To Hell With Hackett (updated)
Wed Mar 15, 2006 at 03:43:16 PM PDT
This diary is based on a comment made in another diary about this issue. It has been edited and expanded from the original comment
Last night I took a break from reading about media coverage of the presidency to watch the Daily Show with my friends, a common nightly occurrence. I'm normally a fan of the Daily Show, because not only being funny as Hell, it usually goes after people who need to be taken down a peg.
But what I saw last night wasn't funny, no matter how much my friends laughed at it. Maybe it would have seemed funny if I hadn't known the situation. Or hadn't be privy to such an underhanded attack on the party I proudly claim membership in, or on my own personal political savvy.
Yes, I'm talking about Paul Hackett.
I don't watch the Daily Show expecting to get the news. I watch it for political satire. But just as we would expect a newspaper op-ed piece to uphold a certain level of accuracy and intellectual honesty in how it presents it's argument, I expect the same thing from good satirists. The Daily Show's Paul Hackett piece failed on this account to a rather spectacular degree.
This was one of the most shamefully one-sided stories about the Democratic party I've seen anywhere this side of Fox News. The piece (which I do not have a link to, but I believe is on Crooks and Liars) presented Hackett as a sympathetic figure, wronged by a risk-adverse party establishment. The script sounds all to familiar: Democratic leaders scared to stand up for what it seems they should so obviously support. But only the most over-zealous Hackett supporters would claim that was the real story. We here, who witnessed the blow by blow of the debacle of Hackett's withdrawal from the Ohio Senate race know better (or at least we should).
The Dailyshow did a good job of presented Hackett the way it seems he wants to present himself. However, it did not provide the context or facts needed for viewers to fairly judge his claim. As I watched the piece, the following questions came to mind which I would like Paul Hackett to answer.
If the Democratic party is really trying to force out candidates who don't accept the Republican-lite approach to politics, then how does Hackett explain the fact he was passed over for, arguably, one of the most liberal-progressive members of the House?
If he really is to far a field from the party line, how does he explain the efforts of Rahm Emanuel to recruit him for another run in the Ohio 2nd?
And if the Democratic party was really so worried about Hackett turning off moderate voters, why would the DCCC want to run him in a district as blood red as OH-2?
Nowhere in Hackett's sanctimonious and self-serving Daily Show appearance where these questions asked or addressed. Not only that, but the piece did not give enough context to let viewers make a fair appraisal of what happened in the Senate race, and if Hackett really was the victim of trepidation by party higher-ups. In point of fact, pundits in the traditional media (I think it was someone on Tweetee's show) used Hackett's departure as evidence that Democrats were abandoning an â€oeelecatable†candidate for another far-left liberal. Hackett's claims might hold water against another candidate, but not against Brown.
In point of fact, my group of friends who were unfamiliar with the situation all came away believing Hackett was a victim of the Joe Libermen's of the Democratic party, and as a result, a negative impression of the party as a whole. However, this impression was based on what can only conclude was a deliberate effort on the part of Paul Hackett to deceive and mislead viewers about the events that lead to his withdrawal from the race, such as anemic fund raising, staff problems, and the fact the main architects of his near0victory in the Ohio 2nd had left to work for his opponent (who it should also be noted strongly supported Hackett's congressional bid).
The Daily Show may not be news, but if it is going to be shaping people's opinions, it has a responsibility to get the facts right, and it should be above participating in what I can only interpret as a political attack by an angry and disgruntled politico.
The Daily Show segment has effective destroyed any and all confidence, trust, or good-will I once had for Hackett. His actions were as disgraceful as Libermen's chronic inability to not pass up a chance to bash fellow Democrats to shore up his "moderate" cred. Only Hackett's target wasn't the middle, it was us, the liberals, the progressives, the Democratic wing of the Democratic party. It was an attempt to pit us against the leadership, motivated out of his sense of anger and entitlement. I take deep exception to an attempt to use me as a political tool against my party, and Hackett has forever darkened his reputation with me as result of that attempt.
The bottom line is this: I thought Hackett got a raw deal from the party higher ups. However, I always had doubts about his ability to run state wide, and would have been flat against it were it not for fact he would have been running against a deeply vulnerable candidate. And while I favor contested primaries, and wish Hackett would have stayed in, his performance prior to his withdrawal strongly suggested he was never going to beat Brown, and it would have been iffy against Dewine. So, he was forced out. That sucks, but it's politics. It wasn't personal. He was give a lifeboat, a second chance, in the form of DCCC support for another run in the Ohio 2nd (the race I thought he should have taken all along). He turned this olive branch down instead to wallow in petulance and self-pity. If he wanted to drop out of politics and do this, fine, but to try to drag me, to drag us into the fight with him, focusing on ego and grudge matches when we should all focus on winning back the Senate was dirty, dishonorable, and unbecoming the man I thought Paul Hackett was.
To Hell with that, and to hell with him.
Update Several people have made the point that the Daily Show writers, not Hackett, are responsble to for the piece I found objectionable. However, I have a hard time beliving Hackett didn't know what direction the DS writers were going to take things, and by extension supports the position they expressed. If Hackett in fact did not know how the footage he shot with them would be used, my objections would be moot, and I would glady admit I was wrong. However, barring evidence of that, I can only conclude Hackett's participation in the Daily Show skeatch ammounts to, at the very least, an endorsement of the piece they aired (which was dishonest and misleading, no matter if Hackett knew what they were doing or not).
When I see a politican on TV, I have to assume they know what they're doing. I have to assume they're aware of the message they're projecting, and if for some reason they are not, and their words or likeness are misused, I expect them to say so, and set the record streight.
Hackett may not have written the Daily Show piece, but unless he was unaware of what they were up too, I can not avoid holding him accountable for it.
