A Newsletter With An Eye On Political Media from The American Prospect
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A NEWSLETTER WITH AN EYE ON POLITICAL MEDIA

Politico Lambastes Washington's Insider Culture

Nina Totenberg's new book is roasted by the unlikeliest publication
imaginable.

Politico ran an extraordinary article

last week. In it, Michael Schaffer, former editor of the Washingtonian,
former editor of the Washington City Paper, and former editorial
director of The New Republic, took a hacksaw to the reputation of the
famed NPR journalist Nina Totenberg. The occasion was Totenberg's
publication of a book celebrating her friendship with the late Supreme
Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The book, entitled Dinners With Ruth, is widely viewed as a response to
the criticism-including that from the NPR ombudsman-that Totenberg
received upon revealing the two women's closeness when Ginsburg passed
away in 2020. It also seems to be a paean to the days of yore in D.C.
when Democrats, Republicans, lobbyists, and journalists could all sit
around the same table and tell their private jokes that were deemed
inappropriate for the public at large.

As Schaffer notes, "In this universe, it seems, we're all on the
same team." The "team" includes not only Totenberg and liberal
favorite Ginsburg, but also everyone who occasionally reads their own
name in Politico's "Playbook" and is considered to be a
"player." Well-connected journalists like Totenberg exploited these
friendships not only for status in a culture in which perceived
proximity to power is itself a form of currency, but also for what were
appropriately termed "buckraking" opportunities. As Schaffer notes,
"Totenberg became part of the RBG hype machine. As the justice became
an unlikely celebrity, she and Totenberg developed a sort of stage act,
conducting public interviews before ticketed audiences. Totenberg would
share questions in advance. The responses were more thoughtful that way,
which it seems was really what the evenings were trying to show." In
other words, it was theater masquerading as journalism.

Schaffer also flags what he aptly terms "one particularly excruciating
passage" in which "the Scalias come to a dinner party shortly after
the conservative justice wrote the precedent-shattering decision
striking down D.C.'s gun laws. Totenberg's husband, a surgeon who
she says has operated on hundreds of gunshot victims, adorns every
guest's soup bowl with a plastic squirt gun. Everyone laughs.
Hilarious!"

The story Totenberg tells about Alan Simpson (a former Republican
senator from Wyoming and co-chair of President Obama's austerity
commission) is more confusing, but also depressing, in a way she
apparently does not understand. We learn that, in the aftermath of the
Clarence Thomas hearings, the senator "followed Totenberg to her car
following a Nightline taping, screaming so furiously that the
network's hired driver told her she ought to get a gun. Totenberg
eventually got out of the car and yelled right back at the towering pol,
calling him a 'fucking bully.'" However, later, they became
friends, and, one suspects, Simpson became a source. During one outing,
the old fella "couldn't have been a better date, picking me up, and
even bringing me a corsage to wear for the evening."

Schaffer notes how casually Totenberg references her close friendship
with numerous judges. Her home was where "the likes of Nino Scalia
('a mensch'), Stephen Breyer (he and his wife helped clean up after
an I Love Lucy-style dishwasher disaster), and William Brennan (he wrote
a thoughtful note to Totenberg's niece) were holding court." But as
Jeet Heer points out

at The Nation, this phenomenon goes deeper. Totenberg is one of those
alleged liberals who feel it necessary to reassure the rest of us that,
while a certain Supreme Court justice or nominee might appear to be a
right-wing extremist based on their, you know, opinions, we can all
relax because we are talking about a personal friend of the author whom
he or she knows to be cool.

[link removed]

Consider Neal K. Katyal, former acting solicitor general in the Obama
administration, writing in The New York Times
:
"I have no doubt that if confirmed, Judge Gorsuch would help to
restore confidence in the rule of law. His years on the bench reveal a
commitment to judicial independence-a record that should give the
American people confidence that he will not compromise principle to
favor the president who appointed him."

A year later, Yale law professor Akhil Reed Amar could be found

writing on the same page of Brett Kavanaugh: "[I]t is hard to name
anyone with judicial credentials as strong as those of Judge Kavanaugh.
He sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia Circuit (the most influential circuit court) and commands wide
and deep respect among scholars, lawyers and jurists."

If you thought it was impossible for a liberal to go to bat for Amy
Coney Barrett, well, think again. Here's Harvard law professor Noah
Feldman writing in Bloomberg
:
"I know her to be a brilliant and conscientious lawyer who will
analyze and decide cases in good faith, applying the jurisprudential
principles to which she is committed. Those are the basic criteria for
being a good justice. Barrett meets and exceeds them."

It's interesting that liberals do this for right-wingers, but it
almost never happens in the opposite direction. This is due, I think, to
the fact that (a) liberals feel a need to show how open-minded they are,
and (b) many liberals think they derive a sense of legitimacy from their
ability to embrace conservative nostrums and individuals in a sad
"Thank you sir, may I have another
"
syndrome.

A century ago, John Dewey pointed out that democracy risked creating
"a class of experts ... inevitably so removed from common interests as
to become a class with private interests and private knowledge
." Another
prophet, and lifelong adversary of this phenomenon, was my late friend
and mentor I.F. Stone, who once warned: "You've really got to wear a
chastity belt in Washington to preserve your journalistic virginity.
Once the secretary of state invites you to lunch and asks your opinion,
you're sunk ."

Schaffer hits the proverbial nail on the head when he castigates
Totenberg's misguided attempt to rejuvenate her reputation. He writes
that her book "seems to be cast as a corrective against some national
misapprehension that Washington is about nothing but bickering and
partisanship. But that misunderstands why so many Americans are down on
the capital. Instead, the rage stems from a conviction that the city is
full of insiders who are all part of the same contented club, forever
scratching one another's backs."

What's so crazy about this is that the piece appeared in Politico,
where, if its editors read it and took it to heart, they would either
have to resign their jobs in shame or else transform the publication
into one reporting the news in an entirely different-opposite, in
fact-fashion. For no publication since the unlamented disappearance of
(alleged serial sexual harasser
)
Mark Halperin's "The Note" has done as much as Politico to
reinforce the notion that political Washington is one big happy circus
where gossip and drama matter far more than policy. When the publication
provides constant updates on the newest promotions and parties among
lobbyists, PR hacks, and other pollutants of the political process at
the same time they write about journalism and politics, they imply that
they don't really see any important distinction between these jobs.
Sure, gun violence may be out of control in our society and killing our
children at an unconscionable rate, but wasn't that a cute move by
Nina to Nino at that wonderful dinner party she had? What, one wonders,
are the favorite foods (and potential food allergies) of fascism?

It makes for a depressing contrast with dogged reporters like CNN's
terrific Daniel Dale , who always goes to
the trouble to get to the truth of whatever the issue is, and how much
bullshit surrounds the issue in question. One wonders if his voluminous
fact-checking Twitter threads are not a quiet commentary on virtually
everything else the network produces, where hosts and guests are invited
to lie, without consequence, as often as they like.

Donate to TAP's Midterm Tracker Travel Fund

to send our reporters to cover elections around the country. You can
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Your 100% tax deductible donation goes directly to our edit team to
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Thank you for your support!  

Speaking of fascism, and the roles both liberal wimpiness and
journalistic cluelessness are playing in helping to make it possible,
take a look at this quote from Fox News contributor and former
congressman Trey Gowdy on the Italian election: "If you are what the
people want, at what point does that become the center? Who gets to say
what is far-right or hard right
?" The dude
has a point, albeit accidentally. The far right has been engaged in a
six-decade-long effort to redefine this revered notion of Washington
insiderdom
further and further into its own territory to the point where now The
Washington Post can publish a pointless piece like this one
without
mentioning anywhere in it that one of the parties in question is in the
indirect control of an insane criminal conspiracy and openly pledging to
destroy what remains of our democracy if elected. But to those Post
reporters, all that matters are the balls and strikes.

Oh, and thanks to the AP for telling us what was really important about
the return of fascism to Italy: "First female premier poised to take
helm of Italy government
."

Music to Improve One's Mood By

* John Fred and his Playboy Band: "Judy in Disguise
"

* Martha and the Muffins: "Echo Beach
"

* Carole King: "One Fine Day
"

* Raccoon Lodge member Bruce Springsteen with Ed Norton, Alice, and
Trixie, apparently, doing "Brown Eyed Girl
"

See you next week.

~ ERIC ALTERMAN

Become A Member of The American Prospect Today!

Eric Alterman is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn
College, an award-winning journalist, and the author of 11 books, most
recently Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie-and Why Trump Is Worse
(Basic, 2020). Previously, he wrote The Nation's "Liberal Media"
column for 25 years. Follow him on Twitter @eric_alterman

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