NYT correction: "David Gregory... displayed a gun magazine on the air, not a loaded gun."

An embarrassing "editing error" in the TV critic's review of Chuck Todd's debut as host of "Meet the Press." Imagine thinking Gregory had waved a loaded gun!

That review is linked at Drudge for the observation that "TODD TURNS ORANGE ON 'MEET'..."

But the critic, Alessandra Stanley, wasn't mean enough to say "orange." She said:

Even though he lost weight and gained a tan for his debut on Sunday, Mr. Todd doesn’t look like other anchors. For one thing, he has a goatee and speaks in a direct, conversational manner, without punchy diction or pomposity.

Stanley doesn't mention that Todd called attention to the new beardsiness of the show at one point, as he switched a second time from the Obama interview to a panel discussion:

... Joe and Nia are back. John Stanton of Buzzfeed is here, because we didn't have enough goatees on the desk for the first time as well....

"This is great, Chuck Todd who worked for one of the most radical leftist senators Tom Harkin, is going to interview President Obama for his first guest."

"The only question is going to be, who has the softest balls."

That's the top-rated comment — of 3596 comments — to the Politico article titled "Chuck Todd to interview President Obama on first 'Meet The Press' broadcast."

Before I read that comment and decided to blog it, I was a participant in this conversation here at Meadhouse:

ME: Chuck Todd is beginning his stint on 'Meet The Press' by giving Obama an interview.

MEADE: Why doesn't he begin his stint on 'Meet The Press' by giving Obama a blowjob?

ME: Can I use that quote?

I got a sarcastic and negative response, so I was pleased to see that the top-rated comment at Politico was handling the male genitalia well enough.

You know, Chuck Todd has a lot to prove, and he should want to maximize the likelihood that he'll seem more like tough guy Tim Russert than affable sweetheart David Gregory. How is he going to do that while showing appreciation for Obama for deigning to sit down with him?

Gregory out. Todd in.

At "Meet the Press."

As expected.

What is NBC going to do about the post-Russert crashing ratings of "Meet the Press"?

It's not just that no one can match the magnificent Tim Russert, because David Gregory has fallen behind the elderly Bob Schieffer (on "Face the Nation") and the once-cute but never particularly popular George Stephanopoulos (on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos"). So what is NBC doing about its David Gregory problem? I'd recommend reading my blog posts on the subject, like this one. ("Gregory plays favorites, shoring up liberal commentators when they seem to be stumbling, supplying arguments and glossing over rough spots for them. Russert would go in for the kill.") I'm a longtime viewer who loved Tim Russert, and I've kept up my habit of watching the show (which I record along with other Sunday shows), and I am very unhappy with it.

But according to this WaPo article, here's something NBC has done in an attempt to fathom its Russertlessness problem:

Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State has been forgotten, or let's pretend it has.

A colloquy on "Meet the Press" this morning:

DAVID GREGORY: Before I get to my final question on Israel, with a big meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister coming to meet with President Obama. Marco Rubio is on this program in just a few minutes in saying it's time for the administration to publicly acknowledge that the reset with Russia is dead. Do you acknowledge that?

SECRETARY JOHN KERRY: Well, I don't know what you mean by the reset.

Thanks to Irene in (the comments to the previous post) for calling attention to that (as an illustration of my observation: "I take that to mean Kerry is weak and he knows it.")

And here's Hugh Hewitt, writing yesterday about the upcoming 5th anniversary of Hillary's reset button.

It is astonishing that so failed a figure would presume to seek the presidency but she is measuring herself against Joe Biden so that is a partial explanation. I have asked a number of pundits, reporters or elected officials to tell me what she accomplished in her long tenure at State....

Obama said "there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine," and "Now you've called this an invasion. So what are the costs?"

David Gregory asked Secretary of State John Kerry on "Meet the Press" this morning.

Kerry was clear. He said it all in one word: "Opprobrium."

That word was (of course) surrounded by typical, tedious Kerryesque blah-blah-blah, which I've printed out below the fold. But the answer is "opprobrium." The dreaded opprobrium. A big international frowny face.

David Gregory tries to drag Rand Paul into the war on women.

On "Meet the Press" this morning, Gregory seemed intent on extracting something from Rand Paul that would hurt him with women voters.

First, Gregory started the interview with Mike Huckabee's gift to the Democrats, the statement that birth control coverage implies that women "cannot control their libido." Gregory asks Paul whether that's "helpful," and Rand Paul goes meta, saying "a lot of debates in Washington... get dumbed down and are used for political purposes," which is a way of saying Gregory's question is dumb. Then Paul jokes, "if there was a war on women, I think they won," and proceeds to talk about the women in his family, who are doing well, and the fact that women now outnumber men in law schools and med schools. He concludes that he doesn't see women as "downtrodden." They are "rising up and doing great things." In fact, he worries about men, "because I think the women really are out-competing the men in our world."

Why do members of Congress, nice enough in private, get tough on camera, when network journalists, presumably also nice in private, stay nice on camera?

In his new book, "Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War," former Secretary of State Robert Gates makes this criticism of the members of Congress:

During his tenure as Pentagon chief, Gates often found himself tempted to quit because of the adversarial treatment he received from members of Congress. He says that in private the lawmakers could be reasonable. "But when they went into an open hearing, and the little red light went on atop a television camera, it had the effect of a full moon on a werewolf," he says in an excerpt in the [Wall Street] Journal.

Here's the WSJ excerpt, in which I cannot find that quote, but there's additional text about Gates's dismay at congressional brutality. He says that at congressional hearings he'd often thought of slamming his briefing book shut and saying: "there is no son of a bitch in the world who can talk to me like that. I quit." He complains about "the consistently adversarial, even inquisition-like treatment of executive-branch officials by too many members of Congress across the political spectrum—creating a kangaroo-court environment in hearings, especially when television cameras were present."

Are television cameras to blame? Yesterday, I was talking about how inanely nonconfrontational David Gregory is on "Meet the Press." He and his fellow journalists coddle administration officials. They sit back, nod, and say "okay" and "right" as these people deliver their prepared talking points. They don't seem to understand that they need us, the audience, and we want vigorous, probing questions. They're making one another comfortable, on camera, in the manner Robert Gates describes as prevailing behind the scenes in Congress.

How can we explain this difference? Why do members of Congress, nice enough in private, get tough on camera, when network journalists, presumably also nice in private, stay nice on camera? Let me offer a few answers for your assessment:

1. To put on a good TV show, you do need to get tough on camera, and "Meet the Press" is failing as a TV show. It's ratings are way down. Maybe members of Congress should not see themselves as putting on a TV show, but they are modeling how to put on a show.

2. Members of Congress have the power to force administration officials to appear and to testify under oath, but the producers of a show like "Meet the Press" can only extend invitations, invitations that will be accepted only if the invitees think it will be to their advantage. As there are more than one show, a host needs to give the best party to entice A-list guests. The real guests that matter, of course, are the home audience, but the TV show folk must think the viewers look at the guest list to decide what to watch.

3. Members of Congress face elections, and the judgment of voters exerts more pressure than the judgment of viewers. The viewers and the voters are just the American people, but each member of Congress is answerable to his (or her) constituents, and a national TV show is trying to appeal to everyone. The member of Congress has a more focused idea of what people in his state or district are going to grill him about, and the journalists involved in a TV show think more vaguely about what will make people tune in and stick around.

4. Both the members of Congress and the journalists are supposed to feel a profound sense of responsibility for the power they exercise, but actual power to legislate is different from a power only to influence people through the force of words. You'd think this difference would create more vigor in the expression of the journalists, so why would it have the opposite effect? The easiest inference is that the aim of the journalists is to lull the people.

Is it wrong to call the man who delivers the President's talking points his "point man"?

This question came up in this morning's post about "Meet the Press," where I'd written that David Gregory introduced Gene Sperling as "President Obama's economic point man," and I quipped "He's the 'point man,' on the show to give the Administration's points."

In the comments, Kevin said:

"Meet The Press" has run out of time, right?

Politico has an item titled "NBC's 'Meet The Press' hits historic lows in the final quarter of 2013":

It's no secret that NBC's "Meet The Press" has been in bad shape of late. Indeed, the show has been on the decline since David Gregory took over in 2008. But the most recent numbers are especially troubling.

This is no mystery! The show is completely different without Tim Russert, who challenged his guests — "guests" seems like the wrong word — with questions, often built on a series of quotes — displayed on screen — that would box them in painfully. We at home enjoyed the tension and pain. Gregory expects us to look on as the respected elite of Washington are made comfortable while they deliver the speeches they arrived with. And Gregory plays favorites, shoring up liberal commentators when they seem to be stumbling, supplying arguments and glossing over rough spots for them. Russert would go in for the kill.

Tom Brokaw, David Gregory, and Chris Matthews daintily allude to Obama's masculinity deficit.

On yesterday's "Meet the Press," Tom Brokaw said it was "just inexplicable" that the Obamacare website "suddenly landed the way that it did, in utter chaos." The President should have pressured "Kathy Sebelius and other people" about the "rollout" which was "going to be our big play for the second term."

"Big play" picks up on that football metaphor Obama used 4 times in his November 14th remarks. "We fumbled," he said, though in real football, it's an individual player who fumbles. But here was this "big play," and somebody fumbled. Was it "Kathy"?

The moderator David Gregory, immediately steps up to frame the next question in macho terms: "Who's got the muscle?" The manly (though 50-years-dead) JFK somehow shoulders his way into the conversation. Gregory turns to Chris Matthews and says:

You were making the point to me this week about, you know, where's his Bobby Kennedy? Who's got the muscle? When the president says, and he did say, "The user experience of this website is everything," who had the muscle in the White House to get it done and make sure the president gets what he wants?

Muscle, muscle, muscle. If a right-winger had phrased the question that way, somebody would call this misogyny. These 3 men — Brokaw, Gregory, and Matthews — are hankering for a muscular man who can nail the big play. He depended on a Kathy when he needed a Bobby. And here's what Chrissy Matthews said:

Everybody goes to their battle stations when there's chaos. 

I'll see you your football metaphor, and raise you a military metaphor.

You always go to where you've been arguing before. But I've always been arguing this president doesn't have a chain of command, a very clear line of authority and unique responsibility. I remember Sebelius, who I like of course, most people do like her, she's a public servant. 

She's liked. Kathy's likeable enough. She's a good servant.

But when she was asked, "Who's in charge?" in that committee, under oath, she started to talk about someone, the head of C.M.S., who handles Medicare and Medicaid. Among 30 or 40 other responsibilities, this person had the rollout responsibilities.

And was "this person" male or female? Female. Marilyn Tavenner. Can you say her name without vaulting back in time to your old macho icons Jack and Bobby? They knew what "responsibilities" to give their Marilyn.

Matthews reaches even further back, to an even manlier man:

Look at Japan, the occupation of Japan, it simple: Put one guy in charge, Doug MacArthur. 

Put one guy in charge. Doug. Call him Doug, not Douglas. Not — in the style of "Kathy" — Dougy. He's Doug. And there was a guy! Put one guy in charge.

You put somebody in charge and they're uniquely responsible for its success or failure. Obama doesn't do things that way. He's got floaters, like Valerie Jarett, floating around. 

Floaters. Like Valerie Jarrett. The disrespect! They can't even spell her name right in the transcript. Floaters, like Valerie Jarrett, floating around. Matthews being a good Democrat somehow feels secure that the double meaning of "floaters" won't bring on the accusations of racism that would surely have burst forth if a Republican had talked about Jarrett like that.

He doesn't want to have a real chief of staff, like a Jim Baker.

He's saying — it's hardly subtle — that Jarrett's not a real man. You need a man. A man like Bobby or Doug or Jim.

He doesn't want to give authority to people, and I think it's been a real problem.

So what does this say about Obama, not wanting to bring in real men, who take charge, who make the play, who exert authority? He's not man enough to work alongside real men? He needs to play with the ladies, ladies who don't know their place — who dither and float?

Nancy Pelosi explains her "pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it," accepts your "hoop-di-doo and ado," and flips the old "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" on us.

On "Meet the Press" this morning, David Gregory confronted Pelosi with her old statement, "But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it away from the fog of the controversy." He asked:

And hasn't that idea, that you have to pass it before you know what's in it, isn't that really the problem, as you look back on it? That the-- there was such a rush to get this done, no Republicans voting for it, and now there are unintended effects of this that were foreseen at the time that you couldn't know the impact of it. And now this is coming home to roost.

Unintended, yet foreseen. Foreseen, and yet with unknown impact. As one might say: the known unknowns.

Pelosi answered:

David Gregory moderates an excellent discussion on Syria with David Axelrod, Newt Gingrich, Jane Harman, and Chuck Todd.

On "Meet the Press" today. Gingrich is especially good. Here's his answer to Gregory's question paraphrasing Denis McDonough's argument for the strike ("It's going to be limited. Don't worry. Very, very limited, very targeted. And by the way, if we don't act, Iran, the real enemy, is watching"):

No, look, I thought Denis was very effective, making a bad case. And I think that's their problem. If the strategy is inexplicable to a normal American, we're going to sort of punch you, but we're not going to punch you too hard, and we really would like you to leave, but we don't want you to leave enough to get rid of you, and we hope there's a political solution, although we haven't got a clue what it is. I mean, that's very hard to build momentum for. 

And Harman left a strong impression on me when she said:

But the notion of going to war or launching a limited strike, at least to me, to project American power in a way that deters really bad consequences in Iran and North Korea and so forth is by my rights, the right thing to do. And I think what's going on here, in my view, is all these folks in both parties, especially in the House, are worried about being primaried. The base in each party is against this. I'm sympathetic to that, the economy hasn't rebounded in most parts of the country. They're against it. So these folks think that the reelection, my view, matters more than perhaps taking a principled stand.

Video of the whole segment:

"The word 'slam-dunk' should be retired from the American national security issues."

Said John Kerry on "Meet the Press" today, when David Gregory asked him: "This is a sarin gas attack, perpetrated by the Assad regime, this is a slam-dunk case that he did it?"

The term "slam-dunk" figured large in the run-up to the Iraq War. Hence the resistance. It should connote certainty, but the meaning got flipped. To use it now is to seem to say: How do we know you're not conning us? And I'm going to assume David Gregory meant the insinuation, because everyone's been making the comparison to the selling of the Iraq War.

"How do you ask John Kerry to be the fall guy, go on all the Sunday morning talk shows, and try to cover up for your own leadership mistake?"

Asks Meade, in the comments to "How do you ask a man to be the [first] man to die for a mistake?" — which was yesterday's post, titled after Meade's rewrite of Kerry's famous question, " How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

So, we watched the talk shows today, and in addition to Kerry, on "Meet the Press," there was Rand Paul, and just about the first thing he said was:

... I think it's a mistake to get involved in the Syrian civil war. And what I want would ask John Kerry is, he's famous for saying, "How can you ask a man to be the last one to die for a mistake?" I would ask John Kerry, "How can you ask a man to be the first one to die from a mistake?"

I'm not saying Rand reads the Althouse blog, but hi, Rand. Rand was remarkable — or seemed remarkable in contrast to Kerry, who preceded him — because he listened to the questions and appeared to think in real time and then verbalize actual answers.

Kerry filibustered, evading David Gregory's questions, such as "If Congress says no [to an attack on Syria], the president will act regardless of what Congress says?" Nonanswer: "I said that the president has the authority to act, but the Congress is going to do what's right here." Note the "I said," like he's already answered and now he's forced to repeat himself.

Somehow I started feeling sorry for Kerry, having to be the one to go around to all the talk shows. And he looked so weary. He looked awful, weirdly different from usual, like something wasn't right. His hair was fine. (It's a wig, right?) But his eyes were mismatched, and he kept sticking out his tongue like this:



Is there some tongue-out disease going around this week, some virulence of chapped lips? (Cf. "21 Obnoxious Photos of Miley’s Tongue.") That particular shot was taken immediately after he said the words "the American people," which annoyed Meade so much that he backtracked to pause it so I could photograph it.

What I really want to do, now that I have the transcript, is go through and find all the ways Kerry managed to say that the President needs to go to Congress and doesn't need to go to Congress. I'll update this post and show you soon.

ADDED: Here's how Kerry avoided saying the President needed authority from Congress:

"What caused NBC’s Meet the Press to fall behind Face the Nation and This Week?"

Jennifer Rubin tries to answer the question. She's got a list of 8 things, and I especially like:

2. Bob Schieffer has gotten feisty. He zings administration guests, asks probing questions, and gives snappy commentary. Given the choice between a Schieffer and a Gregory interview, I’d watch the former every time.

I agree! I think Schieffer got angry about Susan Rice lying on all the talk shows about Benghazi. He's been on fire since then. He's so old, so I was assuming he was coasting, but he woke up.

Something Rubin doesn't have on her list is: David Gregory is too concerned about being nice. He's always smiling and getting along with the guests. That is not what Tim Russert did. Russert intimidated the guests. He cornered them, often using a brilliant sequence of quotes displayed on screen. Very entertaining! Russert seemed to be directing the show toward us, the audience. Gregory seems more to be letting us watch while he socializes with his Washington friends.

"We have no relation to Mr. Snowden, his relations with the American justice or his travel around the world."

"He chooses his route himself, and we have learned about it from the media," said Russia's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.

"We consider the attempts to accuse Russia of violation of U.S. laws and even some sort of conspiracy, which on top of all that are accompanied by threats, as absolutely ungrounded and unacceptable," Lavrov said. "There are no legal grounds for such conduct of U.S. officials, and we proceed from that."

I think back to what Michael Haz wrote in the comments to yesterday's Edward Snowden post:

Mr. Snowden, his computers and everything stored in his brain are now in possession of the KGB. He will now fully understand the meaning of the word 'disappeared'.

The press, the Department of State and Barack Obama have all been played for the rubes they are by Vladimir Putin. And there is nothing any of them can do about it. The amateurs have met the pro, and the pro won, then erased all tracks.

Meanwhile, 20 or so reporters were thrown way off the track as they happily enclosed themselves in a Snowdenless, Cuba-bound metal tube for 12 hours. What newsless meditations did they hammer out for publication? The New Yorker's John Cassidy lambasted the on-the-tube, not-in-the-tube newsmediafolk like David Gregory who, he asserts, have demonized Edward Snowden:

Snowden took classified documents from his employer, which surely broke the law. But his real crime was confirming that the intelligence agencies, despite their strenuous public denials, have been accumulating vast amounts of personal data from the American public. The puzzle is why so many media commentators continue to toe the official line. About the best explanation I’ve seen came from Josh Marshall, the founder of T.P.M., who has been one of Snowden’s critics. In a post that followed the first wave of stories, Marshall wrote, “At the end of the day, for all its faults, the U.S. military is the armed force of a political community I identify with and a government I support. I’m not a bystander to it. I’m implicated in what it does and I feel I have a responsibility and a right to a say, albeit just a minuscule one, in what it does.”

In the end, for all its faults... Marshall's going all last-paragraph-of-"1984." ("O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.") Except... Marshall never resisted.

Back to Cassidy:

I suspect that many Washington journalists, especially the types who go on Sunday talk shows, feel the way Marshall does, but perhaps don’t have his level of self-awareness. It’s not just a matter of defending the Obama Administration, although there’s probably a bit of that. 

Oh, just a tad. Probably! But...

It’s something deeper, which has to do with attitudes toward authority. Proud of their craft and good at what they do, successful journalists like to think of themselves as fiercely independent. 

Like to... but trapped on Aeroflot flight to Cuba, you start noticing your lack of independence. And those journalists who didn't get bamboozled into your lamentable predicament look so enragingly smug.

It’s not surprising that some of them share Marshall’s view of Snowden as “some young guy I’ve never heard of before who espouses a political philosophy I don’t agree with and is now seeking refuge abroad for breaking the law.”

A political philosophy I don’t agree with.... What is that? Resistance to big government? Cassidy — who says — he's "with Snowden" because he's "the underdog" — ends with "Which side are you on?" which is the title of an old union song. Here's Pete Seeger singing it. Bob Dylan repurposed it in "Desolation Row":

Praise be to Nero’s Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody’s shouting
“Which Side Are You On?”

Unlike the Titanic, the Aeroflot flight reached its destination uneventfully.

All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name

When David Gregory asked Glenn Greenwald: "To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you, Mister Greenwald, be charged with a crime?"

On "Meet the Press" today. Greenwald answered (from Brazil):

I think it’s pretty extraordinary that anybody who would call themselves a journalist would publicly muse about whether or not other journalists should be charged with felonies. 

How did Gregory "muse about" it? He asked about it.

The assumption in your question, David, is completely without evidence, the idea that I’ve aided and abetted him in any way.

How not to show respect for the stay-at-home spouse.

On "Meet the Press" today, David Gregory questioned various commentators about a report from the Pew Research Center that said that in 2011 women were the sole or primary breadwinners in 40.4% of American families. (It was 10.8% in 1960.) There were some strange statements from "Republican strategist" Ana Navarro:

There has been an evolution in the American family.  You know-- and I think what we have to be as a society is accepting of what couples decide to do for themselves.  There are some people who want to lean in, there are some people who want to lean back and be on a rocking chair drinking a mint julep.  Whatever works for every couple is what we should respect…

So right off, Navarro is portraying the home-based partner as lazy! The old image was lying on the sofa eating bonbons. She's got the sofa replaced by a rocking chair and an alcoholic beverage in place of the box of chocolates. Gregory breaks in with a wisecrack — "Enough about your Sunday afternoon" — and this prompts Navarro — the Republican — to double down on her idea that the stay-at-home spouse is a sponge:

When I say in my house that I want to be a kept woman, the answer I get back is well, I want to be a kept man.  So, you know, that’s not working-- it’s not working in my house.  

Kept woman! This isn't as bad as Rush Limbaugh's notorious equation of free birth control and prostitution. It's actually kind of worse. Limbaugh intended to malign the demand for free birth control. He meant to say that the general public shouldn't have to pay for a particular person's sexual activities. He found a notoriously crude way to say I don't want to pay for you to have sex (i.e., if someone pays you to have sex, you're a prostitute). But aside from the crudeness, the opinion that the group shouldn't pay for the individual to have sex isn't offensive. It's just economics and ideology.

Navarro claimed "Whatever works for every couple is what we should respect," but she said — twice, quite clearly — that the stay-at-home partner isn't contributing. The first image was of someone loafing and drinking alcohol during the day. The second image was of a "kept woman" — that is, a woman who doesn't take care of the house and the children or do anything helpful other than to provide sex! If that "works for" you, that that's something that deserves respect — she asserts — but it wouldn't work at her house, and if she were to suggest that for herself, her husband would say that's what he wants. Obviously, the idea is that the nonbreadwinner spouse is goofing off. So where's the respect? At most, she says, if some other couple finds that this "works," then we should accept that they make their own decisions. Navarro goes on to say:

But I think, you know-- I think, we-- women that work need to be not judgmental of women who don’t.  

But your judgment leaked out all over the place!

I think men who are mister moms need to be accepted by those who are the alpha male breadwinners.  So, I think it’s got to be whatever works-- different folks…

Mr. Mom... alpha male... the disrespect is plain, even as you keep insisting you are tolerant.

Highlights from "Meet the Press."

Here are the things that jumped out as I watched "Meet the Press." this morning.

1. At the end of a discussion of the Boston bombing, David Gregory asks "[W]hat are you really focused on that you’d like the intelligence community and the FBI to answer?"

REP. PETER KING: I think it’s important to know are there other people involved in this threat? Are there others that are still out there?... Are there family members or people in-- in the community? That’s very important to find out. Also, what did cause them to radicalize? Was it done here? Was it done overseas? Was it done over the internet? What caused that to happen? How can we stop it in the future? Also ask why the FBI is not cooperating more with the law enforcement? Why they did not give vital evidence to the NYPD about another possible attack.

GREGORY: This is that you think a failure that needs to be learned from?

REP. KING: Absolutely. Absolute failure.

2. Chuck Todd, talking about Obama's routine at the Washington Correspondents Dinner: