Media Hangover

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 23, 2006 7:36 AM

Bad-boy behavior pays off, big time.

Skiing star Bode Miller goes on "60 Minutes," shoots off his mouth about getting drunk before a big competition, rips the CBS program for airing his remarks, holds a news conference to apologize and winds up on the cover of Time and Newsweek. Not exactly a downhill trajectory.

Journalists can't resist a troublemaking athlete who produces a blizzard of controversy instead of the usual sports cliches. And in the media world, doing bad things only fuels your celebrity, as Martha Stewart's post-jail television and radio gigs make clear.

"Skiing's Wild Child," declared Time. "Fast, loose and seemingly out of control," with "a smirking disrespect for the media," gushed Newsweek. In the run-up to the Olympics, it was Miller Time.

The storm began days before the Jan. 8 edition of "60 Minutes," with a CBS press release headlined "Bode Miller on Skiing Drunk." Miller told Bob Simon about his Saturday night drinking, saying: "There's been times when I've been in really tough shape at the top of the course" and that it's hard to ski "when you're wasted." It was presented as a light moment, but there was no missing the potential for a media avalanche.

While some sportswriters dismissed this as less than shocking, Ron Judd wrote in the Seattle Times: "Miller's confession to skiing drunk was highly uncouth, and it makes you want to slap the guy upside the head." Ray Grass wondered in Salt Lake City's Deseret Morning News: "Tell me, please, why anyone would go before millions of viewers and brag about being 'wasted' in the starting gate?"

Maybe because all publicity is good publicity?

Miller's agent, Lowell Taub, complained about an "out-of-context and salacious headline involving drunkenness." Miller, in his Denver Post blog, called "60 Minutes" "probably the most reputable and prestigious news program in the U.S., and I told them the story to test their integrity. . . . If they were interested in doing the right thing, or doing what they should be doing in terms of painting a role model for kids, they would have left that stuff out."

Say wha' ? Miller says on camera that he skis impaired to see whether television's oldest newsmagazine would protect him by cutting it out?

In any event, the head of U.S. skiing was not amused, calling Miller's comments "unacceptable" and "irresponsible." Under pressure, Miller summoned journalists in Switzerland and apologized to his friends, family and supporters.

"I don't need the media," Miller boasted to Newsweek, but he's too smart to believe that he could have amassed millions of dollars without all the journalistic adulation.

There was a time when an athlete's reputation might have been marred by such frank talk about drinking and hangovers, but that now seems very 20th century. Miller already has a Sirius satellite radio show and the kind of swaggering image that money can't buy. If he misbehaves at the Olympics, he'll probably get his own cable show.

Thumbs Down

Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard, is pretty conservative. And his forthcoming book, "Rebel-in-Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush," sounds like it would appeal to the right. But the Conservative Book Club has not only declined to offer the Barnes volume, it has also attacked the book.

"Rebel-in-Chief" is filled with "empty puffery," writes book club Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Rubin. Barnes is too favorable toward "all those things that Bush does to drive traditional conservatives to despair" in a way that "call[s] into question his own understanding of conservatism. . . . Fred Barnes isn't doing the president -- or the country -- any favors by celebrating his worst political tendencies."

Barnes says he doesn't believe that an unsuccessful bid for his book by Regnery Publishing, owned by the book club's parent company, was a factor in the slam. "I guess they don't like Bush, or me, either," he says of the club. "But going out of the way to say 'don't read this book' is a bit unusual."

Explosive Story

In reporting last week that the FBI was making progress in identifying the origins of homemade bombs used against Americans in Iraq, CBS News agreed to withhold some details at the bureau's request.

Rome Hartman, executive producer of the "CBS Evening News," says CBS News President Sean McManus and correspondent Jim Stewart spoke with FBI officials who "made the case that putting in certain details might in their view jeopardize American lives. They felt very strongly about it."

During a "very spirited" internal debate, Hartman says, the FBI's case "felt to me, and to Sean and Jim in the end, to be a pretty persuasive argument. You ought to err on the side of discretion and caution." Stewart's report mentioned that CBS was withholding part of the story.

Blogging Manifestos

The lightning-quick online pundits known as bloggers are turning to a far older and slower technology: book publishing.

In his forthcoming "An Army of Davids," Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds casts bloggers as an increasingly influential check on the mainstream media: "Where before journalists and pundits could bloviate at leisure, offering illogical analysis or citing 'facts' that were in fact false, now the Sunday morning op-eds have already been dissected on Saturday night, within hours of their appearing on newspapers' Web sites." He also predicts a backlash from "Old Media guys" who resent the scrutiny.

Reynolds praises "flash media" -- bloggers who spontaneously organize around a sudden event -- and says that "even when Big Media snubs such coverage, bloggers let hundreds of thousands of people read about, see and sometimes even experience via video a story that they would otherwise miss."

Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas, who speaks regularly with Democratic leaders, will soon publish "Crashing the Gate," his indictment of "a progressive movement that is failing to keep up with the times," including "issue groups that don't realize it's no longer 1975 or even 1995" and "an incestuous relationship between the party committees and consultants that serve themselves more than our candidates."

Urging people to pre-order the book online, Moulitsas writes: "Help us debut on the best seller list. Wingers like [Ann] Coulter get an automatic berth on the best seller list thanks to TWO conservative book clubs (our first doesn't launch until March or so) and bulk purchases from organizations. We don't have those advantages. But we've got you guys."

Andrew Sullivan, one of the blogging pioneers, is finishing "The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It; How to Get It Back." He calls it "an attempt to grapple with the way in which American conservatism has shifted in recent years from an emphasis on small government, individual freedom and a 'leave-us-alone' coalition into a big-spending, big-government force for correcting human immorality and delivering us from foreign evil."

Why do folks with instant access to an audience labor over manuscripts? Sullivan puts it this way: "The blog is a short form. It's provisional and meandering. A book is a longer project, it requires sustained concentration on one line of argument or one central topic. I find it really hard to flip from one mode of writing to another. . . . So right now, I try not to blog at all until I have spent a few hours on the book."

If Only the Democrats Had Known

The Exponent, the student paper at Purdue University, carried a routine wire-service item that began: "Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito told senators Monday that good judges don't have an agenda." The final sentence said: "His motive for shooting John Paul in the abdomen on May 13, 1981, remains unclear."

A subsequent correction, as noted by the Web site Regret the Error, said nothing about the charge of attempted assassination. The item, the paper said, merely "contained a sentence that was not intended to be part of the brief."

On to the rest of the media world: Here's a hot story in Time. You know how Scott McClellan says the prez can't recall meeting Abramoff?

"The President's memory may soon be unhappily refreshed. TIME has seen five photographs of Abramoff and the President that suggest a level of contact between them that Bush's aides have downplayed. While TIME's source refused to provide the pictures for publication, they are likely to see the light of day eventually because celebrity tabloids are on the prowl for them. And that has been a fear of the Bush team's for the past several months: that a picture of the President with the admitted felon could become the iconic image of direct presidential involvement in a burgeoning corruption scandal -- like the shots of President Bill Clinton at White House coffees for campaign contributors in the mid-1990s.

"In one shot that TIME saw, Bush appears with Abramoff, several unidentified people and Raul Garza Sr., a Texan Abramoff represented who was then chairman of the Kickapoo Indians, which owned a casino in southern Texas. Garza, who is wearing jeans and a bolo tie in the picture, told TIME that Bush greeted him as 'Jefe,' or 'chief' in Spanish. Another photo shows Bush shaking hands with Abramoff in front of a window and a blue drape. The shot bears Bush's signature, perhaps made by a machine. Three other photos are of Bush, Abramoff and, in each view, one of the lobbyist's sons (three of his five children are boys). A sixth picture shows several Abramoff children with Bush and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who is now pushing to tighten lobbying laws after declining to do so last year when the scandal was in its early stages.

"Most of the pictures have the formal look of photos taken at presidential receptions."

They may be nothing more than grip-and-grins, but remember how many times we had to look at that shot of Monica on the rope line, greeting her special friend? In the video age it's all about the pictures, and I trust that more than just "celebrity" magazines are in the hunt.

Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum critiques the Democrats' lobbying proposal through the prism of the coverage:

"Here are three responses from the national media to Wednesday's Democratic plan to fight congressional corruption:

"Washington Post: 'Democratic leaders from the House and Senate endorsed proposals that closely mirror Republican plans unveiled this week. . . . '

"Knight Ridder: 'The Democratic plan resembles the reform agenda unveiled by Republicans the day before. . . . '

"Los Angeles Times: 'But a crucial question remains: whether either party's plans would alter the close relationship between the capital's lobbyists and lawmakers.'

"Not every newspaper played it this way, but enough did to convince me that the Dem plan was simply too mushy to make much of an impact, even if the presentation and delivery were better than usual for these kinds of things.

"That's too bad. As the latest Hotline poll shows, public awareness of Jack Abramoff is rising (nearly half have heard of him), as is awareness that he's a Republican operative. What's more, although independent voters mostly think corruption is a problem for both parties, a significant number don't -- and of those, nearly all associate it more with Republicans than Democrats.

"So there's a real opportunity here. A more dramatic proposal on Wednesday could have done a better job of taking advantage of that."

Guess who else is lobbying, and without black hats? The L.A. Times clues us in:

"In four decades as a guitarist with such iconic rock bands as the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, David Crosby played in front of millions of fans at such venues as Woodstock, the Fillmore East, the Hollywood Bowl and London's Wembley Stadium.

"Lately, one of his regular gigs has been at one of the nation's most elite clubs: the U.S. Senate.

"Last year, the shaggy-haired, 64-year-old musician donned a suit in lieu of his usual bluejeans to lobby the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, seeking to thwart plans to expand Chumash casinos and commercial developments near his home in the tranquil Santa Ynez Valley in Santa Barbara County. On another occasion, Crosby opined to lawmakers on campaign finance reform.

" 'Being a celebrity cuts both ways in Washington,' Crosby said. 'In some ways it gets you access. But in other ways it makes people dismiss you. You have to be insanely careful about what you say.'

"Crosby is part of a growing parade of celebrities trekking up Capitol Hill to talk to the nation's lawmakers about issues that rarely have anything to do with their day jobs. Trying to get attention for pet causes easily lost in the clutter of public policy debates, stars hope their cachet can make the difference in opening doors, getting media attention and scoring face time on C-SPAN."

Other names in the piece: Salma Hayek, Mary Tyler Moore, Bono and Michael J. Fox.

In the Weekly Standard, Duncan Currie looks at the House leadership race (don't fall asleep, please) between Roy Blunt, John Boehner and John Shadegg:

"Boehner's own close ties to the lobbying community made it tricky for him to assail Blunt over earmarks and pork. Whether unfairly or not, he was lumped in with Blunt as a 'K Street Republican.'

"Blunt, however, is closely associated with Tom DeLay, while Boehner isn't. Press coverage of the race has invariably cast DeLay as an albatross. But the reality is a bit more complex. As GOP staffers and congressmen point out, there are actually two Tom DeLays. The first Tom DeLay is the longtime chum of Jack Abramoff; the scandal-tainted lightning rod; the machine-oriented pol who dependably brings home the bacon but has become perhaps too comfortable with big government and the K Street culture. Blunt's connection with this Tom DeLay does him no favors.

"But there's a second Tom DeLay, whom many Republicans still respect: the proud ideological conservative; the bête noire of liberals; the most efficient conservative legislator in decades; the leader who -- despite being a right-wing prince -- successfully managed a big-tent party and rode herd on GOP moderates. Blunt's association with this Tom DeLay is a positive."

Chris Matthews is being hammered -- I mean hammered ! -- in the liberal blogosphere for saying on "Hardball," while analyzing Osama's taped remarks about the "war merchants": "I mean he sounds like an over the top Michael Moore here, if not a Michael Moore."

Salon's Peter Daou cries foul:

"Bin Laden sounds like Ron Silver' -- 'Bin Laden sounds like Rush Limbaugh' -- 'Bin Laden sounds like Bill O'Reilly'-- 'Bin Laden sounds like Mel Gibson' -- 'Bin Laden sounds like Bruce Willis' -- 'Bin Laden sounds like Michelle Malkin'. . . . Imagine the outrage on the right and in the press (but I repeat myself) if a major media figure spat out those words. Well, on Hardball, Chris Matthews just blurted out that Bin Laden sounds like Michael Moore. Simple: Matthews should apologize. On the air. This has NOTHING to do with Michael Moore and everything to do with how far media figures can go slandering the left.

"And last I checked, Michael Moore didn't massacre thousands of innocent Americans."

This is how fast things move these days. Instapundit Glenn Reynolds was on my show two hours ago (as I type), with Arianna Huffington and Jill Zuckman, talking about whether the Web piece questioning Jack Murtha's Vietnam medals was fair or not. Reynolds gets in a post-show point:

" Ian Schwartz has the video. Most striking to me is the bit at the end, where Jill Zuckman of the Chicago Tribune says that Murtha's war record is a fair story, but one that should have been reported by a legitimate news organization, not Cybercast News Service, which she calls a 'right wing part of the blogosphere.' I'm guessing if the Chicago Tribune had been on the story first, CNS would have foregone its own investigation. . . ."

Finally, Slate's Tim Noah gags over another journalist's home, citing "an article in the Jan. 19 New York Times about The New Yorker writer Susan Orlean's weekend place in the Hudson Valley. The damn thing has choked up all my gears and brought my machinery to a stuttering halt.

"Orlean is a marvelous writer, and when I met her many years ago at the wedding of a mutual friend I found her to be delightful company. But this Times piece, and especially the accompanying slide show that she agreed to narrate for nytimes.com, suggests to me that she has lost her mind. Orlean likens her house, which was built by the same architect who built Bill and Melinda Gates' mansion in Medina, Wash., to a 'great piece of sculpture' whose modest entrance with its 'small, beautiful door' gives way to '--and then, gasp!' . . .

"I don't begrudge Orlean her delight in her new abode. But what possessed her to broadcast it to millions of New York Times readers? Yes, dozens of idiots do it in the Times 'Home' section every year, but, perhaps naively, I've always expected journalists to show less inclination to flaunt privilege, especially when the privilege exists on this scale. Among other things, it puts the profession's habitual poor-mouthing in an especially unattractive light. And if we are to believe the growing body of evidence that the acquisition of real estate (especially in an overheated housing market) is somehow related to sex, then isn't showing the entire world your fabulous house a bit like opening your trench coat on Main Street when you've got nothing on underneath?"

In case Noah is tempted to investigate, the proprietor of this column has no summer home, and (don't tell anyone) doesn't even read the Home section.