Clueless Pundits

Mark Nickolas at Huffington has a great piece out on the foolishness of pundits, including UW-Madison alum Jeff Greenfield.

On this historic day, I thought it would be instructive to look back on just how wrong some of the pundits were when Barack Obama (D) launched his bid for the presidency two years ago, including the embarrassing remark by an esteemed member of the self-described 'Best Political Team on Television' (CNN):

'Illinois Senator Barack Obama's announcement this week that he's likely to enter the Presidential race adds a dash of glamour and excitement to the Democratic field. But all of his media attention doesn't change the basic truth of the 2008 primary contest: The race is between Hillary Rodham Clinton and everybody else.'
- The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, Jan. 18, 2007

'Ask yourself, is there any other major public figure who dresses the way [Obama] does? Why, yes. It is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, unlike most of his predecessors, seems to have skipped through enough copies of 'GQ' to find the jacket-and-no-tie look agreeable. And maybe that's not the comparison a possible presidential contender really wants to evoke... Now, it is one thing to have a last name that sounds like Osama and a middle name, Hussein, that is probably less than helpful. But an outfit that reminds people of a charter member of the axis of evil, why, this could leave his presidential hopes hanging by a thread. Or is that threads?'
CNN Senior Analyst Jeff Greenfield, 'The Situation Room,' CNN, Dec. 11, 2006

WORT Madison Radio Lives on, Salon Recalls Memorable '80s Show

WORT Radio (Madison' community-sponsored station) lives on, still broadcasting a hard-hitting programming line-up.

A late 1980s WORT show (still running), A Public Affair, was recalled in Salon's column yesterday by Glenn Greenwald.

Jeff Hansen, the former host of A Public Affair in the 1980s, interviewed an array of brilliant guests, packing intelligence and insight into a one-hour radio, phone-in format.

A frequent guest of Hansen's was Noam Chomsky.

In one memorable show, Hansen interviewed media talking head Jeff Greenfield, (a UW-Madison alum and former ABC News Nightline reporter) and provoked Greenfield to candidly defend corporate broadcast news' dumbed-dumb editorial product on the basis of "concision".

Concision is the constraint of news guests' analysis that is fit in between commercials.

In one show after Hansen played his Greenfield interview on air to Chomsky, Chomsky ripped the concision imperative that Greenfield allowed and pointed to the results plain to any TV news viewer.

Salon's Glenn Greenwald, a first-rate legal-political columnist, referred to the WORT interview in this week's column after Greenwald's recent spate of appearances on broadcast TV news shows. Greenwald bemoaned the concision constraint.

Check out the Greenwald column and the video below. Writes Greenwald:

... (S)ee this definitive 3-minute explanation from Noam Chomsky on precisely how mainstream television's demand for 'concision' -- which shapes how the overwhelming majority of Americans receive their 'news' -- precludes any meaningful examination or challenging of prevailing political orthodoxies ... .

Below is an excerpt from the video, "Noam Chomsky: Manufacturing Consent," in which Chomsky talks about concision and the Hansen interview with Greenfield.