON: He's going to try not to divide us by race, by class, by trial lawyer, by doctors.
(CROSSTALK)
CARLSON: You can divide us by trial lawyer. That's fine.
MCMAHON: Or in any other way.
ROGERS: There's only so many doctors to sue.
(CROSSTALK) MCMAHON: And the Republicans win when they divide America.
CARLSON: OK.
That's an interesting exchange. He still hit the trial lawyer hard, but we all notice what he didn't say.
Finale
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
-- Barry M. Goldwater
This trio of essays, or rants, or screeds, or whatever they may be called, is difficult to condense into a single theme or moral. Are they a diatribe against Tucker Carlson in specific? An angry rant at the absurdity of the news industry in general, or the conservative talking heads that swim through it? A visceral reaction to that situation in which nearly all functional adults find themselves cringing -- a child in danger -- and to the apparent blind callousness with which other people can react? Yes, all of those... sort of. I, like everyone else, first assumed upon reading the Salon story that Tucker Carlson was simply an ass; it did not occur to me, until I did the research, that this was not an idle cheap shot, but yet another calculated and long-running lie.
As I said in another post, politics, like Soylent Green, is made from people, and what you get out depends in large part on who you put in. Our political discourse is full of blatant and unapologetic liars, like Limbaugh, O'Rielly, Hannity, Coulter, et. al., as well as astonishingly dishonest figures like Karen Hughes, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, etc., so it is not surprising that what we have been getting out has been, to extend the analogy, far from edible. We are living in a time when journalism means something different than it did perhaps thirty years ago. Television news, in particular, now runs 24 hours a day. True journalism is expensive. Pundits, and talking points, are a dime a dozen.
CNN jumped the shark the first day they advertised Crossfire using boxing images -- not that they were a paragon of virtue in the months before, but in that they finally formalized the Death of Meaningful Discussion. In these times, political debate is about the spectacle of the attack, not about the issues to be addressed. Issues are boring; having two grown humans shout petty verbal attacks at each other, in a bizzare D.C. suit-and-tie version of MTV's Real World, is apparently what the networks believe America is into these days. Constant bookings of truly depraved liars, on all the networks, demonstrates that truth is meaningless compared to a titillating, hyperbolic lie.
But I would like to draw several morals from this particular story.
Moral 1: Find a Lie, and Kill It
The power of individuals is diffuse, but can be focused like a laser with the proper motivation. We can kill individual lies, if we take action against them.
It is beyond the abilities of any one person to keep track of the entire media world, much less all the facts, pseudofacts, spin and bluster that fills and inflates that world. It can't be done. But there are tens of thousands of willing participants in this battle; if we each pick our individual targets, we can cover nearly everything.
There's no coordination involved here. You don't have to dedicate your life to factchecking a single journalist, or to exploring a particular meme. You don't have to pick a different target than I do. You don't have to pick a target at all. You simply must listen for the lies, and when one rears up -- one that is particularly infurating, or offensive, or which you have some special knowledge about -- make your voice heard.
So pick one lie at a time, and make it your own. Research it. Find out where it came from, and who propagates it. Tell the world about it. Then, with the help of like-minded people like us, kill it. Dead.
I don't mean simply refute it. I mean refute it with such force, to so many people, that the "pundits" who propagated the original lie look like drooling idiots for repeating it. Sic their enemies on them. Sic their bosses on them. Sic their sponsors on them. Make telling a lie on national television, for example, something that comes with a price afterwards, even if that price is only scorn and inconvenience.
Moral 2: Don't Ignore Bad Journalism -- Fight It
The predictable response to most diaries that complain about a particular event in media coverage is some variation of this:
Why are you watching [Network X]? Ignore them. Go to CSPAN, or don't watch television at all.
If someone told us they were, this year, voting for Nader out of some sense of moral purity, we would jump down their throats. Yes, it feels good to vote for the Pure and Noble Windmill-Tilter, instead of sullying oneself at the trough of electoral practability, but moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue; there is a time for idealism, and a time to help the cause.
Likewise, abandoning all popular forms of media to allow them to spread spin, half-truths, and outright lies, while we bunk complacently in the ivory towers of CSPAN and look down at the rabble, is satisfying but profoundly unhelpful. We are in a mean-spirited battle for control of the message that is told to the American people -- for control of how every issue is framed, how every candidate is presented -- and we still, to this day, are loathe to engage it. The conservative movement learned that working the refs works, and works well. And is still working. Until it stops working, whether because it is counterbalanced by punching from the other side, or because we work to immunize the refs from those attacks from either side, it will continue.
Pundits like Coulter, Hannity, O'Rielly, and Carlson, and political operatives like Ed Gillespie and Karen Hughes, spread a lie because there is simply no price to be paid for doing so. They have learned, over the past decade, that stating a bald-faced lie on national television will result in, well... absolutely nothing. It will not get you disciplined, or fired, or sued. It will not affect you financially, or affect the reception you get the next time you appear on television. Lies are free.
The media will not factcheck themselves; that is a facet of news coverage that cannot be accomplished by today's "instant-opinion" pundits, talking heads, and perennial guests. They don't have the time for it, between television appearances. They don't have the inclination for it, between Washington get-togethers. And they don't have the training for it, unlike the less telegenic and far more anonymous "real" journalists still investigating stories that require analysis more detailed than a simple furrowed brow, a single-page fax, and a snide, knowing smirk.
Therefore, we must do it for them. We must be their editors, until such a time as CNN and other networks decides that their "journalistic integrity" really wasn't something that should have been downsized in their budget cuts of the last decade.
The paid political operatives, like Gillespie or Hughes, and the most venom-laden of the partisans, like Hannity and Coulter, may be incorrigible. That's fine: we're after the second-tier liars, the so-called "real" journalists who propagate those lies, and the editors and executives that let them. Divide the Coulters and Gillespies of the world from the people who are still giving them unvarnished airtime, in spite of their constant dishonesty. Isolate them. Show both sides of the incestuous relationship that there is a price for dishonesty and unethical behavior.
As fact-checkers of the national media, create a political, financial, and reputational price for propagating a lie. Make it embarrassing. Make it frustrating. Make it hurt. And make it very, very public.
Moral 3: From Time to Time, Go Postal
We sometimes joke that the blogosphere is an echo chamber. It can be, if the sound never leaves the box. With enough people shouting the same thing at the same time, however, the blogosphere can also be a megaphone.
It isn't enough to read. Write, too. Report. Investigate. Let us know what we should be getting angry about. Use your voice, and make it loud.
And rant, every once in a while, if the situation requires ranting. We admire the spirit of politicians who can speak the unvarnished truth; sometimes it requires a loud voice to cut through the din of mediocrity. Where a factual argument may glance off, a satiric, mocking laugh may cut to the bone.
So go postal, if you feel it in your bones; rein in afterwards, once you have woken people up, and formulate your plan.
You can truly help a cause without ever leaving your chair. And that, in a nutshell, is the true power of blogs.
---
So that's it, for this particular series. I'm sure I'll find something else to go postal about, soon, though, so never fear.
I want to thank all the Kossacks who helped make the Jacuzzi case diaries into a minor force of nature. A particular shout-out goes to kid oakland and others who spent untold amounts of time publicizing these diaries. Though they claim failure, the fact is that searching for "John Edwards jacuzzi" on Google brings up pretty much exactly the kind of content that we hoped it would. A shout-out, too, to all those who were inspired to write letters, email links to friends, and keep us updated with the results. My action was indirect; theirs was direct. Their action was what killed the lie, or at least rendered it forever harmless, not mine.
Sleep well, Tucker. And behave yourself.
Permalink | 44 comments