Ari Fleischer's new book, Taking Heat, has the New York Times' Pulitzer Prize winning book reviewer stumbling all over herself. Fleischer's criticism of the press is hitting Michiko Kakutani hard.
New York Times
This attitude that reporters are more a special-interest group than guardians of the public interest has informed the Bush administration's dealings with the national press, and it's reflected in "Taking Heat," the tedious and tendentious new book by Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary."Taking Heat" takes a lot of potshots at the press (including The New York Times), and it reads like the very embodiment of the administration's disciplined, corporate-style message control.
Full of excerpts from Mr. Fleischer's often contentious exchanges with members of the press, it is essentially a collection of talking points hastily pasted together with large slatherings of the vitriol and exasperation the author seems to have accumulated during his years as a "piñata," his word for how he sometimes felt in the White House briefing room. In short, it's an extended exercise in Mr. Fleischer's spinning his own earlier spin.
"Guardians of the public interest"--sheesh. Kakutani can't believe that anyone would dare to question the press' neutrality; her "review" reads more like a refutation; a rebuttal. She doesn't even mention the book's title until the second paragraph. In her flustered state she wanders aimlessly through a litany of the NYT's predictable criticisms of whatever "right-winger" they happen to be discussing at the time. She expresses incredulity when Fleischer admits to liking his boss.
Instead, the book simply tries to reinforce the presidential "persona" once outlined by the political adviser Karl Rove in a campaign brief: a "Strong Leader" with a penchant for "Bold Action" and "Big Ideas." On 9/11, Mr. Fleischer reports, Mr. Bush, "under inconceivable pressure," maintained "his composure and sent an image of calm to the nation." He also tells us that Mr. Bush is "one of the most uplifting, personnel-oriented, tough, demanding, humorous bosses you'll ever find."
Kakutani dismisses facts (such as this PEW Research poll on media bias) with the wave of her hand, and dwells on Fox News, old media-for-money's cable channel competition, the lone conservative voice in television, as proof that there is no bias in media--or at least the bias is completely balanced, liberal to conservative.
Kakutani's pretzel-logic takes some remarkable turns. She justifies the inaccuracies of a pair of New York Times and USA Today reporters factually challenged stories by saying "neither writer was on a White House beat." Then she takes a step into absurdity by criticizing Fleischer for not criticizing the press for being soft on the weapons of mass destruction question before the Iraq war.
When it comes to accusing the press of inaccuracy and carelessness, Mr. Fleischer dwells on the CBS fiasco in which the network broadcast an unsubstantiated document about Mr. Bush and his National Guard service, mentions cases in which a reporter at The New York Times and a foreign correspondent at USA Today used fabrications in their stories (neither writer was on a White House beat) and runs through a litany of inaccurate stories that appeared in other publications. This is fair as far as it goes, but Mr. Fleischer does not grapple with another one of the more remarked-upon failures of the press in recent years: the failure, in the months leading up to the Iraq war, to question more aggressively the administration's arguments about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction.
This construction is a favorite myth of the elite media, and it doesn't make any sense at all. They think the myth makes it seem as though the press corps knew something that the rest of the world (even their favorite liberal icons) didn't know. The press was simply being too kind, too fair, to the president, and let it slide; they were remiss in their duties but will do better next time. This is just a load of... something nasty.
Kakutani's offering is poor indeed. As a review it... doesn't. As for her rebuttal: her logic is flawed; her reasoning questionable; her bias, despite her protestations, is strongly evident. I've not yet read Fleischer's book, but based on Kakutani's recommendation, I think I'm going to enjoy it.
Update: Howard Kurtz, of the Washington Post, doesn't mention the book until the fifth paragraph. More of the same.
