PBS: With a Whimper

I saw the very first New Hour on PBS, some 30 years ago, with Jim Lehrer and Robert MacNeil. They were still trying to figure out what to do with a full hour of news. They played with "Postcards," which were pictures of scenes from around the country, to fill that yawning 60 minutes.  Eventually, they got it right and after you got accustomed to The News Hour, all the other news programs looked like shameless news-entertainment hucksterism. 

But the years do take their toll, and now we've got the hoary pundits of Mark Shields and David Brooks who are so wrapped up in their own images as pundits, they simply cannot see the forest for the trees--in fact branches and entire trunks are crashing down on their heads and rendering them brain injured.

Last night Rahm Emmanuel joined Shields and Brooks in the sky box above the convention floor and these two aging journalists did not just embarrass themselves, they embarrassed this erstwhile fan and the viewing public. 

Shields was so intent on demonstrating how even handed and objective a true, professional journalist he was that he asked Emmanuel how the Democrats could complain about the Citizens United case, (which allowed a few very rich people to buy up all the television air time to air their own commercials, espousing their own self serving moneyed interests) when President Obama was the one who ceded the "moral high ground" to the Republicans in 2008 by refusing to accept public funds for his campaign and he was able to outspend John McCain two to one.

The statement/question was so breathtakingly stupid it caught Emmanuel, who is rarely at a loss for words, off guard and he simply, appropriately ignored it. 

He did not answer because the answer would have had to go something like this:  1.  Candidates were not legally required to accept government funding for their own campaigns and Obama did the simple calculation that he could air more TV ads using contributions acquired from millions of $25 contributors than if he took a lump sum for the government. 2. Using the internet, millions of voters contributed typically less than $100 to fund Obama's messages. 3.To compare using the contributions of millions to the contribution of a precious few rich men--the Koch brothers, Mr. Adelson (the casino magnate) as being morally equivalent , in a democracy, is so insipid as to raise the question of whether or not Mr. Shields should be sent immediately for a CAT scan of his brain.
In the Citizens United case a reactionary Supreme Court said monetary contributions are a form of speech, protected by the First Amendment, which was written in the 18th century, before there was television, radio or PBS. Justice Scalia started preaching about "original intent" and the sacred concept of cleaving to the parchment, as if he was talking about a stone handed down from God. 
What Emmanuel and many others have been saying is when you have a huge crowd in a stadium, in  democracy, each voter has a voice. And each voice should be of equal importance. But when you give a microphone and a huge sound system and a podium and a place on the stage to the Koch brothers, then their voices are heard above all others, then their speech is more equal than any other.
Now, Mr. Shields, that, you might think would be immoral. 
But is it immoral for a candidate, faced with Sarah Palin's frothing rants to say, "I will not accept half the air time, half the attention I can be given by millions of eager contributors, so we can pretend we have public financing of national political campaigns?"
Would the moral high ground have been to honorably lose to Sarah Palin and a man who has subsequently revealed himself to be less honorable than we thought he was--a man who has been seen on Jon Stewart saying the Constitution guarantees America will be  a Christian nation?
Who is Mr. Shields to define "moral high ground?"
Where did Mr. Shields ever get the idea he could put "higher moral ground" in the same sentence as "political campaign."
Now you will say, good for the goose, good for the gander, but Citizens United is a bird of a different feather.  This is a decision by a Republican Court to limit speech under the rationale of protecting free speech.
Rather like protecting the integrity of the election by disenfranchising  as many likely Democratic voters as you can with voter ID laws.
When Mr. Ryan shows himself indifferent to facts, hostile to truth telling, where is the moral high ground comparison?
Then David Brooks swoops in for his "Gottcha" moment, asking Mr. Emmanuel how the Democrats can say Mr. Ryan and Mr. Romney want to kill Medicare when they would allow current recipients to keep their current coverage and to phase in the Coupon Care Medicare over 15 years? 
How much insight does it require to know that the Republican Ryan bill, voted for by every Republican in Congress was a bill not to change Medicare, not to save it, but to kill it?  
What is the definition of disingenuous? What does the dictionary have a picture of David Brooks by that word?
Emmanuel, of course, simply replied there is a difference between a guarantee of payment for all costs of medical care and a coupon.  He might have said, a coronary bypass operation costs $250,000 and Mr. Ryan's coupon would cover $8,000 of that. Do you really think Mr. Ryan is "saving" Medicare with his coupon?
Emmanuel looked from one to the other much as the animals of Animal Farm looked around the table and could not distinguish the people from the pigs.