It seems the lovely and talented Rachel Maddow – whose chief claim to fame, besides her sneer, is …what, exactly? – has got her Rhodes Scholar knickers in a twist over the famous O’Keefe/Giles ACORN tapes. She’s seized upon a statement in Jerry Brown’s partisan whitewash of the now-defunct organization that claims the undercover videos that brought the hydra to its current low estate were subject to “highly selective editing.” That was enough to set Ms. Maddow and her trademark curled lip off on a long end-zone victory dance, which you can see here.
Leaving aside for now the apparent contradiction inherent in the former Gov. Moonbeam’s report — which basically stated that no crimes were committed by ACORN employees, except for the “likely violations” of state law, including dumping confidential records, failure to file tax returns and four instances of possible voter registration fraud – let’s take a quick look at a little word that has become, all of a sudden, dirty:
“Edited.” Or, with its modifier, “severely edited.”
Dealing with the Left, more often than not, is like trying to have a conversation with small, not particularly bright children, whether they are Rhodes Scholars or no. In fact, one might say especially if they are Rhodes Scholars, eager-to-please young things who learn the value of sucking up and kicking down early and often. (Think Bill Clinton.)
In this case, the left, via its mouthpieces in the media, has decided to attach a sinister connotation to what is a perfectly normal and everyday act in the writing and reporting business, which is selecting, rewriting and polishing so that your written piece or video report makes its case strongly and effectively.
We call it “editing,” and we do it all the time.
“Editing” is what Ms. Maddow and her producers do as well, or should – it’s what everybody in this business does. There’s nothing sinister about it. In the course of writing literally thousands of stories, news, features and reviews, both in my newspaper days and for Time Magazine, I did it all the time. Hours would be spent with interview subjects and what wound up in the magazine? A single quote or two, selected by me in the overall context of the story to convey the essence of what that person had said – a quote that, later, may or may not be replaced with another or removed entirely by an editor.
“Editing,” in fact, is what People Magazine just did in its report on Rachel and her partner, Susan Mikula. Think they left anything on the cutting-room floor?
Pace Ms. Maddow, journalism is not served by dumping the complete contents of a reporter’s notebook into the word processor and printing or posting it without thought, care or reflection. The great newsweeklies, at the height of their influence, never did that. Except when it runs the complete transcript of a presidential speech, the New York Times does not do that. The flagship ambush interview show, 60 Minutes, never did that. And The Rachel Maddow Show doesn’t do that either.
And yet – to listen to Ms. Maddow and some lesser bloggers who have swarmed like pesky fruit flies around a few non-existent “issues,” such as whether O’Keefe actually wore his ludicrous “pimp cape” costume into the ACORN officers (a talking point effectively demolished by Patterico in his story below) – editing now connotes something dark and ugly: separating the wheat from the chaff and then publishing the chaff. At least when conservatives do it.
It’s become a truism on the right that the left always accuses us of what they themselves are either planning or actually doing. Call it projection, transference or just plain mendacity, and watch The Rachel Maddow Show and others like it with that in mind.
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