What We Can All Learn from Maddow's Trump Taxes Broadcast
Those of us who are fans of Kindly Doc Maddow and her electric teevee show occasionally are driven to distraction by what we can only term her opening monologue. This nightly trip all around Robin Hood's barn to get to the point of the A-block story is a rare exercise in genuine television eccentricity (Hooray!), and, like the old chief's magic in Little Big Man, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and it always feels like it should begin with, "Call me Ishmael," or, "In the beginning."
Such was the case last night, when she rolled us through all the smoke surrounding the Trump administration's purported ties with grifters and bagmen and plutocrats of many lands before getting to the big reveal: that somebody had mailed the president*'s 2005 Form 1040 to David Cay Johnston, and that he was now prepared to share it with the country. The electric Twitter machine went instantly aflame with anticipation. Trump! Taxes! And if there wasn't news to match the hype, and there wasn't, that doesn't mean the evening was completely lost.
There is a line of thought, beloved of the clergy of that which Jay Rosen calls The Church of the Savvy, that holds that this whole thing was a clever scam by the White House-and, indeed, that the administration may have been the source of the leak. But overrating the cleverness of this crowd has become reflexive. A lot of what they've done is just stupid, their efforts at spin control an insult to the memory of Michael Deaver, and their strategy roughly on the level of, as President Jed once put it, "Hey, your shoe's untied!" Chief among these explanations is the notion that this was meant to be a distraction from the other bad news engulfing the White House on the subjects of healthcare and whatever-the-hell James Comey is going to say next.
However, if the distraction argument is true, then it is a massive dereliction of duty on the part of the members of the media who make it true. In essence, coming from anyone in this business, the distraction argument denies that the media has any agency in what it covers. If you are an editor-or a reporter-and you decide that a story is a shiny object, then don't cover it. Or, at the very least, don't emphasize it. The decision by the elite political media to make Hillary Rodham Clinton's email server a central issue in the campaign was a deliberate choice. It wasn't forced on them by anyone or anything. If you can choose to emphasize something, you can choose not to do that. If you can choose to concentrate on HRC's email practices, you can choose not to concentrate on what you judge to be obvious diversions from the White House.
Do your freaking job.
The distraction argument denies that the media has any agency in what it covers.
As to the actual story itself, well, it was a bit oversold, but there was actual news to be found. If I read the substance of the information correctly, the president* made most of his income that year selling off properties he already owned. (And this is coming from a self-proclaimed real estate genius at the beginning of the fraud-financed real estate bubble.) It can be extrapolated from this information that the Trump operation already was taking on water. Not only does this blow a hole in his proclaimed net worth, it also raises questions of whether or not it was shortly after this that he went looking for more, ahem, exotic sources of financing. This is certainly worth further investigation.
And there is an interesting historical parallel that struck me as the chorus swelled to minimize what we learned on Tuesday night. Back in April of 1974, with the Watergate scandal beginning to immolate his administration, Richard Nixon went on TV and announced that he would be releasing edited transcripts of the White House tapes. This was plainly an attempt to turn public opinion against attempts by Congress and the office of the special prosecutor to get their hands on the real thing, which Nixon knew would hang him. He told the nation:
During the past year, the wildest accusations have been given banner headlines and ready credence as well. Rumor, gossip, innuendo, accounts from unnamed sources of what a prospective witness might testify to, have filled the morning newspapers and then are repeated on the evening newscasts day after day. Time and again, a familiar pattern repeated itself. A charge would be reported the first day as what it was-just an allegation. But it would then be referred back to the next day and thereafter as if it were true. The distinction between fact and speculation grew blurred. Eventually, all seeped into the public consciousness as a vague general impression of massive wrongdoing, implicating everybody, gaining credibility by its endless repetition.
The gambit backfired. What was in the tapes was horrifying enough that it actually stoked further demands to hear the actual recordings. The public was revolted. "Expletive deleted" became a catchphrase and a joke that persists to this day. Paul Conrad, the genius cartoonist of the L.A. Times, drew a scathing illustration of Nixon in a getaway car, tossing reels of tape out the window to distract his pursuers.
And this all happened because, by and large, Congress and the media declined to be "distracted" by how "deft" the release of the transcripts was as a political maneuver-people did try to sell it and some people did, alas, buy the scam-and continued to concentrate on the search for the criminality that still lay in the shadows. If the Trump administration did arrange the leak of these documents, what they're doing can be seen as the equivalent of Nixon's release of the edited transcripts-the revelation of something bad to prevent to revelation of something worse.
It is up to the country to decide whether that ploy will work. If you're "distracted" by this, it's not because the White House wants you to be, it's because you decided to be.
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