Lapdogs: Why the Colbert Context Matters

Every time I (or any other blogging screenwriter) goes off on a jag writing about U.S. politics, we get emails from some people saying, "can you just get back to writing about screenwriting?"

I understand the sentiment -- I've grown pretty weary, Lord knows, of hearing Pam Anderson on Peta or George Clooney on deforestation, or Bono on Africa. (Okay, maybe not Bono on Africa.) Blogging screenwriters don't even have their chiseled good looks to fall back on.

But in the case of the Media today, and reportage of Iraq, and Bush -- I think the reason why so many of us freak out every once in a while has screenwriting roots.

In brief: we spend our days trying to come up with narratives that make sense, that don't defy rules of logic - that take questions and follow them to truthful, emotionally satisfying conclusions.

And then we look at the narrative of what's happened in the last couple of years in America and we just can't believe it. Because it's such a bullshit narrative. Never in a million years could we get away with such a shoddy, misleading, ill-researched, counter-intuitive plot.

Yet here we are.

In Salon today, Eric Boehlert has published an excerpt from his new book, Lapdogs: How The Press Rolled Over For Bush. It's long, and depressing, and quietly devestating. It's so devestating, in fact, that much as I've always enjoyed Boehlert's writing in Salon, I don't think I can bring myself to read the book. It's just too depressing, and I'm not really going to learn anything I didn't already know.

In recounting how the MSM behaved in the leadup to the Iraq war, Boehlert name checks the usual suspects: and with fact after fact, lays bare how completely the U.S. media have abandoned their responsibilities since 9/11.

In short, it's like this: they're so afraid of being labeled "liberal" that they have grossly overcompensated. During the Clinton administration, this meant going with poorly-sourced and false stories that were unfairly critical of the adminstration. In the War President Fictions of Bush the Second, it means overreporting talking points by the administration, and marginalizing any views that challenge the Bush narrative. All this while the media mouthpiece of the Republican Party, the right wing talk shows and FOX News and their ilk, continue the steady drumbeat of criticism that the media has a "liberal bias."

Boehlert's quiet, steady timeline of story comparisons, timelines and, um, oh yes, facts -- puts the lie to the received wisdom at the centre of the media story in America today. From Judy Miller to the Times to the conduct of supposedly "liberal" outlets like CNN and Nightline -- it's just shameful. And, of course, the only way that it can be refuted by the right is through more of the same dirty, sleazy demagoguery.

Which brings us back to Colbert. Make no mistake, Boehlert's article is the Cliff's Notes for what we saw play out in the media last weekend.

The press ignored Colbert -- as they have about far, far more important stories over the last three years. Then, when prodded, step one was to float the idea that near-total omission of talk about Colbert was due to it just not being "newsworthy."

That spin couldn't hold, of course, because it was ridiculous. Someone does a hyper-critical routine three feet from a President who's well known for not hearing critical voices -- that's news. It certainly was news when Don Imus roasted Clinton at the same event a few years before. So... that spin morphed to the current talking point: "he just wasn't funny."

One problem: millions of people have seen the clip now...millions more than ever would have seen it if it was the one day story it deserved to be -- and they disagree. Plus, the sentiments expressed by Colbert are now the sentiments of a majority of the American population.

The optics are crystal clear: the press is completely out of step on this one, with everyone except the hardcore, shrinking rump of the extreme right wing. They may try to peddle the "Colbert crossed the line" meme -- but considering Colbert's actions run in a straight line back to, oh, say, Thomas Paine -- it's just not a theory that will fly for long.

My parents are fiscal and social conservatives. Through my twenties and into my thirties, as a series of Conservative governments ruled Canada, and my Province of Ontario, I would have huge, pointless political fights with my father. I'm actually pretty centrist, but I used to joke that all it took was a visit with my parents to make me come out sounding like Trotsky.

My Dad and I haven't had a political argument in two years.

What changed? Well, my parents, like a lot of retirees, now spend half the year in Florida. And for the last couple of years, they've become horrified by the one-sided slant they see in the news. "Americans," they say, "simply aren't getting the full story."

The Salon article neatly lays out how that came to be.

Funnily enough, I have never been too comfortable with journalism even when I nominally worked in it. (For a laugh, check this internet wayback cache of an article riffed off by Jon Katz when I interviewed him in my previous life.)

All voices have bias. All stories have a slant.

But there are some pitches that you should just not be able to sell.

Interestingly enough, this week in Toronto, there's the huge HotDocs festival going on. The huge rise in the popularity of the Documentary format -- the thirst people have for non-fiction reading these days...take the blogs out of it -- do you think maybe, just maybe, these trends have something to do with people feeling failed by the storytelling coming from the mainstream media?

Just asking.