Looking Back: "Leave It To Lieberman"

Danny Schechter

Don't say independent media analysts can't get on the air. On Wednesday might, hours before Joe Lieberman would speak to the Democratic Convention, Seth Ackerman was invited to have his say. Seth, who works with Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), was asked to comment on the media coverage in Los Angeles. No, he wasn't on any of the big networks, just a radio show hosted by Joan Rivers, the on-the-way-down comedienne who went from prime time to less time and occasionally shows up with a good one-liner on ABC's "Politically Incorrect." She demonstrated her lack of political correctness once more as she welcomed Seth into her studio and asked with a straight face: "Why are the police getting such bad coverage in L.A. after being treated so badly by the protesters?"

Seth, who had come on the show to release a detailed new FAIR study

documenting the way the protests had been ignored, distorted and misreported, couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"I was stunned by the question, and I tried to change the subject back to reality," he told me at a book party for John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney's call to arms, "It's the Media, Stupid" (Open Media Pamphlet-Seven Stories Press.) "I told her about an ACLU report and law suit against pervasive First Amendment violations by the Los Angeles Police Department. But then she changed the subject."

Joan had not been to L.A., of course, and was relying for her prejudices on the skewed media coverage. She herself has been doing some convention commenting for CNN but not exactly on politics. Her task has been to give expert commentary on what the politicians are wearing, a subject she may be better suited to handle. (Pun intended!)

I am not sure what she thought of Joe Lieberman's attire, but in the end it didn't really matter. The chairman of the Democratic Leadership Conference (DLC), the Party's right wing, wowed the crowd with a speech that tied Al Gore to "larger themes of American legend and myth," according to one obtuse analyst on PBS. As the minions chanted "Go Joe Go," he galvanized the crowd, with shtick, chutzpah and cliches like "Only in America." When it was over - after he had invoked the name of God and his "Republican friends" more times than I could count - NBC's Tom Brokaw compared him to the GOP's Dick Cheney, rather negatively, as someone who also couldn't really be called an orator. I flipped to CBS, and there was Ed Bradley weighing in with: "They said he wasn't much of an orator, but to this crowd it didn't matter." My partner Rory O'Connor compared Lieberman's performance - unfavorably - to Mr. Roger's on PBS.

While the major media enthused about Lieberman as a breaking-through -the-barriers Jew making it to the top, and as a symbol of tolerance and Al Gores's "courage," other Jews who are critical of Lieberman's politics were not being heard on any network that I saw. Reported Jenn Bleyer on the Indy media Web site: "Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of progressive Jewish magazine Tikkun and author of "Spirit Matters: Global Wisdom and the Healing of the Soul," echoed others' mix of pride and criticism."

"On one hand, I was celebrating American society for being able to transcend two hundred years of Christian anti-Semitism. On the other hand, I was very unhappy that it was Lieberman who was chosen, because he is bad for Jews and bad for the country. He has further moved the Democrats from being champions of working and poor people, at least in their own eyes, to being a clone of the Republican party."

Lerner, who spoke at the Shadow Convention about the dangerous convergence of the left and the right, also commented on the media's relentless infatuation with Lieberman's orthodoxy. He asserted that though Lieberman adheres to religious law, he is an "assimilated Jew" nevertheless, having assimilated to the American values of materialism and selfishness, a trap into which many American Jews have fallen. "America offered Jews an incredible deal when they came here," Lerner explained. "They said we could be white, as long we turned our religion into ritual and reinforced the status quo." Speculating on how non-Jews might react to a Lieberman vice-presidency, Lerner predicted that "it will intensify negative images about who Jews are, namely as people who support corporate power over human needs."

As the network cameras roamed the arena, they spotted celebrities who were out in force - Stevie Wonder, Whoopie Goldberg and a movie star in every aisle. Actor Tommy Lee Jones, who was Al's college roommate, was there to tell us what a great guy Al is and then nominate him for president. Gore's daughter later seconded the nomination. Whatever happened to political leaders and party members nominating the President? Seems those days are gone. Today, all of this is being treated as family-friendly entertainment with frequent cutaways to Tipper and the daughters with the great teeth. I noticed that AFL-CIO President John Sweeney was seated in the box along with former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, but they did not get much face time.

Soon we were told that Al G. himself was in the room. The cameras caught him briefly in a back hall of the Staples Center surrounded by "his friend and donor" media-mogul David Geffen and some of Geffen's colleagues from Dreamworks. Gore, clearly big media's new darling, will soon be getting the full Hollywood treatment, although, paradoxically, the New Democrats want to distance themselves from what they call "Hollywood liberals." According to Doyle McManus in Thursday's Los Angeles Times: "A Gore advisor, speaking on condition of anonymity, agreed [with Gore's strategy of moving away from liberals]. 'If Hollywood liberals are complaining, that's fine,' he said. 'We kind of enjoy that.' "

And some liberals are complaining. At a meeting Wednesday afternoon, there was criticism that the Gore-Lieberman ticket had strayed too far into the middle of the road. "I long for the day when we are inside the convention delivering the keynote, and most of the corporate interests are outside protesting," said Rep. Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. of Illinois, the Rev. Jackson's son. "This should be the last convention we come to where our position is not represented on the ticket."

We, the viewers, don't see or hear too much of this debate. In fact, we barely saw Al Gore. The needs of the TV business come before the needs of the political culture - at least in the East, it was time for the networks to cut back to local news. Football games that go into overtime may get to override the cash-cow news shows, but political conventions no longer have that status. I had to swing to C-SPAN to see the states cast their ballots. As a kid, I loved the mix of accents and boasts about the Great State of Wherever of this part of the convention process, but that fun political ritual is no longer considered worthy of mainline TV coverage. So suddenly, we New York viewers were yanked back into stories about the dying Russian sub and its condemned crew and yet another murder in Brooklyn.

Meanwhile, back in the convention hall, many journalists are not just being massaged by the "on message" DNC spinmeisters. For some, the message became the massage. I have the Online Journalism Review to thank for a report that many of those covering the convention are having more than their brains massaged.

"That's right," reports Jim Benning. "At the DNC the stories can wait. The journalists are getting massages. In droves. Just don't tell their editors. Event411.com, whose representatives are eager to tell you that they built the planning software incorporated into the Democratic Party's Dems2000.com site, has sprung for the service for the week, providing massages, gratis, from 10 to 2."

And if you talk to Vivian Geffen, one of five massage therapists working in the hall, she will tell you that this a very good, very important thing.

Journalists at the DNC, she reports as she kneads a weary left arm, are very tight. "Camera people have big shoulder problems," Geffen says matter-of-factly, shaking the arm and then tugging at it. "Reporters have a lot of tightness in their wrists from their computers."

I am jealous not to have one of those all-access credentials. At this point, after watching hours of convention speak and pouring over mountains of conventional coverage, I think my eyeballs need a massage just about now.

Maybe its finally time to let these eyelids down...

Danny Schechter (danny@mediachannel.org) is the executive editor of MediaChannel, and the author of News Dissector: Passions, Pieces and Polemics (www.electronpress.com) and the forthcoming Falun Gong's Challenge to China (Akashic Books, 2000).