By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 5th, 2010
Fox News is not just biased. It is a political mobilization machine, shaping the political landscape.
 President Obama offered a critique of Fox News in an interview published in an issue of Rolling Stone. This absolutely shocked and appalled Fox shock jocks Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity the evening of Obama’s speech at the University of Wisconsin in Madison on Tuesday. They were shocked by any suggestion that they were anything but “fair and balanced,” providing the alternative to the kowtowing liberals of the mainstream media. They were appalled by Obama’s criticism. (link)
Their response is cynical. They pretend to be what they are not, news commentators on a news network. Obama’s critique on the other hand is on firmer ground, even if it is not clear that it was wise. Isn’t it below the President’s dignity to engage in polemics with partisan press criticism? Doesn’t it enlarge them and belittle him? These are the questions of the talking heads on cable and on the Sunday morning shows.
But actually in the interview Obama was quite careful, offering a measured serious answer to a provocative question:
Rolling Stone: “What do you think of Fox News? Do you think it’s a good institution for America and for democracy?”
President Obama: “[Laughs] Look, as president, I swore to uphold the Constitution, and part of that Constitution is a free press. We’ve got a tradition in this country of a press that oftentimes is opinionated. The golden age of an objective press was a pretty narrow span of time in our history. Before that, you had folks like Hearst who used their newspapers very intentionally to promote their viewpoints. I think Fox is part of that tradition — it is part of the tradition that has a very clear, undeniable point of view. It’s a point of view that I disagree with. It’s a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world. But as an economic enterprise, it’s been wildly successful. And I suspect that if you . . .
Read more: Obama v. Fox News
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, September 29th, 2010 
Barack Obama gave a campaign speech yesterday on the campus of the University of Wisconsin which was largely absent from last night’s newscast. (link) Now, I will take a closer look at the content of his speech.
Obama made his points cogently, identifying the problem and the obstacles:
Think about it, when I arrived in Washington 20 months ago, my hope and my expectation was that we could pull together, all of us as Americans — Democrats and Republicans and independents — to confront the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. I hoped and expected that we could get beyond some of the old political divides between Democrats and Republicans, blue states and red states, that had prevented us from making progress for so long because although we are proud to be Democrats, we are prouder to be Americans. Instead, what we found when we arrived in Washington was the rawest kind of politics. What we confronted was an opposition party that was still stuck on the same failed policies of the past…
He criticized the opposition:
Understand, for the last decade, the Republicans in Washington subscribed to a very simple philosophy – you cut taxes mostly for millionaires and billionaires…You cut regulations for special interests, whether it’s the banks or the oil companies or health insurance companies. Let them write their own rules. You cut back on investments in education and clean energy and research and technology.
So basically the idea was if you just put blind faith in the market, if we let corporations play by their own rules, if we leave everybody else to fend for themselves, then America would automatically grow and prosper. But that philosophy failed…
He highlighted Democratic accomplishments
And over the last 20 months — over the last 20 months, we’ve made progress… We’re no longer facing the possibility of a second depression — and I have to say, Wisconsin, that was a very real possibility when I was sworn in. We had about six months where . . .
Read more: Why Obama’s UW Speech Should Have Made the News
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, September 29th, 2010 Barack Obama gave a campaign speech yesterday on the campus of the University of Wisconsin. I knew about the speech through an email from Organizing for America, emphasizing the need to get behind the President in the upcoming elections. I was alerted that I could watch it at NYU, down the block from the New School. While I was attracted to the idea of watching the speech with a group of like minded supporters, I decided to watch it at home, near my computer, so that I could easily make this post.
When I went to the television to watch the speech, I was surprised to see that only CNN was broadcasting it, and even they cut it. They skipped the opening remarks when the President thanked the notables present (significantly including Russ Feingold who was missing from Obama’s last full throated partisan address in Milwaukee on Labor Day), and broke off from Obama after about fifteen minutes into the speech so that their regular talking heads could analyze his remarks and the latest political gossip, proceeding with their usual nightly opposing talking point exchanges. I quickly ran to my computer to watch the remainder of the speech, which I found to be an impassioned and reasoned account of why it is important to vote for the Democrats in the upcoming elections.
Transcript
I was surprised the speech wasn’t covered by the news programs. I guess it was deemed to be too partisan, but it was strange. Fox was going on about why Obama is obsessed with them, celebrating the fact that a President has made negative remarks about their one-sided coverage. MSNBC commentators were continuing to fight last summer’s intra-party battles, exploring how the President had not adequately confronted Republicans, caving into Lieberman on the public option before it was necessary, getting less on healthcare as a result, and CNN turned to a Republican operative to balance the President’s partisan remarks. Instead of highlighting the political position of the President, as he carefully presented it to his supporters, the politics of the day was reduced to endless bickering from three different political angles.
. . .
Read more: Coverage of Obama’s Recent Speech Disappoints – Again
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, September 28th, 2010 
The Tea Party has made an impact on political conversation, no matter your (or my) politics. I’ve written previously about them here.
I am quite ambivalent about the Tea Party. While I am appalled by some of the slogans and signs that have appeared in Tea Party rallies, I am convinced that this is a genuine social movement, a politically significant instance of the politics of small things, a political movement concerned with fundamental principles, engaged in a great debate about both the pressing issues of the day and the enduring problems of American political life. As a registered Democrat and as a strong supporter of President Obama and his program, I am pleased that the actions of the movement may have made the Republican landslide in the upcoming elections less momentous, as the talking heads are now speculating, although I am still concerned that the movement may have given wind to the rightward shift of public opinion. The emotional, irrational and often purposely ignorant political expression in Tea Party demonstrations is of deep concern, but I think the strong expression of fundamental political principles can and should be seriously considered and confronted. I am unsure about what the Tea Party Movement’s impact on American public life in the very near term, i.e. the midterm elections, and in the long term, i.e. in the reinvention of American political culture will be. As I have been trying to sort this all out, I am reminded of the insights of an old friend, Alberto Melucci, an Italian sociologist who presciently understood the meaning of social movements in the age of internet and mobile communications, before these new media were common.
The Theoretical Perspective of a Friend 
Alberto Melucci
In series of important books, Nomads of the Present: Social Movements and Individual Needs in Contemporary Society, Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age, and The Tea Party Challenges ‘Business as Usual’
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, September 22nd, 2010
The man behind the controversial Islamic Community Center in lower Manhattan, Feisal Abdul Rauf, aims for tolerance, but stirs up fear and regret.
 While I have been observing Feisal Abdul Rauf’s actions and reactions to the public controversies surrounding his work as the the chairman of the Cordoba Initiative and the imam of the Farah mosque in Lower Manhattan, I have been thinking a lot about my book, Civility and Subversion: The Intellectual in Democratic Society. I think that in democracies, intellectuals are talk provokers who help the general public confront and address serious political problems by informing discussion. I think that they do so by civilizing differences so that enemies can become opponents and opponents can become collaborators, and by subverting commonsense that hides problems, so that these problems then can be discussed. I, of course, know that no one intellectual is always a subversive, and no one intellectual is always an agent of civility. Yet, certain key intellectuals have primarily played one or the other role. This for example is how I think about the intellectual work of Malcolm X versus Martin Luther King Jr.
The tragedy of Feisal Abdul Rauf is that he has intended and has dedicated his life to the role of civility, while more brutal figures in our public life, perhaps Newt Gingrich is the primary culprit, have intended to turn the persistently patriotic imam into a subversive. He has been labeled an agent of Islamic, indeed radical Islamist, subversion of the good moral order, just when he has done everything in his public pronouncements and actions to support the good pluralistic moral order that he understands, along with many of his fellow Americans including his President, to be the great American achievement.
Thus consider deliberately Feisal Abdul Rauf’s words in his recent op-ed piece. He is even willing to see this episode in which he has been systematically and viciously slandered as a positive development in the project of civil religious interactions:
“Lost amid the commotion is the good that has come out of the recent discussion. I want to draw attention, specifically, to the open, law-based and tolerant actions that . . .
Read more: The Tragedy of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, September 12th, 2010
Max Weber, author of "Politics as Vocation"
It sometimes feels like Barack Obama has studied Max Weber’s classic, “Politics as a Vocation,” a bit too carefully. In his lecture, given in the aftermath of the tragedy of World War I, Weber made a strong distinction between an ethics of responsibility and an ethics of ultimate ends – between an ethics that is based in getting practical things done politically, serving one’s constituency’s interests and understandings, and an ethics of principled politics, true to one’s core values.
Such a distinction leads Obama to clearly distinguish between an ethics of responsible governance and an ethics of imaginative and eloquent political campaigning, including attractive depictions of ultimate ends. Obama’s reticence to use the poetry of campaigning, while he is engaged in the prose of governing, has meant that he hasn’t attacked those who have viciously attacked him. It is only now in campaign mode that he is responding. There are pressing questions: has his been a responsible approach? And has his position made Obama’s (and his supporters) ends more distant?
Thus, Brian Beutler, in a post on Talking Points Memo, applauded President Obama in his speech on the economy of September 8 in Cleveland for his direct attack on John Boehner, criticizing him “by name no less than eight times,” but laments “Complicating matters for Democrats is that, well, few Americans know who “Mr. Boehner” is. That might not be the case if Obama had given speeches like this starting a year ago. But there are still several weeks to go until election day.”
And Bob Herbert, in his op-ed. piece on Tuesday, was very pleased but also bewildered, “ Mr. Obama linked the nation’s desperate need for jobs to the sorry state of the national infrastructure in a tone that conveyed both passion and empathy, and left me wondering, ‘Where has this guy been for the past year and a half?’”
The Method to his Madness?
Yet, it should be understood that there is a method, or at least a significant strategic decision, to the President’s madness. He knew that he might need at least a . . .
Read more: Obama’s Dilemna: Responsible or Principled Politics?
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, August 23rd, 2010 
While the Tea Party and other political-right opposition attacks President Obama’s policies with outlandish arguments, Obama is forced to contend with both emotional arguments without factual basis and defending his administration’s positions persuasively. He has been criticized by party leaders and citizens alike for his mediated approach to attacks from the political right: will his calm censure be enough to have his argument heard? Only voters from the right and left will decide. My fear: The opposition’s tactics and arguments, while ridiculous, may be effective in swaying the voting public.
It has always been the case that the politics of America is a blend of cynicism and real democratic deliberation. I wrote about this extensively in my book, The Cynical Society. There are the sound bytes and the serious modes of deliberation. There are the media circuses and the deliberative chambers. And, there are slogans and extended reasonable arguments. But the proportions of the blend changes. During the election, Obama used serious persuasion more effectively than his opponents and his predecessors as a political tool. He consistently did this, most strikingly in his famous race speech in Philadelphia. A provocative compilation of the words of his minister Reverend Jeremiah Wright was used to insinuate that Obama was an angry Black man, a reverse racist. He responded with a carefully reasoned speech, addressing the problems and promise for racial understanding.
He has tried during his Presidency to do the same. This has led to aggressive attacks by his opponents. They attack not only in substance, but also in form, as he insists upon reasoned deliberate debate, his opponents flee from reason. Many have wondered whether his cool reasoned response to this has been wise. His critics within his Party, his fellow progressives, are most interesting in this regard.
There has been a concern that Obama has not been tough enough. That he has been too open to an opposition that has been unbending. He has offered respect and cooperation, while they have vilified and demonized him. And when his opposition does not demonize, it . . .
Read more: The Far, Far Right Battles Reason with Fear-Mongering
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, August 23rd, 2010 
The health care debate pitted the current administration against some familiar feeling foes. Though President Obama doesn’t seem to have expected it, the Republican-attack machine that distracted and embarrassed the Clinton administration is up to its old tricks. Using minute and displaced facts as well as fishing-boat whoppers to dissuade and disillusion an already frighted public, conservative lawmakers challenge this administration to fight back in kind–or risk losing the battle altogether.
Cynicism versus democracy the battle continues almost every day during the Obama Presidency. There was a serious debate to have on economic policy and health care reform, for example. There was a broad consensus that aggressive government action was necessary at the height of the financial crisis. Even the leading conservative economists understood that aggressive action was necessary. (link) But there have been reasonable debates about the shape of the action, (link) and after its success, there has been a debate about what actions should follow. (link) Yet, the tone of the opposition has not generally followed this course of criticism and opposition. Instead there have been the accusations of socialism and fascism.
On health care reform, there were crazy assertions of death panels and even a Republican senator who was engaged in a bipartisan effort at reform, warned about “pulling the plug on Grandma.” And thus serious conservatives wanting to engage in a serious debate about the issue found it impossible to do so. (link)
In the face of this gap, Obama actively acted as if he had faced a reasonable opposition for a long time, despite the evidence to the contrary, to the consternation of many of his supporters. He has faced the same sort of Republican attack machine that the Clintons did, and he has not prepared to meet it head on. As Paul Krugman put it “So far, at least, the Obama administration’s response to the outpouring of hate on the right has had a deer-in-the-headlights quality. It’s as if officials still can’t wrap their minds around the fact that things like this can happen to people who aren’t . . .
Read more: The Health Care Debates Rages: the Sleeping Elephant Rears its Head
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, August 23rd, 2010
The first two parts of “Gates-gate,” a socio-political drama in three parts, suggest the validity of the old French saying, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Part 1: a local affair, in Cambridge, Massachusetts: Henry Louis Gates Jr. returned from a trip to China, ironically working on a television documentary on the heterogeneous racial, ethnic and national genealogy of Americans. When he and his driver were trying to open his front door, finding that it was jammed, a neighbor thinking that they might be burglars called the police. The police investigation led to the arrest of Gates in his own home, with Gates asserting racial profiling, with Sgt. James Crowley, the arresting officer, charging Gates with disorderly conduct. The charges were subsequently dropped.
The characters in the affair are noteworthy. Gates is a distinguished professor at Harvard, a renown scholar and public intellectual. As a student of African American culture, he is careful and sober, not a flaming radical. Crowley, ironically, is a police academy expert on racial profiling, teaching a course on the subject at the Lowell Police Academy. And in many ways the two are on the same side of the cultural wars. Both Gates and Crowley have cooperated with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Crowley having participated in a 3- day workshop on Racial Profiling at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles in 2007, Gates delivering the Center’s Third Annual “State of Antisemitism” Lecture in New York in 1994. These were odd antagonists in what turned out to be a major national affair.
Part 2: the local becomes national. The event was first covered by The Harvard Crimson, but given Gates’ prominence, and the irony that he was apparently arrested for breaking into his own home, it became a national story, covered by the national media. As such affairs go, it followed the conventional black and white script. There were those who clearly saw the ugly face of racism pure and simple, and there were those who sided with the cop and stressed the importance of maintaining and respecting law and order. The usual suspects played . . .
Read more: The more things change, the more the stay the same
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, August 23rd, 2010
The persistence and changes of racism in American political culture are nicely revealed in the periodic explosions of racial controversy. From decisions about affirmative action, to the killing and brutalization of innocents, from Emmett Till to Abner Louima, to the prosecution of a black media celebrity charged and convicted of killing his white wife, i.e. the strange case of O.J. Simpson, the character of racism is clearly revealed.
These events may not be at the core of the problem of racism. That is manifested more in the daily struggles and interactions of ordinary people, beyond the public eye, as they get on with their lives. But the events, “media race events,” permit the symbolic enactment of American moral codes about race.
Blacks and whites perceived the OJ trial and acquittal differently. In and of itself this would appear to be a trivial matter. It took on great significance because it revealed how separately and differently blacks and whites live and perceive themselves and each other in America. Distinctions, differences and commonalities about race were revealed. With an African American President, such a case, which inevitably appears periodically in American life, has taken on a new dimension. The head of state, the central symbol of authority in the society, is now black, and this necessarily has meaning. The first case in point in the course of the Obama Presidency is “Gates-gate,” a socio-political drama in three parts. The case suggests both how racisms persists and has not much changed even with the election of a African American President, but also how the election has changed everything.
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