Ginzu Journalism The boys and girls of the fourth estate can be real cut-ups. by JACKSON BAKER ver since the self-hagiography of Woodward and Bernstein’s All the President’s Men, we journalists have gotten so deadly serious about ourselves that we seem forever to be auditioning for Captains Courageous. We are much too prone to regard ourselves not just as savants but as public servants and heroes of the realm. Well, it’s time for a little self-criticism. The fact is, we can be at least as self-serving and lickspittle as anybody we deplore. And vastly more mean-spirited. This means everybody — all the way from us local yokels to the big boys and girls of the nationally famous newspapers and magazines and network and cable shows. The fact is, we (none of us) are as wise and superior and noble-purposed as we (some of us) make out. The reason I’m on this hobbyhorse is that I happened to catch one of those archtypical Washington talking-head reporters, Stephen Roberts, on a TV show Sunday saying out loud what has so far been totally obvious but largely unspoken. Now Roberts is a guy who, when I knew him in Washington in the early ’80s (or, rather, when I was continually honored with glimpses of him or his royal raiment), had down pat that unique Beltway gift for never looking you in the eye or acknowledging you if you weren’t really Big Time or, at least, of immediate use to him. He has drifted from The New York Times to U.S. News to the New York Daily News since those days, but his smug way of flipping out obiter dicta to the unworthy still exudes gold-plated conceit. There’s an interesting other side to that coin, however — a kind of mealy-mouthed Uriah-Heepishness. As Roberts expressed it in so many words Sunday: Conservatives used to think that the Washington press was in bed with Democrats and liberals, but surely this last year of nonstop, obsessive Monica-gate coverage has proved to them that the media plays no favorites. Right, guys? Followed by a knowing, nodding wink at the rest of the panel. Bingo! At last everything is perfectly clear. It isn’t just that the tabloid style has taken over in Establishment media circles or that reporters like Roberts (or Sam Donaldson or Brian Williams or, to some extent, Roberts’ wife Cokie or, what the hell, David Broder!) have gotten spoiled on scandal and have forgotten how to render stories about Social Security or Medicare or the GNP or even ordinary cloakroom politicking. Steve Roberts has let the cat out of the bag, and a sorry little pussycat it turns out to be: It now seems clear that a dominating motive for the journalistic overkill of the last year has been a desire by the members of the Establishment press to suck up to the Right Wing (or maybe just to the presumed legions of the populist middle class), to prove their bona fides by bringing along Bill Clinton’s head on a platter. This rite of sacrifice might be tolerable, mind you, if they threw in someone for ideological balance — say, professional moralist Bill Bennett, or at least that portion of him that brays like a Pharisee on glue. But this last year, anyhow, the mainstream media’s knife has been preferentially sharpened for other game. In the long run, this “ginzu aesthetic” is probably non-partisan. Today Clinton, tomorrow whatever carcass best provides cover. No wonder Fred Thompson begged out of his Rendezvous with Destiny. He no doubt foresaw what was about to befall his fellow presidential wannabes from Tennessee. You know: Al Gore, Inventor of the Internet; Lamar “Son of Stassen” Alexander. No one ever said life was fair; no one should pretend that political punditry is, either. There, I’ve said it! Now somebody pass me that steak knife. (Jackson Baker is the senior editor of The Memphis Flyer.)