CT Blue

This post at Atrios, along with this article from the San Franciso Chronicle to which it links, bring to mind a problem with our discourse that seems so easily fixed in one case, and hard in another. As a lawyer I find it particularly grating. One might call it the case of the missing followup.

In the article an anonymous (they’re always anonymous) Democratic consultant:

But one key state Democratic strategist, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of concern for riling the netroots crowd, warns that such efforts are potentially positive and negative.

Netroots commentary can frequently be intensely personal, even “totally mean and irrational,” the strategist said, with some bloggers finding power in their ability “to assassinate political characters online.”

“It’s amplified by the anonymity, and it can be scary that it’s so irresponsible,” the insider said. “And it’s pulling the mainstream media in that direction.”

Now, I am not going to argue that there are no irresponsible bloggers, though I would maintain that there are fewer on the left than the right (at least proportionally), but it seems to me that the obvious follow up to a question like this would be: “who are you talking about-give me an example”. I have a feeling that, like the Georgia Congressman who couldn’t recite the 10 Commandments he wanted posted in public buildings, that strategist would be unable to give a concrete example, and if he could it would be an isolated comment or an obscure blog. It’s not just Democrats that do this, and it’s not just bloggers that are the targets. Bush is a past master at attributing statements to unnamed Democrats, and he is never asked to specifically identify the (often non-existent) people to whom he alludes.

Maybe politicians can get away with making these sort of statements because there is some sort of tacit agreement between politicians and the media that they will never explicitly call each other on these fact free statements. I have yet to hear of a politician respond to one of those “some say” questions (e.g., Some say that you, John Edwards, are displaying insatiable ambition by running for President when your wife has cancer) by asking the interrogator to identify some of the sayers. Why, for instance, didn’t Edwards ask Katie exactly who those people were? He was a litigator-would he ever let an opening like that go by in a courtroom (Okay, I know the old saw about not asking courtroom questions when you don’t already know the answer, but in real life you often have to take a deep breath and do it). This seems so very odd, because if the standard response to such a question were: “Oh really, who are you talking about”, some of the sillier questions might stop.

This problem could be easily fixed if only, depending on the interrogator, the media person or the politician would follow up.

The more intractable problem involves those cases in which the media person speaks for him or herself. The comment about bloggers is a good example. The same type of statement has been made by media types about us horrible bloggers. In that case, there’s no one to follow up, even in theory. If a media person wants to dismiss bloggers as a bunch of pre-pubescent kids living in their mom’s basement eating ice-cream sandwiches” there’s no one in a position to follow up and point out how fact free that is.