Barbara West, a right-wing reporter with WFTV in Florida, surprised Joe Biden by asking him questions from the far-right-wing — which is to say, questions that pretty much reflect the framing of the McCain campaign.
West: “You may recognize this famous quote: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” That’s from Karl Marx. How is Senator Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?”
Biden: “Are you joking? Is this a joke?”
West: “No”
Biden: “Is that a real question?”
West: “That’s a real question”
The liberal blogosphere has reacted to West with disdain, demands for an apology, and calls for West to be fired. And the Obama campaign blackballed WFTV from any further interviews before November 4.
Journalist Frank James writes:
Embarrassing and painful are two words that quickly come to mind to describe West’s interrogation of Biden last week. […]
Whatever she was going for, it certainly wasn’t straight-ahead journalism. Where was the balance or the attempt at fairness?
Most journalists have their points of view and political leanings. We’re citizens. We’re allowed that.
But any journalist who’s covered politics and politicians long enough knows it’s important to keep a certain distance. You don’t want to drink the Kool-Aid of either political party.
I disagree. I thought it was a good interview, and I want to see more like it.
Don’t get me wrong — West clearly has guzzled the kool-aid until its running out the nostrils. And despite her denials, she’s ridiculously biased. But what’s wrong with that?
On November 4, 2000, then-President Bill Clinton was making get-out-the-vote calls to radio stations, one after the other. And some assistant had failed to vet the calls properly, so Clinton ended up on the phone with Amy Goodman (of Democracy Now) and Gonzalo Aburto. What followed was a half-hour interview — one that Clinton clearly was astonished to find himself giving — and the only time Clinton was interviewed by unapologetic left-wingers in his eight years of presidency. Goodman and Aburto asked about “Leonard Peltier, Racial Profiling, the Iraqi Sanctions, Ralph Nader, the Death Penalty and the Israeli-Palestinian Con,” among other subjects.
I remember listening to the interview with astonishment and glee. I felt… included. I felt represented. For almost the first time in my life.
It shouldn’t have taken eight years before Clinton was asked questions from the left. And it should have happened more than once in eight years. My concerns aren’t so worthless that they shouldn’t ever even be addressed by the conceited, arrogant people who think so much of themselves that they think they’re qualified to rule over us, but at the same time, are shocked and appalled if they have to answer a single question from outside the comfortable circle of mainstream political concerns. And neither are Barbara West’s concerns.
Probably 20-30% of Americans think that the questions Barbara West asked Joe Biden are serious questions, and are are eager to hear Biden (and Obama) answer them. 20-30% isn’t a trivial number of Americans. There are likewise probably 20-30% of voters who, like me, share a lot of Amy Goodman’s and Gonzalo Aburto’s views.
There are some views that are so extreme that they needn’t be included; I don’t want to see KKK members interviewing major candidates, or folks who think the moon landing was faked. But Barbara West’s views are shared by millions of voters.
When Obama (or, if disaster strikes, I suppose, McCain) becomes President, they won’t be President of only the middle-ground 40% or so of America. They’ll be President of the entire country; they’ll be my president, Amy Goodman’s president, Barbara West’s president. Why is it a given that they should only have to face questions from the middle 40%?
That West’s views are shared by millions of her viewers doesn’t confer her interview questions any stamp of validity. Millions can be wrong, bigoted, ill informed, hateful and insistent the nation remain mired in a miasma of backward looking anti-intellectualism. I wouldn’t have consoled myself in 1942 while watching Goebbels interrogate an opposition politician (one hypothetically allowed to remain alive or be heard) that the millions in or out of Hitler’s camp were at least having their views aired in a marginally bipartisan fashion. The Republican base, the essence of their party once distilled and reduced to its most fervent acolytes, are on par with the very KKK members you say even you wouldn’t countenance getting an interview with Biden. The Republican party and the KKK are one. Go to YouTube and watch what camera crews have filmed outside rallies, citizens waiting in line to hear Palin speak. It is some of the most vile, hateful, racially derogatory spewing of venom you can witness. Hundreds of people calling for Obama’s death, calling him a terrorist, proudly looking into the camera and proclaiming “I’d never voter for a nigger for President”. These are West’s viewers. This IS West. Biden was being interviewed by a person fronting for all the prejudices represented by the KKK. The Republican Party is but one constantly blown dog whistle. You accord West far too much respect in your writing here.
I assume she went on to ask if McCain’s opposition to liberalism and plan to work with businesses was derived from his love for Benito Mussolini’s fascism.
No?
Really?
Shocking.
Obama has no plans to reorganize the farming communities of the USA into labour battalions, to strip the property of emigrants, or any of Marx’s other oppressive ideas. Calling Obama a Marxist is equivalent to calling Republicans Nazis… and the last time somebody did that publicly, it destroyed the reputation of MoveOn.Org, even though they didn’t even make the video.
The fact that Conservatives get away with throwing around words like that in public discourse shows how insane and right-wing politics have become.
” I remember listening to the interview with astonishment and glee. I felt… included. I felt represented. For almost the first time in my life. ”
there would be at least two reasons for the disconnect between the average citizen and power.
1) the fools and thieves in washington are not interested in what average citizens of the country wants or if the average citizen is represented. they want to either gain greater power or retain the power which the already have.
2) the fools and ideologues at various “news” outlets are not interested in informing the citizens about significant, valid, sententious events and movements, but rather they have a need to sell a media production to the highest bidding advertiser.
we have no factual, objective means of determining which fool and thief will be the better qualified chief fool and thief come november 4. neither the candidates themselves nor the media itself can play the game straight enough for the citizens to make an intelligent and informed choice; in the unlikely event that the citizens would in fact be more interested in demonstrated integrity in government than in bread and circuses.
The real story here is how good Biden sounded. His answers were mature and forthright, and I think did a good job of explaining the positive aspects of their vision for the country. West comes off as a tinfoil-hate crazy person and Biden looks like a leader, and I think he did a good job of framing her questions as coming from “the far right wing of the Republican party.”
Look at it this way: let’s say somebody accuses you of having an affair with your hot blond secretary. You don’t have a secretary. In fact, you’re gay. The accusation is totally absurd. But the accusation keeps flying about. Tons of people pipe up and keep explaining how the accusation is absurd. Everybody who looks into it knows it’s absurd.
Then, you walk into an interview and the first thing your interviewer asks is “so, does your secretary give good head?”
Yeah, I’d be offended and not come back.
If a conservative wants to interview Biden about issues that matter to conservatives, they could ask him about his position on abortion, gun control, separation of church and state, and tax cuts. Switching to base accusations instead is tasteless and wrong, and has only become acceptable because right wing so-called “journalists” have been flinging these accusations about so fast and furious that the public has gotten used to it.
The only reason that the public thinks that Obama is a secret muslim commie terrorist is because of assholes like her who know that if they say it often enough the public will believe it, regardless of the truth. Claiming that she *should* ask the question because that’s what the viewers are thinking is similar to the old line about a boy who murders his parents and then throws himself onto the mercy of the court on the grounds that he’s an orphan.
What she asked was not a legitimate question, it was pandering to the hate mongers who clearly have never read Marx. Many people walk around with cold war fear but have never once read the communist manifesto never mind having a legitimate understanding of the message that it conveys. She was going for a sound bite and not a legitimate conservation which is what a question like that needs to be thoroughly explored.
No card carrying Marxist would ever call Obama one. By asking that question publicly in a country that has irrational fears of socialism without an extended explanation of Marxism and the ways in which the U.S.S.R, China, Cuba and North Korea have strayed from what Marx intended is inflammatory. It is simply not a fit question for a 4 minute interview. I would bet my whole set of marbles that woman has never read any Marx and simply asked the question to stir up controversy. There is a difference between asking a question to gain more information on a candidates position and doing so to stir up fear and unrest.
Amp, the two situations aren’t even remotely related.
You said it yourself, Goodman was asking questions that hadn’t been asked in eight whole years. West’s questions, on the other hand, have already been asked and answered over, and over, and over.
The people who wanted answers out of Clinton, wanted those answers because they are legitimate, difficult questions. They’re smart folks who have done their research. The 20-30% who think Obama’s a Marxist, on the other hand, don’t think he’s a Marxist because of his clearly stated views. They think he’s a Marxist because of the out-of-context sound bytes that Fox News has been pushing. Or because he’s a scary black man. Or because he’s got a “D” next to his name. If they want answers to their questions, all they need to do is open their fucking eyes and start paying a modicum of attention.
If we legitimize the conspiracy theories of the right based on what percentage of Americans have bought into them, do you think Amy Goodman should have been asking Clinton about all the “mysterious deaths” connected to him, started with the “suicide” of Vince Foster? Hey, it was respectable enough to get pushed by the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and even I got that e-mail in the early days of mass internet use. (Prodigy, holla!)
There is a serious way to ask questions, and an unserious way. Her question was not serious. The serious question would be: “Senator Biden, the tax plan your running mate advocates doesn’t just raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for government; it raises taxes on them to give money to the working poor. In combination with a bailout that has made Washington, D.C. the biggest player in the financial markets, with the president now ordering banks to make loans against their business judgment, this has many Americans worried about how much more the government is going to interfere with the private sector and engage in redistribution. How is an Obama Administration going to bring America back to its roots of limited government and free enterprise?”
The serious, smart Republicans I know who are troubled by Obama are not worried that he is going to have five-year production plans for factories or create collective farms in Kansas, which is why bringing up Marx is moronic. What they are worried about is using the tax system not to provide services, but to send a check to some taxpayers that is drawn on the wealth of other taxpayers. They are worried about giving a Democratic Congress and White House a huge stake in the financial industry, particularly given the degree to which Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had their management and boards based on political patronage. They are worried about ever-increasing regulation that does not entail direct government ownership in the private sector, but hedges the private sector about with so many mandates on how to run businesses that it is stifled and uncompetitive in the global economy. I don’t share all of these concerns, but they are concerns based on past experience with liberal politics and that are not wholly unconnected with Obama’s own track record and platform.
It seems to me that one of the tragedies of this campaign has been the shouting down of the smart, serious Republicans by the Barbara West wing of the party. West’s question is so obviously silly and irrelevant that Biden can pretty much dismiss it, but there are only so many people who get to ask questions. For every stupid tinfoil hat right winger question that gets asked, there’s a serious conservative question that doesn’t get asked. It also allows us to marginalize conservatism as being represented by the Barbara Wests rather than the George Wills. He did two Newsweek columns several months ago with a list of questions for each candidate (Obama, McCain) that were hard-hitting and in a couple of cases, I thought not wholly fair, but every one of them was serious.
Someone should tell Barbara West that if the question is one that would be asked to get a laugh on the Colbert Report, it is not serious journalism.
Amp, I disgree.
What you’re saying comes awful close to the old “everybody has an opinion” trope. Everybody has an opinion but not all opinions are equally valid; valid opinions are ones that are based in fact.
Everyone might have questions, but not all questions are valid; valid questions would be ones that have a genuine bearing on the issue at hand and not thinly disguised smears.
Biden sounded good except for the last question, which he completely ducked by saying something along the lines of “I don’t know anyone who thinks that” instead of simply answering the question.
As far as the question about Marxism goes, I don’t know why Biden thought it was a joke. I don’t think that either Obama or Biden want to turn the U.S. into a Marxist state – and I doubt that either West or Biden could define Marxism – but as Amp points out the whole concept of “redistribution of wealth” is a bright red alarm for a lot of people and SOUNDS like Marxism to them (even if, again, most of them couldn’t define it). Asking for further explanation of what he meant is legitimate. If Biden doesn’t think that a lot of people have that word pop into their heads when they hear that phrase he better wake up.
RonF,
the whole concept of “redistribution of wealth” is a bright red alarm for a lot of people and SOUNDS like Marxism to them (even if, again, most of them couldn’t define it).
Really, so when Milton Friedman proposed the negative income tax, and Richard Nixon turned it into the Earned Income Tax Credit, all those people thought, “Marxist”?
I totally agree that interviews like this should be allowed to continue. Someone above made the point that Biden came off as a mature statesman in the interview, ridiculous questions aside. If that’s something people are thinking, then it ought be voiced. It doesn’t lend credibility to the crazy question, it adds volume to the sane answer. She gets to ask it and he gets to ask her if she’s serious. Seems awfully fair to me.