It takes a master of suspense to decode the final plot twists of this election.
It is impossible to count the myriad ways in which the media botched FBI Director James Comey’s Friday announcement that the agency had found a cache of emails that seemingly (a key word) pertain to Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server. (Actually, the emails contents are the relevant factor. These new emails contain information that Comey decided was serious enough to re-open the investigation.)
I heard the news via CNN at an airport while waiting to board a plane. No one needs to be told that CNN is a journalistic disgrace – a textbook case of the decline of American media, all the more depressing because, unlike Fox News and MSNBC, it purports to be a real news organization. (Indeed, its leftward tilt has taken it out of consideration for being such.)Instead, it is a ratings machine, and it is beyond contemptible. (CNN managed a single month of good rating in October, but it has been trending downward for years.)
So what I heard was Wolf Blitzer in his customary tizzy, as if Pearl Harbor had just been attacked, breathlessly ballyhooing Comey’s missive to Congress and asking what seemed to be an endless queue of talking heads to weigh in on what is now routinely called a “bombshell.” This too is a textbook example of media practice. In the movies, bombast has replaced narrative. The last half-hour of every blockbuster is obligatory and generic: noise, lots and lots and lots of noise, and a gazillion special effects until any vestige of story evaporates and your head throbs. Cable has done something similar with news. It is all pitch, no content. The hysteria can transform anything into a drama, which is precisely cable’s intention.
This has been true of the Clinton emails since the beginning. It was always something of a hoax – a new chapter for a hungry media juicing its audience. ("Something of a hoax?" So does that mean there is a part of it that would be of concern? Tell us, pray, what that might be. The author dismisses the entire scandal by glossing over the serious issues with a wave of the hand.)
Not one in a hundred voters can tell you the awful crime Clinton was supposed to have committed or why it matters. (Perhaps not. Will the author tell us?)
Not one in a hundred – and I would include journalists – have any idea of what really went down with these emails, (This begs an obvious question. If journalists are so clueless, and as a result the public is clueless, what else might be out there that isn't being told? How deep does this incompetence in journalism go? And most importantly, why should we trust the author and what he is telling us?)
as I discussed in an earlier post that highlighted the one reporter, Garrett M. Graff of Politico, who actually did something it appears no other reporter thought of doing: read the FBI’s summary account of the investigation.
In effect, then, the Clinton emails have always been what the great film director Alfred Hitchcock called a “MacGuffin,” which Hitchcock described as the “device, the gimmick, if you will, that sets the plot in motion.” And he continued: “It doesn’t matter what it is. And the logicians are wrong in trying to figure out the truth of a MacGuffin, since it’s beside the point. The only thing that really matters is that in the picture, the plans, documents, or secrets must seem to be of vital importance to the characters. To me, the narrator, they’re of no importance whatever.”
It takes Alfred Hitchcock to reveal the secret of the emails as well as the basic operating principle of our political media. To the media, the emails are the primary plot device. In reality, they mean nothing. (This is an astounding statement, made without documentation, explanation, or context. The contents of the emails are deeply troubling, showing a pattern of corruption, malfeasance, and disregard for the law that makes Watergate pale in comparison.)
And I should add this: Should Donald Trump win this election, and he very well might now, historians 50 years from now will be scratching their heads over how something so inconsequential as a private email server could possibly have swayed the election. (Again the author goes back to the "private server" thing, which of course in itself is troubling. But the brouhaha is about the CONTENTS of the emails!)
Emails! Really! How do we explain a MacGuffin overtaking our politics?
The thing is that while the media have been obsessing over the MacGuffin, they have missed entirely the real story – the story that historians will examine and ponder. (An illegal private server containing emails that describe illegal activities isn't the real story?)
Oddly enough, it was arguably one of the world’s worst newspapers, England’s right-wing Daily Mail tabloid, which is about ten notches below our own New York Post, which is ten notches below any real newspaper, that broke the deeper story. (20 notches below a real newspaper, but the author happily accepts its reporting, solely because it fits his narrative.)
The Daily Mail reported that FBI agents were incensed over Comey’s decision not to prosecute Clinton (so, says the paper, was Comey’s wife) and many submitted resignations in protest. (That is, the decision not to prosecute in the face of documented evidence of wrong doing was enough to cause these FBI agents to protest. This in itself should point to the political nature of Comey's decision.)
Even when real newspapers finally caught up with this angle, they soft-peddled the significance of the nation’s primary investigative agency being an in-house right-wing force (Ah, yes. The only reason these agents would protest is because of their politics. No, they would never stand on principle or the law.)
that was determined to veer the election toward Trump. The later dump of Bill Clinton documents only underscores the determination of the FBI to turn the election. (That is, more documentation of wrong doing = FBI influencing the election.)
That is real and really disturbing news – colossally big news, giant headline news. With his sudden announcement, Comey may or may not have been trying to pacify the GOP, which would have been bad enough. It does appear he was trying to raise morale among the gestapo at his own agency by aiding Trump. (Hmm. had it been a Republican that was exposed, the FBI agents would be labeled heros. But because the subject of wrong doing is a Democrat, the author feels free to violate Godwin's Law.)
And let’s be clear: He knew he was aiding Trump. (What he knew is not discernible by those of us who cannot read minds, including the author. If the author were honest his phrasing would be, "He knew he was aiding Trump, but he had to do what the law required of him.")
That the media have largely ignored this aspect is both astonishing and depressing. The New York Times very delicately compared Comey to the late J. Edgar Hoover, who used the agency for his own devices, largely to settle personal grievances and advance his right-wing agenda. (And I mean very delicately. The media have always treated Comey as Diogenes.) (Only a few weeks ago Comey was a hero for refusing to bring charges against Clinton. He was principled, reasonable, and appropriate. But now he is a shill, a manipulator, a partisan. Is clear the author is a political hack and not a dispassionate observer.)
You could say that Comey brilliantly played the media for his own benefit, knowing that they couldn’t resist and certainly wouldn’t investigate a new plot twist. (Comey is the villian.)
Hitch knew the difference between an insubstantial MacGuffin and something that was important. Comey realized that the media don’t. Their confusion, along with their unwillingness to out the FBI and its seemingly alt-right agenda, (Now it's only "seemingly." He was sure they were Nazis only a couple of paragraphs ago.)
could wind up being the decisive element in this election. It is the campaign equivalent of that deafening superhero movie climax – all noise, no sense. But then the media are so caught up in their own hysteria over emails, they don’t have distance to view the big story. And when they aren’t preoccupied with the emails, they are preoccupied with how Comey’s revelation, seemingly in violation of Justice Department protocols and the Hatch Act, will affect the election. (This begs another question. If it is true that Comey violated protocol, doesn't it stand to reason that something big was contained in the emails, so big it would cause him to reverse his earlier decision?
And as far a violating the Hatch act, well, that's simply nonsense.)
So you go from the MacGuffin to the horse race without ever having to engage anything substantive. (An achievement spectacularly engineered by the author himself. He was able to carefully negotiate the minefield of the contents of the emails, never discussing them.)
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