‘It has come to this’

July 17, 2008

One of the more painful aspects of the media’s coverage of the Democratic presidential primaries was the ridiculous coverage of Hillary Clinton’s pantsuits and cleavage. Now that the primaries are over, we’re less than four months from the general election, there’s an endless stream of substantive news stories to report, and Hillary Clinton isn’t even a candidate anymore, I’d hoped the media would be prepared to move on.

No such luck.

Yes, on MSNBC yesterday, host Monica Novotny and congressional correspondent Mike Viqueira did an entire segment on Hillary Clinton’s new hairdo. Seriously.

If you watch the clip (Media Matters has the entire transcript), you’ll notice that neither Novotny nor Viqueira seem especially pleased to be doing the story. Viqueira, apparently laughing at the absurdity of his own network’s broadcast, said, “It has come to this.” To which Novotny responded, “Welcome to mid-July.”

Sorry, but that’s not going to cut it. “Welcome to mid-July” suggests the news cycle has become so outrageously slow, poor cable news networks have nothing else to put on the air. What nonsense.

And lest anyone think I’m just picking on MSNBC, I noticed that the New York Daily News devoted an entire news article to the direction of the part in Clinton’s hair.

Hillary Clinton is moving to the right.

The longtime lefty is making a dramatic change – not in her policies – but in her hair style.

Clinton revealed her new ‘do, with the a part on the right, Tuesday when she gave a speech on Capitol Hill praising her Senate colleagues for overriding President Bush’s veto of a Medicare measure.

A historical review of Clinton’s myriad hair styles revealed she’d previously been a devotee of the left-side part – although in college she wore it in the middle.

Clinton’s representatives did not return calls for comment on the new look to her blond-streaked coif, cropped short on the sides and collar length in the back.

Is that so. A reporter called Clinton’s office to get a comment about the senator’s hair, and staffers didn’t rush to return the call. I can’t imagine why.

ABC’s Jake Tapper also had an item about Clinton’s hair — which I think/hope was tongue in cheek.

So what does this all mean for Hillary Clinton? She has made the reverse switch — from left to right — but then again, she is a woman, and the Walters’ theory would seem to indicate that this makes more sense for her.

Her new do will evoke visual, artistic, and musical skills, nonlinear tasks traditionally culturally attributed to femininity, right-hemisphere stuff.

On the other hand, it is just a hair part, for the love of Pete.

About a dozen times a day, I notice something I find important and think, “The media should pick up on this, but won’t.” And the reason is simple — “stories” like this one get media oxygen.

Anyone wanna bet Maureen Dowd writes her next column about this?

Oh, I forgot, no one bets on a sure thing.

  • With all of the critical problems in the world today, with all of the things broken by the Bush administration; with all of those broken things embraced by John “Bull-In-China-Shop” McCain—the only thing MSNBC can embrace is Hillary Hair? Methinks the “MS” in MSNBC now stands for “Mondo Stupido….”

  • There’s a reason for all of this. It’s the same reason public education has been deliberately set on nose-dive trajectory. An informed electorate would be outraged and would totally transform the power paradigm in this country. And that can’t happen. So… hair.

  • Who would have thought that the most important election of many decades would have been reduced to THIS? We’re in a Constitutional crisis, an economic crisis, a moral crisis, and are groaning under the weight of a criminal and corrupt Bush government, and we get this kind of shit.

    Where are the candidates? Why isn’t Obama raising holy hell, why isn’t he ringing the alarm bells, with McCain falling flat on his face from a challenge to the status quo that he loves so much?

    Under such conditions, who would have thought this election would be boring, with will-o-the-wisp candidates?

  • Why isn’t Obama raising holy hell, why isn’t he ringing the alarm bells,

    Do you really have to ask? Nobody who “raises holy hell” gets anywhere. Obama is the better of the two, but don’t kid yourself. He’s totally mainstream. You’ll never see him “raise holy hell” so stop wondering when it will happen.

  • Haik

    I think you’re wrong. I think Obama would win with a landslide if he raised holy hell and rang all the alarm bells. It would certainly stir things up and get many more Americans involved in the election process, those who believe there’s not a damned thing they can do politically about the huge problem of corruption and complicity in both parties.

    But of course, he won’t.

  • The only thing dumber than that is McCain’s comb-over. Which of course would be fair game if he was a Democrat!

  • If “reporters” are bent on embracing silly season, John McCain, who is running for president of the United States, can provide lots of fodder…in his policy statements and gobsmacking inability to answer simple questions in his areas of “strength.” Oh. Boring. Back to hair and cleavage and missing white girls.

  • Question posed to media: Why do you waste time on moronic stories like Hillary’s new hair cut?

    Answer from media: Well, we have to fill 24 hours of news, every day, so sometimes, we have to go with stories that are somewhat trivial.

    Question posed to media: Why don’t you go into more depth on substantive issues, like, say, the obvious lies of GOP saps claiming that no oil was spilled post Katrina, or maybe give a really good explanation of what’s really happening with Social Security?

    Answer from media: Well, we only have so many hours in which we can report. If we spend too much time on any one story, you won’t find out about other, equally important issues.

    Reality: Individual reporters and editors are all just people. I doubt they have any special agenda to keep power sitting comfortably in the hands of those who already hold it, but they do know that when they rock the boat too much, they loose access. That makes their jobs harder, so they don’t do it. They do the least that they need to do to get by.

  • My barber suggested I switch my part to balance my (very slowly) receding hairline. I never have, but I imagine that is the reason for Hillary’s change.

    Dr. George F. Will has recently switched his part from right to left. It doesn’t make him a liberal.

    This story does make it clear, however, that the Media is full of idiots.

  • Who would have thought that the most important election of many decades would have been reduced to THIS?

    Anyone paying attention to the media at any point since, what? 1196?
    *sigh*

  • what else can we expect when America is infatuated with trivialities like who Lindsay Lohan is sleeping with and crotch-shots of celebutards like Hilton and Ritchie? You get what you pay for- caveat emptor. The lack of interest in sophistication and culture goes back to Edison-when other filmmakers were making truthful cinema verite- Edison was after the quick buck and created what then could be equated to Youtube videos ( the Nickelodeon). Add to that Edisons thuggish practices on competitors and thats why you have Hollywood today. this has been your mass-media lesson for today, class dismissed.

  • Not since Moses has a part raised so much interest. We’re not the target of their insipid news focus. They’ve got a lot of other people to amuse and entertain. As George Carlin said: Look at your average American. Then realize that half of them are even stupider.

  • Actually, it means she’s moving further to the left. She was looking in a mirror when she changed it.

  • Welcome to mid-July, year eight of the New Dark Ages. The president vows to catch the leaker and to fire anyone involved, then he commutes the leaker’s sentence, now he exercises executive privilege to stop anyone from finding out who orchestrated the leaks. But never mind that, Hillary just got new cleavage!

  • They could feature a scandal per hour if they wanted to look into Bush’s governance. Or a feature called “Can you believe they said it” with Bob Somerby would fill some time. Or for nostalgia they could have “Where Are They Now” about our Consitutional Rights.

  • Ohfergoodnessake: Yes, the Hillary item is silly, but making a big deal about it is even sillier. (As far as the campaign goes, while this year IS an exception, mostly because of the length of the primary season and the fact that Obama didn’t take — or let McCain take — the time between clinching the nomination and the Convention as a vacation. But this is new, and probably because of the internet and blogs like this — take a bow, Steve — and television and newspapers are taking time to adapt. But even this year, what will happen from September to November will probably be much more important than whatever goes on in the Summer — unless McCain does quit and a whole new major narrative has to be constructed.)

    But the Summer is ‘the silly season’ most years, and for a good reason. Not because news isn’t happening, but because — traditionally — people have better things to do than pay attention. They go away on vacation, or hang out outside, or go swimming, or whatever, and they are more in the mood for frivolity than seriousness — or so it used to be. This is why summer tv shows were re-runs or shows that failed to make it into the fall schedule — and still are on the networks despite cable disproving the assumption with it’s drama schedule. (Hooray, THE CLOSER, MONK, PSYCH, SAVING GRACE and DAMAGES are all coming back — though I wish DEAD ZONE were with them.)

    This is why there has always been a music category of ‘summer songs.’ Why certain books are thought of as ‘beach reading.’ (And what books are you taking with you if you are taking a summer vacation?)

    Yes, this year is different, but the failure to react to it is simply an example of ‘dinosaurs moving slowly,’ and not some sinister plot. There are serious matters to be addressed in the media’s coverage, and hopefully we will be bringing them out. But if we pick on nonsense like this, if we continue to see all of the problems from the paranoid view that some of us seem to love, then when we make a good and valid point, when we sum up a month’s campaign coverage and show exactly how unbalanced it has been, nobody’s going to be listening to us.

  • Everyone can have an opinion on a hairdo. Opinions on issues require prep work. Simple.

    All the same… They still don’t seem to have covered the subject as fully as it merited. Questions linger: How much she’d pay for the new hairdo? Was it more, or less, than Edwards’ haircut? And how much of a tip did she leave? Was it the same hairdresser that always does her hair or someone new? If someone new then, perhaps, the part on the other side was due to the new hairdresser not being familiar with the Senator’s preferences. Etc, etc, etc. The media, as usual, has fallen on the job.

  • The story about Hillary’s hairdo might seem like more fluff and a non-story, but hair parts actually do make a difference in overall perceptions, and there is a full theory that describes the difference. The Hair Part Theory sounds silly and inconsequential at first look, but there is a lot of support for it in various public and private personalities that we know about. The reasons it should be so do make a lot of sense, and are based on right brain/left brain theory, feedback loops, and “interactional continuity”.

    My main problem with the story is that it is being treated like a fluff piece, like her clothing and cleavage, and not exploring the possiblility that it really can change her image…possibly for the better. Here is a link to the Hair Part Theory’s page on this latest story…Hillary Clinton’s Hair Part Change

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