THE CANDIDATE THEY LOVE TO HATE: The big story this week remains what it was two weeks ago: the unprecedented anti-Jerry Brown slant coming from much of the media. (See Counterspin No. 4.) The question is not whether Brown’s record and proposals should be held up to strict scrutiny–like any other politician, Brown deserves tough coverage. The question is why Brown receives more overt hostility from journalists than any other candidate in recent memory. Not even David Duke provoked this kind of reaction.
OPPORTUNIST OR HYPOCRITE?: Take a recent article on Brown in the New York Times (4/22), which asked, “Who is Jerry Brown?” The answer: He’s “brilliant, self-absorbed, friendless, idealistic, erratic, opportunistic, cold, hypocritical.” Balanced journalism? Some people in California must have a positive image of Brown, since he edged out Gov. Bill Clinton in a recent California Poll, 47 to 46 percent. But you won’t find them by interviewing members of the political establishment that Brown regularly denounces, who are the only people the New York Times talked to.
MEDIA FAVORITE: There was one unintentional note of humor in that New York Times profile, when a Republican state assembly member claimed, “His success is media-generated.” Some pundits claim that Brown has gotten a free ride from the press–an impression perhaps fostered by the fact that Brown was mostly ignored (when not being ridiculed) in the months before Tsongas dropped out of the race.
The New Republic’s Morton Kondracke (4/20) complained that “the press is…next to ignoring contradictions in the record of Brown, who has been on almost every side of every issue over time, and is now claiming to be an outsider while pandering shamelessly to organized labor–and is getting away with it.”
Has Kondracke been reading the papers? “Brown Shows It’s Easier to Run for President When You Can Ignore Your Past”–Chicago Tribune headline; “Brown Firm on What He Believes, But What He Believes Often Shifts”–New York Times headline, 3/30; “As for Jerry and his coat of many colors, no leading Democrats think the voters will buy once they see how many personas are hiding under those chameleon threads.”–New York Times, 3/31; “When confronted with inconsistencies in his record, the former California governor simply declares himself a reformed sinner and resumes his assault on the establishment.”–Washington Post, 3/3 1; “Insider, Outsider, Brown Runs on Contradictions”–New York Times headline, 4/3.
NEWSWEEK CRITIQUE: One of the press outlets that has been most up in arms against Brown has been Newsweek. “Jerry Brown’s more corrupt than the system!” Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift fumed on the McLaughlin Group. Jonathan Alter, in a piece purporting to point
out the positive aspects of Brown’s campaign, called him “a chameleon, a character assassin and a first-class cynic.” Alter called Brown’s platform “demagogic,” “silly,” “sketchy”; he accused the candidate of “engaging in his typical hype” and his supporters of “turning a blind eye to their candidate’s unfitness.”
There is so much of this kind of writing about Brown that it is difficult to remember that journalists don’t usually refer to candidates this way. Can anyone imagine Newsweek’s senior political editor talking about George Bush’s “typical hype” or his “unfitness”–and getting away with it?
FLAT TAX ATTACKS: Columnist Alexander Cockburn and economist Robert Pollin had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (4/2) raising little-noted questions about the well-publicized Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) analysis of Brown’s tax proposals. They argued that CTJ projected that Brown’s plan would increase the deficit because the group mistakenly assumed Brown would exempt certain products from a Value Added Tax (VAT). Cockburn and Pollin further argued that CTJ seems to assume businesses will pass along the VAT to consumers, but that businesses pay current corporate income tax–a distinction that favors the current system.
Doug Henwood, discussing the controversy in Left Business Observer (4/3), comes down on the side of the CTJ analysis. But unlike most journalists who relied on the CTJ critique of Brown’s flat tax, Henwood also pointed out that CTJ has analyzed Arkansas’ tax policy under Clinton: The poorest fifth get taxed at a 13.2 percent rate, up almost 15 percent in the Clinton years, while the richest 1 percent pays less than 8 percent–about as regressive as CTJ says Brown’s flat tax would be.
THE FOLKSY BILLIONAIRE: The candidate who has gotten the easiest media ride has to be H. Ross Perot. Doug Ireland in the Village Voice (3/31) pointed out an aspect of the folksy billionaire that fawning interviewers have not brought up: His solution to the crime problem in Dallas, according to a biography by Todd Mason, was “cordoning off minority neighborhoods and searching door-to-door for weapons and narcotics.” There’s also been little attention paid to Perot’s support of the paramilitary adventures of far-right activist James “Bo” Gritz, whose Perot-funded excursions into Laos were the model for the movie Rambo.
DEMOCRACY AT WORK: David Brinkley, on the night of the New York primary (4/7), praised the rough-and-tumble New York campaign as an exercise in “democracy,” saying, “No one’s going to throw you in jail for yelling at a candidate.” Brinkley overlooked the March 31 arrest of candidate Larry Agran, who was taken away by police for insisting on participating in a Democratic debate. Arrests of presidential candidates are usually big news when they happen in other countries, but here it was buried on the back pages.
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