Mukasey Nomination Goes to Senate

November 7th, 2007 in media, politics |

Well, not surprising and something I kinda support - in the sense that I think it’s the least bad we’re going to get - but still kind of depressing.

Speaking of depressing, the paper I’ve been whining about is a comparison of election coverage in 1984 and 2004, and I was saying just a bit ago - man, the things you block out.

I’m ending with a discussion of where coverage will go in the future. As many people under 30 now get their news from comedy news shows as from broadcast news (Fox, Koloen, and Sahin, 2007: 215). And there are some studies to suggest that The Daily Show is just as substantive as the network coverage - though I add that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement. Others have noted that… oh fuck it, here’s the last couple sentences of my paper, I’m practically retyping it just giving you the setup:

‘A separate study found hope in the show’s format, which ‘forsakes the “now this” model, often providing single-issue coverage for as long as 8 minutes’ (Baym, 2005: 264). Baym adds:

Mainstream journalism’s reliance on predictable conventions can render it susceptible to manipulation by the professional speech writers and media handlers who seed public information with pre-scripted soundbites and spin. The Daily Show’s refusal to abide by standard practices may offer a measure of resistance to manipulation, a counterbalance to the mutual embrace between press and politics (2005: 265).

That being said, others claim that Stewart’s focus on the absurd aspects of American politics can create what they call ‘The Daily Show Effect’, lessening trust in political and media institutions amongst those already disinclined to participate (Baumgartner and Morris, 2006). Given the mendacity seemingly inherent in today’s election process and the meaninglessness in media’s coverage thereof, it is difficult to argue that trust is necessarily warranted.’

I’m thinking of closing with that. Give my lecturer something to think about whilst she slits her wrists over the state of politics and the media. I know that what I’d be doing… if I wasn’t going flying tomorrow morning. It’s 3am. Aren’t I going to be all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tomorrow.

Link:
Nomination of Mukasey Sent to Full Senate [NYT]

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One Response to “ Mukasey Nomination Goes to Senate ”

# 1 sara Says:
November 7th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
From Slate:

Isn’t it ironic that Democrats bend over backward to canonize James Comey, Jack Goldsmith, and now Daniel Levin as The Men Who Said No to the President, while voting to confirm a man who determinedly tells the president, “Maybe”? Maybe we like our heroes to be brave only after the laws have been broken. In the interim we want them to keep an open mind.

What Levin, Goldsmith, and Comey did—what made them so “independent”—was not to change decades of settled law into unsettled law. That’s not independence; it’s lawlessness. What they did is what Mukasey pointedly refuses to do: draw a line around a certain class of conduct and deem it off-limits. Confronted with undeniable evidence of the suffering that water-boarding causes, and the many laws it violates, Mukasey declined to say “never.”

That’s why Feinstein’s supposedly elegant solution—hey, let’s pass legislation that makes that illegal water-boarding really, really illegal—seems so naive at this late date. Is she hoping that this time the president will be persuaded that we really, really mean it?

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