CNN’s Hosts: Hidden Agendas

Hitting record-low ratings among total viewers and in the 25-54 age demographic, CNN had its overall lowest-rated month in April 2012 since August 2001. In May 2012, the network hit a 20-year low for total viewers during primetime viewing.[1] Something had gone seriously wrong. Perhaps the easiest move when a company takes a nose-dive is to fire the top. Accordingly, Time Warner executives were thinking of replacing the president of CNN Worldwide.[2] While taking off the top might make sense in government because the entire administration is apt to change, business firms tend to be more entrenched even when under new management.

In the case of CNN, the culprit may have been bad hiring decisions. If so, the solution would lie in replacing the staff who made the hires as well as the “personalities” hired. In an age of “media personalities” wherein opinion typically accompanies journalistic interviewing, it is only natural to hire people who have strong personalities. It is far less common to witness interviewees going after hosts in terms of their personalities. In May 2012, Donald Trump laid into Wolf Blitzer during an interview. The real-estate magnet told the journalist that the introduction was inappropriate, but then added a personal insult in remarking, but “that’s okay, because I’ve gotten to know you over the years.”[3] It would appear that Trump and others “in the loop” having had years of experience with Blitzer had come to the conclusion that he could not be trusted. The general public—meaning the viewers—could only surmise on the accusation, knowing only the “on-screen” media personality.

Years before Trump’s revelation, I had already glimpsed a bit of the man behind the curtain when Blitzer wished everyone “a happy holiday and happy New Year.” The meaning of this statement struck me as suggestive of a Jewish prejudice against Christmas, as if the U.S. holiday were only the religious holiday celebrated by Christians. I also saw footage of Blitzer at a Hollywood event as he was desperately trying to get interviewed by a journalist.

My sense that CNN “stars” might be too self-absorbed got a shot in the arm when Piers Morgan admitted on-camera while covering Queen Elizabeth II’s sixty years on the state’s throne that he really wanted to be king. That was too much even for one of Morgan’s co-host, who said in exasperation, “Oh, Piers!” Strangely, he had previously said that he was glad to be a subject (of the Queen).  Might it be that pride in being a subject is really a subterfuge for a desire to be king? Piers’ imagining of himself as king of the island (an interesting fantasy, given that he had been implicated in the Murdoch hacking scandal) was revealing. Two days before, his coverage had been reduced to drawing attention to the rain—a constant refrain during the parade of boats. He even pointed out that there was water on his seat (as if any of the viewers cared). Moreover, he was careful to stress everything that was distinctively British, while generalizing everything American across fifty republics (Britain is one republic). My instinctive reaction was to ask, well then why don’t you stay over there? 

I was not at all surprised to learn of CNN’s low ratings. I suspected that even if viewers had not been aware of it, they had probably reacted in reaction to the arrogance of the major hosts. People were voting with their remote controls even if they couldn’t put their finger on what was behind their decisions. Rather than limit the change to the top brass at CNN, Time Warner executives would have been wiser to demand that the major “stars” of CNN be replaced en masse. Owning a subsidiary does not mean that oversight is limited to the subsidiary’s executive suite, at least if the parent company is being capably run.

1. Rebecca Shapiro, “CNN Considering Leadership Change in Wake of Ratings Woes: Report,” The Huffington Post, June 8, 2012.

2. Ibid.

3. The Atlantic Wire, “Donald Trump Blasts Wolf Blitzer, CNN During Combative Live Interview,” May 29, 2012.

Pressuring E.U. States: The Debt Crisis as Leverage

By mid 2012, the verdict was in on the German-led recipe for restoring states overwhelmed by public- or private-sector debt: Austerity is counter-productive in reducing government deficits. On June 6, 2012, the media reported: “Prolonged austerity is making it harder, not easier, for governments like Greece to become self-reliant again.”[1] Salaries and pensions in the private and the public sectors in the state had been cut by up to 50 percent, leaving Greece 495 million euros short of its revenue targets in the four months ending the previous April, according to the Greek Finance Ministry.[2] With less cash, consumers had to reduce spending, leading thousands of taxpaying businesses to fail. Income expected from a higher, 23 percent value-added tax required by the bailout agreement fell short by around 800 million euros in the first four months of 2012. That is partly because cash-short businesses that were once law-abiding started hiding money to stay afloat, tax officials said.

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires.

1. Liz Alderman, “Greece Warns of Going Broke as Tax Proceeds Dry Up,” The New York Times, June 6, 2012.

2. Ibid.

The Wisconsin Recall Election: A Predictor of the U.S. Presidential Election?

According to Paul Abowd of the Center for Public Integrity in 2012, the election to fill the governor’s office in the wake of Scott Walker’s recall “has become a referendum on the future of public sector unions.”[1] That the union of teaching-assistant students at the University of Wisconsin in Madison refused to endorse Barrett precisely because he was not making collective bargaining rights a salient part of his campaign would suggest that Abowd had it wrong. Moreover, it is a mistake to read the election results in Wisconsin as a harbinger of things to come in the U.S. presidential election five months later in November 2012.

During his campaign, Barrett downplayed the public-sector union issue because he figured he already had his base, which had detested Walker for more than a year. Barrett was going for the independents who saw the recall petition as sour-grapes by a vocal interest group (the student union validating this judgment). Most tellingly, the teaching-assistant student-union had even refused to endorse the unions’ own favorite for Democratic nominee, Kathleen Falk, who had lost to Barrett in the primary by twenty points. Falk had promised not to sign any legislation until a bill restoring the public-sector unions' collective-bargaining rights is presented. You cannot get much more pro-union than that, and yet even THAT was not good enough for the graduate students at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. At the very least, it would appear that the graduate school's admissions committees at the university in Madison could have been doing better in their decisions, at least in regard to assessing maturity and judgment. 

I count it as a good thing that Barrett’s position on restoring the Wisconsin government workers’ bargaining right was less “my way or the highway” than was Falk’s position because Barrett was evincing a more mature or seasoned approach to governance. In contrast, the teaching-assistants’ union can be read as evincing the self-defeating and immature rigidity of “my way or the highway.” The contending camps in Wisconsin’s Democratic Party reflected this difference of political culture between Milwaukee and Madison. Hence, the dynamic cannot be assumed to operate at the U.S. level.

Furthermore, Mitchell, a young fireman whose involvement in his union probably won him the Democratic nomination for Vice (or lieutenant) Governor (as an after-thought by most voters), was at the time both too young and inexperienced in terms of public office to occupy the second-highest office in the land, not to mention the highest. At an outdoor rally in a street-alcove after a motley march that took place in downtown Madison the day after the primary, Mitchell easily stood out in video of the event because he was the only person in the warm weather wearing a grey suit. His political inexperience really stood out as he could be seen walking through the crowd, insisting on shaking hands with people even as they were trying to listen to the speakers. Perhaps most tellingly, he bumped into at least one person who preferred to keep listening to the speaker rather than turn around to shake hands. I suspect that Mitchell was trying to be a "professional" politician in a very atypical (and thus inappropriate) context (i.e., the recall). This itself essentially disqualified him from the office he was seeking, especially because it was possible that had he won along with Walker, the young fireman could have found himself assuming the office of governor.

The quality of the Democrats’ choice for vice governor mattered particularly because Walker was being investigated at the time by U.S. and Wisconsin law-enforcement agencies for corruption while he had been chief executive of the County of Milwaukee. In Illinois, Quinn had become the head of state and chief executive of the government when "Blago" was impeached and removed from office for trying to sell Barak Obama's vacated U.S. Senate seat. Were Mitchell to have won even as Bartlett lost, the novice could have found himself eventually taking over for Walker. It is not at all advisable to have a political novice in the highest office in the land. I suspect that this factor weighed on independent voters.

It would be perfectly understandable, therefore, for Wisconsinites in favor of Barrett to have skipped the lieutenant governor race based on principle (i.e., putting the interest of the public good over partisanship), even if that could have resulted in the governor and lieutenant governor being of different parties. Because the lieutenant governor office has some important powers when the governor is not in Wisconsin, such a scenario would certainly not be optimal for Barrett supporters. Therefore, I believe the Democrats in Wisconsin dropped the ball in voting in the primary for a nominee for lieutenant governor. To be sure, they made a good choice in picking Barrett’s mature approach to restoring union rights over Falk’s “my way of the highway” mentality on the "single issue" of a union's bargaining rights. The refusal of at least one union in Madison to back Barrett further compromised the Democrats’ strength in defeating Walker.  These are idiosyncratic elements in the Wisconsin “recall election” that don’t project onto the U.S. as a whole. 

Most obviously, going into the recall election, the sitting governor of Wisconsin was a Republican whereas the sitting U.S. president was a Democrat. Also, whereas Mitchell was a political novice at the time (being plucked out of a fire department union), Obama’s VP was an experienced former U.S. Senator and VP. In terms of the parties, Barrett was not associated with Obama's weaknesses (e.g., Obamacare), and Walker did not have Romney's problems with conservatives. Indeed, some Obama supporters crossed over to vote for Walker--a fact that Obama no doubt had foreseen as he was staying away from campaigning for Barrett.

Moreover, the United States is not a state with a very large back yard. Given the heterogeneous political, economic, religious and social cultures of the republics in the U.S., it is not a good idea to simply project the results in Wisconsin on the U.S. as a whole. Furthermore, there are issues that are only relevant at the U.S. level, such as foreign policy. I must conclude that the U.S.-based media was being much too simplistic in regarding the Wisconsin race as an indicator of the “upcoming” U.S. elections. Lest all politics is local, the results of a U.S.-wide election can be viewed as a quilt of various majorities rather than as one huge aggregate. Yet reductionism to U.S.-level politics seems a preoccupation or obsession, at least for the major American media companies, as if the American republics existed only in so far as they contribute to U.S. races. I suspect that the culprit is American business more generally, as large corporations have found it cheaper to have one set rather than fifty sets of government regulations. Reducing American politics to the U.S. stage serves this purpose.

1. Amanda Terkel, “Wisconsin Recall: Election Law Quirk Could Throw Governance Into Disarray,” The Huffington Post, June 3, 2012. See Paul Abowd, “CPI: Wisconsin Recall Battle Is State’s Most Expensive Election,”MSNBC.com, June 3, 2012. 

European Central Bank to E.U. Leaders: Vision Is Needed

Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, warned a committee of the E.U.'s parliament at the end of May 2012 that the structure undergirding the euro in the E.U. had become "unsustainable." He criticized political officials for having kicked the can down the road by enacting half-measures or else delaying decisions, thus making the debt crisis even worse than it otherwise would have been. "The next step is for our leaders to clarify what is the vision for a certain number of years from now."[1] Similarly, Olli Rehm, vice president of the E.U. Commission (the E.U.'s executive branch), said that ways must be found to avoid a disintegration of the common currency.

The full essay is in Essays on the E.U. Political Economy, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

1. Jack Ewing, "A Terse Warming for Euro States: Do Something New," The New York Times, May 31, 2012.