Caveat lector

BENDING HISTORY (PART 1)! David Brooks hadn’t read Hill’s book. But so what? He found it dull anyway:

THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 2003

BEGALA'S CADDIE: Our entire staff will appear on this afternoon's Crossfire. CNN, 4:30 Eastern.

BEND IT LIKE BROOKS: How reflexively fake is your Washington “press corps?” Let David Brooks of the NewsHour show you. Last Friday night, Jim Lehrer asked co-pundits Brooks and Mark Shields what they thought of Living History. The book had been in the stores all week. After some vague remarks by Shields, Brooks voiced a sad assessment:

BROOKS (6/13/03): The frustrating thing about the book to me is that like many politicians, including Ronald Reagan, she is incapable of having an interesting insight or an original thought. All these people who have these positions where they could really see something and say something interesting are just incapable of thinking in that way and the person who has the high power and also can write interestingly like a Winston Churchill or Teddy Roosevelt is so rare. So the book is kind of frustrating because it is frankly a little dull.

But now, Lehrer turned back to Shields, and the crafty host had a trick question. Of course, as Hard Pundit Law requires, he received a Belittling Group Reply:

LEHRER (continuing directly): Have you read it?

SHIELDS: I haven’t, Jim.

LEHRER: Are you going to?

SHIELDS: It’s right behind the—

BROOKS: The Spanish-English dictionary.

SHIELDS: The Spanish-English dictionary or “The Franco I Knew.” No, I don’t. Jim, I really don’t. I don’t plan to.

LEHRER (continuing directly): Have you read it? You talk like you you’ve read it.

LEHRER: Have you read it? You talk like you you’ve read it.

BROOKS: I read parts. I stood in the bookstore for about an hour looking at it; I did not buy it.

LEHRER: You went into the bookstore and picked it up and, what, skimmed it?

BROOKS: Simon & Schuster is now canceling my book contract but I have to tell the truth.

But then, all over the “press corps” we saw the same thing; we saw fake, phony pundits smashing a book which they hadn’t quite managed to read. No, they hadn’t read the book—but they knew the corps’ talking-points. They told us how dull this tiring book was—so dull that they hadn’t yet read it.

TOMORROW: Dull? Clinton makes many stinging assertions. But pundits aren’t allowed to discuss them.

SKIM IT LIKE CARLSON: On PBS, you didn’t have to wait for Brooks to hear non-readers slam the book. Four nights before the pundit’s performance, Charlie Rose hosted Chris Matthews and Margaret Carlson, who—in accordance with Hard Pundit Law—spent a segment beating up Living History. But as all three pundits eventually noted, they hadn’t actually read the book either. As usual, Carlson was a bit more open as she outlined her scholarly methods:

CARLSON (6/9/03): I didn’t—I’ve knifed through the book looking at the pages for the good parts.

CARLSON (6/10/03): Hillary Clinton still doesn’t accept responsibility for many of the things that happened during the Clinton administration in which she played a part—cattle futures, billing records, Whitewater and on and on—because it was always due to her political enemies. And the same thing with her husband and the accusations against him. It’s always someone else’s fault.

But so it goes when fake, phony pundits repeat their Official Approved Points. Hillary blames it all on her enemies is a message all pundits must deliver. But later in the segment, Borger went a howler too far. Let’s watch as she bends it like Borger:

BORGER: Margaret, what about health-care reform, for example? This was a great disaster for Hillary Clinton and she still couldn’t admit that it was a terrible, terrible mistake. I mean, she—

CLINTON (page 261): The women were already seated around a large square table when I walked in. Until that moment, I had been able to conceal my distress and discouragement from everyone on my staff except Maggie [Williams], who seemed to know exactly how I felt, whether I showed it or not. Now it all came out. Fighting back tears, my voice cracking, I poured out my apologies. I was sorry if I had let everyone down and contributed to our losses.

Indeed, Borger’s statement was so absurdly false that even Carlson and Fineman stepped in. And someone fed Borger some of the words Clinton actually speaks in her book:

BORGER: Margaret, what about health-care reform, for example? This was a great disaster for Hillary Clinton and she still couldn’t admit that it was a terrible, terrible mistake. I mean, she—

CARLSON: She did say, “I almost cried.” She did say—she said—

BORGER: Yeah. It—

CARLSON: It—not over her husband, but she almost cried over the failure of health care. [This is, of course, a mocking joke.]

BORGER: Right. And—and here’s what she actually said in the book: “I knew I had contributed to our failure, both because of my own missteps and because I underestimated the resistance I would meet as the first lady with a policy mission.” But what about the substance of health-care reform that seemed to be a bit of a problem here?

CARLSON: Yeah. She submitted a 1,346-page bill to a Congress that had been dealing with the issue for a long time and then treated them as if they’d come to it fresh. And the idea that it was resistance to her as a first lady, a tiny bit, yes, but—

FINEMAN: But she—but what more do you want from her? She said “missteps.” What more do you want from her?

BORGER: And, Howard, I love the “our.” Suddenly it was “our failure.”

CARLSON: It was “our” failure, right.

FINEMAN: Well, that—that was very generous of her to include her husband and the—

CARLSON: Right.

We’ve said “hate speech” because that’s just what this is, conducted by the store-bought bootblacks who now comprise the bulk of your “press corps.” They haven’t actually read the book, but they know what their group’s Approved Talking-Points are, and they’ll continue their ugly and stupid performance as long as they’re well paid to do so.