Response to Ben Carson, Chuck Todd's moronic 'welcome to the big leagues' defense of media idiocy

Let's first understand something about knowledge and intelligence. A person can feign either one in a controlled setting by mastering certain customs, or certain conventional wisdom, as long as he can operate strictly in the environment that never questions either. That's why so many people think Chuck Todd is smart. He has mastered media/Beltway conventional wisdom about as well as any person alive, and every time you see him it's in a setting in which he or others who think this way control the terms of the discussion. In fact, Chuck Todd is a moron, but that's a very difficult fact to expose because Todd always gets to ask the questions and rarely has to answer any. But it gets worse: On the rare occasion when someone does lay bare just how idiotic things are in the kingdom where Todd is royalty, there is a standard pat answer: "Welcome to the big leagues."

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That is the classic and predictable rejoinder to anyone who points out that the media perpetually obsess over trivial nonsense and try to turn matters that aren't the slightest bit legitimate into major news narratives. This is absolutely true, and it matters a lot, and it's not good at all. But point it out - especially if you are a candidate it's happening to - and this is the response you'll get:

Welcome to the big leagues, Ben Carson (and everyone else) After a week of intense scrutiny (on his views on the Egyptian pyramids, on whether he truly tried to stab someone, on whether he was offered a full scholarship to West Point), Ben Carson declared he had enough. "I have always said that I expect to be vetted. But being vetted and what is going on with me, 'You said this 30 years ago, you said this 20 years ago, this didn't exist, this didn't.' You know, I just, I have not seen that with anyone else," Carson told NBC's Chris Jansing. "Or if you can show me where that's happened with someone else, I will take that statement back." Well, here's our try: We found a combined 165 New York Times and Washington Post articles that were all (or partially) about Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright between the time Obama first launched his presidential bid (Feb. 2007) and his 2008 victory (Nov. 2008). During that same time period, we found an additional 41 New York Times and Washington Post pieces on Obama and Bill Ayers. And from the start of her campaign (April 2015) until now, we discovered a combined 44 NYT/WaPo articles about Hillary Clinton and her email server. Our friend Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post even wrote a post entitled: "Why I've written 50 posts on Hillary Clinton's emails." Bottom line: When you're atop of the presidential polls, you're going to get scrutiny--lots of it. If you can't deal with media scrutiny as a candidate, you won't be able to handle it as president And while our system of picking a president is imperfect--especially when it comes to the news media's role in it--do realize this: It's maybe the closest simulation to actually being in the Oval Office. For all of the attention Obama received on Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, those stories paled in comparison to the intense scrutiny of the BP spill, selling the health-care law, dealing with the HealthCare.Gov crash, and reacting to the party's 2010 and 2014 midterm losses. For George W. Bush, his presidency went through the ringer of the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina, Harriet Miers, the Social Security-reform push, and the financial crash. So if you can't deal with the news media picking apart your autobiography and your past speeches, you probably won't be able to deal with the bad news that inevitably comes your way as president.

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Now you might think, hey, he's kind of got a point. If you can't handle it as a candidate, you probably can't handle it as president. And while that may be a true statement, it is not a defense of the behavior in the slightest. What Todd's argument really amounts to is basically, This is how the game is played, like it or not, whether it should be or not, so if you can't handle the game, it's going to eat you alive and you could never handle it as president. Thus, it's essential that we do it to you. But there is another alternative to the game and the way it is played, and that would be to change the game. Carson is right when he says the media is chasing after irrelevant nonsense by looking into incidents from 20 years ago, or 40 years ago, or more. Their worst moment was when they accused him of lying about once having tried to stab a guy because they, the media, "couldn't independently confirm this incident." It turned out they were just really crappy in their confirmation attempts (assuming they were really trying, which they probably weren't) because a story in Parade Magazine from more than 20 years ago - long before Carson ever thought of running for office or would have any reason to make up fanciful tales about himself - contained a quote from Carson's mother confirming it. So they perform a rectal exam on you, often digging up half-truths or things that don't even matter - and when you tell them a true fact about yourself they claim it's a lie because they couldn't find anyone else to tell them the same thing. This is the nonsense Todd defends by saying "welcome to the big leagues." If this is how the big leagues work, these slugs need a spell in the minors. What we need instead of this crap is a media that knows how to focus on substantive policy issues and not some word-stumble or piece of personal trivia from decades ago. Carson should certainly have been prepared for scrutiny if he wanted to run for president, but he's right that the nature of the scrutiny is absurd and does not serve the country well at all. Just because that's how it is and the president has to be prepared to deal with it doesn't mean that's how it should be. We're becoming a much dumber nation as we increasingly accept this idiocy as normal - and as we accept their choice of people like Chuck Todd to supposedly enlighten us about pretty much anything.

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