'Serious' people are the inside-the-beltway aristocracy

Glenn Greenwald discusses what it takes to be considered a 'serious person' in today's hothouse Washington, D.C. pundit climate.

Then, Joe Klein, himself a well-known 'serious person' but more importantly, one who bestows that accolade on others, responds to Glenn. He explains what he thinks he means by the term 'a serious person.'

To my mind, being a "serious person" means the following: you study the facts on the ground, you study the history, you take into account opinions on all sides--not just your side--and then you come to a conclusion. Essentially, that's what I try to do, and also the people I admire across the political spectrum (including many who reside in the blogosphere).

But that is not, in my opinion, the way he uses the term. When he says someone is 'a serious person' he is saying that they have a well-known reputation for deep and long-term involvement in what could be considered serious issues. Those are, of course, issues of war and peace and in legislation on well-known very important domestic issues.

Such people are normally found only in Washington, D.C. and are well-known to the other 'serious' people who reside and operate there. An MD and small-state governor who runs for President and claims that the Washington, D.C. 'serious people' are badly infected with insider bias and group-think cannot be considered 'a serious person.'

Joe's description of the alleged characteristics of 'a serious person' would be pretty good if he actually checked for those characteristics before he bestowed the title 'a serious person' on to someone, but Joe doesn't do that. He operates on gut instinct and determines whether someone is part of the insider Washington, D.C. aristocracy, and on that basis bestows the title 'a serious person' on them. Along with that title also goes the presumption that 'a serious person' has "a well-known reputation for deep and long-term involvement in what could be considered serious issues."

The possession of those characteristics is presumed to accompany membership in the Washington, D.C. aristocracy. No one from outside the aristocracy who dares to attack the aristocracy can be presumed to have those characteristics, so they cannot be considered to be 'serious people' unless they adopt the group biases and conventional wisdom of the inside-the-beltway serious people. You cannot be part of the aristocracy if you aren't well-known to the rest by reputation (and preferred, by family) and if you are attacking the conventional wisdom of the aristocracy. You have to behave like the aristocrats to be one of them. Only then are you presumed to be a person who has "a well-known reputation for deep and long-term involvement in what could be considered serious issues."


So of course, Glenn Greenwald responds to Joe's reply. He adds detail, but I like my response a bit better.

How corrupt are the Washington media figures covering the ultra-corrupt Bushies?

This is from Glenn Greenwald.

Whatever one thinks of how convincing the available evidence is thus far, nobody who has an even basic understanding of how our government functions could dispute that the accusations in this scandal are extremely serious. Presumably, even those incapable of ingesting the danger of having U.S. attorneys fired due to their refusal to launch partisan-motivated prosecutions (or stifle prosecutions for partisan reasons) at least understand that it is highly disturbing and simply intolerable for the Attorney General of the U.S. -- the head of our Justice Department -- to lie repeatedly about what happened, including to Congress, and to have done so with the obvious assent and (at the very least) implicit cooperation of the White House. Even the most vapid media stars should be able to understand that.

And yet so many of them do not. They continue to defend the administration by insisting that even if the accusations are correct, there was no real wrongdoing here. Add Fred Hiatt to that list, as he defends the Bush administration's prosecutor firings in his Washington Post Editorial today by insisting that Gonzales appears "to have tried to cover up something that, as far as we yet know, didn't need covering. U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president . . . ."

Just as was true for their virtually unanimous insistence that there was no wrongdoing worth investigating in the Plame case -- including the serial lying and obstruction of justice from the Vice President's top aide, one of the most powerful people in the White House -- they also see nothing wrong whatsoever with serial lying and corruption by the Attorney General in this case.

Think about this: there are only two instances in the last six years where real investigations occurred in any of the Bush scandals -- this U.S. attorneys scandal (because Democrats now have subpoena power) and the Plame case (due to the fluke of two Republican DOJ officials with integrity, James Comey and Patrick Fitzgerald). And in both cases, it was revealed conclusively that top Bush officials -- at the highest levels of the government -- repeatedly and deliberately lied about what they did. Isn't that pattern obviously extremely disturbing? And imagine what would be revealed had there been real investigations -- journalistic or Congressional -- of all the other scandals that ended up dying an inconsequential death due to neglect and suppression.

Beltway media stars really aren't bothered by any of this in the slightest. It's how their world works. Initially, they even refused to talk about the story at all, insisting that there was nothing worth seeing here, and were all but forced into writing about it as a result of the tenacious coverage in the blogosphere, led by TPM's Josh Marshall. Their instinct is to lash out at anyone who suggests real wrongdoing on the part of the Republican political machinery that has ruled their town for so long.

They respect and admire the Republicans who wield power in Washington -- media elites particularly love Karl Rove (Mark Halperin to Hugh Hewitt: "we say in the book about Karl Rove, who I respect and enjoy…I enjoy his company . . . Maybe he did the things he’s accused of, but to have this guy’s image portrayed and defined by things that are accusations that are unproven, we say in the book is really outrageous"). They admire and love Rove because he is the embodiment of the political power which they worship -- and they are angered by the notion that these figures who rule their world, a world which lavishly rewards them, should be accused of real wrongdoing, let alone threatened with subpoenas and prosecution and imprisonment. Fun and playful political tussles are fine, but anything truly disruptive or threatening is despised by them and considered out of bounds.

These are not journalists who want to uncover government corruption or act in an adversarial capacity to check government power. Rather, these are members of the royal court who are grateful to the King and his minions for granting them their status. What they want more than anything is to protect and preserve the system that has so rewarded them -- with status and money and fame and access and comfort.

The problem the media figures see is not the corruption of the high government officials. It is the lack of sensitivity of the Democrats who actually want Rove to testify to congress about the corruption he is running.



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