60 Minutes

I don’t know who looked less credible on last night’s edition of “60 Minutes”, George W. Bush or the president of Duke University, but the CBS News crew deserves a shout out for allowing both men to present their case regardless of how anemic each was.
It is fashionable to avoid ever complimenting bigfooting mainstream media for doing a decent job on a truly influential public figure. Presidential interviews in particular are generally way too deferential. And God knows history is not being kind to network news orgs and major newspapers for the way they capitulated in the face of Bush’s sky-high approval ratings prior to the Iraq invasion. (A failure I fully expect them to commit again, the next time a popular politician scams the public as baldy.)
Anyway, when you write about the MSM some unwritten law of cynicism says you’re supposed to niggle, I guess.
But Scott Pelley I thought got as much out of Bush as I would ever expect from a network correspondent allowed the kind of access Karl Rove has been cooking up for certain key media outlets as he desperately seeks support for Bush’s escalation in Iraq. (Pelley even declined to use the word “surge” in his knee-to-knee interview with Bush at Camp David, hitting him instead with the far more precise, “escalation”.)
Sure, Pelley could have wiped Bush’s face with a long list of outright lies and distortions the guy has engaged in — from Iraq to Intelligent Design to Kenny Boy Lay to Global Warming — but Pelley’s not Noam Chomsky and CBS isn’t TPM Muckraker.
What struck me was how Bush brought nothing new to his rationale for continuing the fight with US troops, and his weirdly rigid gait and stance as Pelley and he did the strolling-interview shtick around Camp David. You’d think Rove or somebody would be working with Bush full time, especially in the aftermath of his stiff, discomforting demeanor in the actual primetime speech last week. If nothing else, at least fake an appearance of confidence.
I’m sorry, I think Bush is losing it. (Pelley asked him as much.) The smirk never did anything for me, but I think Zoloft zombie when I watch him now.
BTW, let me go on record here, or in any betting pool anyone wants to start, and say that I see the prospect of a bonafide constitutional crisis if Bush and Cheney try to gin up some kind of Gulf of Tonkin rationale for attacking Iran. If they try something like that the only people willing to support him will be the talk radio choir, a gang of cynical bullshit artists that would rally behind him if announced he was deporting everyone lacking a first generation northern European bloodline.
But ask yourself, if Bush tries something militarily, based on his interpretation of “presidential authority”, how far would you be from accepting/consenting to a state sponsored coup d’etat?
As for the Duke president … pitiful chump. His position in the first hours of the rape charges against the lacrosse players was not enviable. He had every good reason to trust the DA — the now wholly discredited Mr. Nifong — but clearly overreacted to the roar of black activists and handed down highly punitive judgment well before all the facts were known.
The whole case is another example of the work left to be done in applying reason and perspective to race relations in this country. Fundamental to every individual and institution, particularly a toney institution like Duke, is the fear of being charged as racist. Like pedophilia, that sort of thing doesn’t wash off easily. As a consequence, you get frightened, ill-considered, media appearance-driven decision-making like we see at Duke.