Rats with water wings. Billmon notices that Howie Fineman seems "dangerously close to turning on flight suit boy" in the wake of Condipalooza, and wonders if Fineman is "the proverbial canary in the mine": the early sign that Dubya is finally beginning to lose the media whores. Well, from NYT-land, it certainly looks that way. David Sanger—who was willing to whore for the notion that Spanish voters had cast for appeasement in last month's elections, even while his own paper reported facts to the contrary—thinks that the significant thing about Condi Rice's testimony is that it "stuck to the White House script," and that the White House script leaves something to be desired in dramatic range:

At every turn in her three hours of often-contentious testimony, she stuck to the White House script: Everything that could have been done to prevent the attacks had been done. She did not acknowledge failings, apart from the institutional tensions that have long plagued the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a culture that made it impossible for a succession of administrations to see the threat unfolding in front of them.

She also did not concede that the newly arrived Bush administration was part of that problem, or that it, too, underestimated what it confronted or was distracted by other issues like tax cuts, China and missile defense. Moreover, her tone—as controlled as her delivery at one of her Stanford seminars—left many panel members wondering if she was defending a position that several of them have publicly said is indefensible.

And Sanger adds—worried, I guess, that the unwonted provision of context in his mention of "issues like tax cuts, China and missle defense" might seem too wonkish—that even from the unwashed perspective there seems to be a problem:

For viewers who have not been following the details of the argument, there was the lingering question of whether anyone in the Bush White House is capable of admitting error—a step many of Ms. Rice's current and former colleagues said would help calm the political waters.

One recognizes in that phrase about "calming the political waters" a cry for help. If Sanger's not quite ready to jump ship yet, he certainly looks ready to ask for a rope. Let's remember just how bleak A1 looks today for Bushian leadership, with Condi on one side and Iraq on the other. If the waters don't calm soon, even Pravda on the Hudson might start getting a little seasick.

posted by michael  6:49:23 PM  
tell me about it []  

 

Post-Condi tristesse. I'm feeling weirdly exhausted today, and not in much of a mind to scrutinize Times coverage of yesterday's Condipalooza—beyond noting that it turned out to be at least moderately skeptical (both straight-news lead by Philip Shenon and news analysis by David Sanger) and not nearly as inclined to let Rice off the hook, or recite her pre-made spin points, as I was afraid it'd be, based on the initial, really half-assed Web-only reporting from David Stout.

But I can't pass up Alessandra Stanley's inner-page "TV Watch" report on the Rice testimony ("Testimony Provides Breath of Racial Reality for TV"), which is one of the stranger performances I've seen in the Times since I started this blog. (And I say this mindful that A1 today features a piece on a kosher-for-Passover performance of the Ringling Bros. circus.) Apparently, for Ms. Stanley, the most salient thing about Rice's appearance was that she's a black woman, even though neither she nor anybody else makes a big deal about that, and it's really good to have a black woman appearing on TV in her capacity, namely as a witness before an investigative body, because ... well ... it's just good, OK?

There was absolutely nothing in Condoleezza Rice's neutral-toned suit, primly folded hands or calm demeanor to draw attention to her sex or race. Her answers, guarded, prosaic and a bit pedantic, were typical of any high-level Washington official.

But the last time the major networks interrupted regular programming to provide live coverage of a black woman testifying under oath in Washington was years ago when Anita Hill spoke out against Clarence Thomas in 1991.

[snip]

CNN and other news outlets had hyped her appearance as a kind of showdown, but as it turned out, Ms. Rice's much-anticipated moment in the spotlight did not shed new light on the administration's handling of terrorist threats before Sept. 11. If anything, her measured performance brought a breath of reality to a television universe too often clotted with distorted images of black women, most notably the angry Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth making her vengeful comeback on the NBC show "The Apprentice."

To which I can only say, "Huh?" I don't watch "The Apprentice," but am I to understand that a (presumably non-fictional) black woman is somehow less "real," more "distorted," to the extent she appears angry and vengeful? And that the proper point of reference for a sitting National Security Adviser testifying before the commission on terror attacks is a reality-show contestant?

Stanley goes on to mention a couple of recent moments where white guys (Garry Trudeau, Robert Novak, Lee Hamilton) might seem to have patronized Rice for her ethnicity: although I'm at a loss to understand how it's patronizing when Lee Hamilton praises Rice for being "articulate" while it isn't when Stanley lauds her "measured" performance as a corrective to the images of angry black women that apparently "clot" our imaginations. The piece stumbles into actual review territory after this, in its last few paragraphs—by which I mean, Stanley actually makes an effort to judge Rice as a performer on camera, rather than going on about what a credit she is to her race while insisting that nobody should go on about what a credit she is to her race—only to go completely off the rails by tossing in a little, well, black humor:

Mostly, Ms. Rice spoke as fast as she could to throw a protective cordon around the president. In an administration in which the president is rarely described as "articulate" and the taciturn vice president spends much time in undisclosed locations, Ms. Rice is one of the most familiar faces on television.

Yet even the camera-savvy Ms. Rice looked a little nervous while reading her opening statement, a text that steered clear of any apology or admission of error. ... And Ms. Rice looked most uncomfortable when Richard Ben-Veniste, a Washington lawyer and commissioner, asked her the title of the Aug. 6 document that she said carried no warning about an imminent terrorist attack in the United States. "I believe the title was 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States,' " she replied stonily.

She got her groove back after a bracing exchange with Mr. Kerrey.

Well, that's sure as hell not patronizing, is it? Yeesh! Couldn't some editor have got to her before Stanley's racial subconscious exploded all over A14?

posted by michael  6:13:22 PM  
tell me about it []