Of course, caustic political commentary and satire has a cherished, well-established tradition in American history. Mark Twain, H. L. Mencken, Will Rogers, Dorothy Parker, and scores of other satirists could have been described as political provocateurs in their day. We celebrate their work and can recall their most memorable quotes. When they wrote, the media environment was smaller, slower, less complicated, and less significant in American politics. But as media has evolved over the last several decades, political commentators have become an entirely different species. Today political partisanship has become institutionalized as media technology has increased outlets for niche points of view on the extremes of the political spectrum, and the money and celebrity flow to those voices at the extremes through radio shows, book deals, and Web traffic.
Much of the history of provocateurs in America is part of the glorious history of free people speaking freely—democracy in action. These voices emerged to challenge the status quo or in some cases to defend the status quo against the forces of political correctness, both good and bad. Some of our nation’s most heated debates took place during the postrevolutionary era as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton argued passionately over the details of our nation’s democratic blueprints, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Thomas Paine is among the most renowned of the founding-era provocateurs. He is the original American agitator, an immigrant to the United States who wrote the inflammatory Common Sense. His treatise, which railed against British colonial domination, was intended to inflame and goad Americans to rebellion. He wrote in bold language: “Everything that is right or reasonable pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, ’TIS TIME TO PART.” His words made the American Revolution much more than an uprising. He transformed it into a holy crusade for all humanity. “The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind,” Paine wrote.
By the late 1800s, Paine’s pugnacious phrases seemed polite and poetic compared to the daily vitriol printed by the two great newspaper magnates of the time, William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. Their coverage of the news, from crime to political scandals to war, was a study in sensationalized accounts, including outright distortion and lies, in a battle to sell more papers in New York City. The high-decibel contest between Hearst’s New York Journal and Pulitzer’s New York World gave rise to the term “yellow journalism.” It describes alarmist, sensationalist journalism that is driven by a desire for attention and is willing to incite and provoke readers with little regard for the facts. Hearst and Pulitzer became infamous for starting a real war. They whipped up so much anger at Spain through inflammatory stories about Spain’s handling of American vessels that they incited the United States to go to war with Spain in the Spanish-American War.
Radio had emerged in the early twentieth century as a form of mass media. The best-known voice of early thunder on radio was Catholic priest Charles Coughlin. Father Coughlin spewed an inflammatory mix of political outrage, social controversy, and division. President Roosevelt used radio to reach out to a country struggling to recover from economic depression; his use of radio was a first for a president, and his occasional fireside radio chats from the White House became a signature of his presidency. Father Coughlin first gained prominence as a supporter of President Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. But he turned against them with equal fury. He blamed Jews for the Great Depression, sympathized with Hitler, and became an ardent opponent of U.S. involvement in World War II. He once broadcast a question that combined isolationism and anti-Semitism: “Must the entire world go to war for 600,000 Jews in Germany who are neither American, nor French, nor English citizens, but citizens of Germany?” His popularity fell, however, when he was linked to a group trying to overthrow the government.
The cold war, with its strong anticommunist sentiments, produced several early versions of today’s provocative media personalities. Fear of communist infiltration into the United States stirred the audiences of that era. Radio shows, pamphlets, and speeches were sponsored by the paranoid, far-right John Birch Society.
The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, too, produced a class of racial provocateurs. Several states added some version of the Confederate flag to their state flags. Alabama’s Governor George Wallace propelled himself to national prominence and a third-party candidacy for the presidency using a “states’ rights” argument, as well as championing the “good” of racial segregation. In June 1963 Governor Wallace drew world attention when he physically stood in a schoolhouse door to block black students from entering the University of Alabama. With TV cameras rolling, and in defiance of the U.S. Justice Department officials standing next to him, he announced that the federal action to integrate the school was “in violation of rights reserved for the state by the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of Alabama.” Later, he stirred warlike passion by proclaiming, “In the name of the greatest people that ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny and I say, ‘Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!’ ”
Wallace’s success as a political provocateur was aided by his prominence as governor of the state. But it was also bolstered by the growth of mass media—radio and TV—that trumpeted his words to every corner of the nation.
In the era of domestic social upheaval during the 1960s and 1970s, the leaders of the feminist movement, the student protests against the Vietnam War, and the civil rights movement all capitalized on the growth of TV news and commentary to build support for their causes. Every cause now had to make strategic decisions on the use of visuals, signs, and symbols intended to display disdain for the establishment, as well as when to stage marches for maximum television coverage, how to increase time on TV by employing Hollywood celebrities to speak for a cause, and how to enlist musicians and messages in movies to agitate for change.
Ronald Reagan’s presidency saw political polarization reach another level. President Reagan’s professional acting and speech-making skills, combined with the birth of TV cable news and the talk/news radio format, turned politics into televised contests of rhetoric and staging. Working with a public relations expert, Michael Deaver, as his communications director, the president led the nation with bold language and powerful settings for his speeches. He stood at the Berlin Wall to challenge Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev with the line, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” He did not hesitate to label the Soviet Union “the evil empire.” He antagonized his liberal critics by talking about poor women as welfare queens in “pink Cadillacs,” taking the bold economic position that if the rich got richer the poor would also be helped because “a rising tide lifts all boats.” Consideration of one Reagan nominee for the Supreme Court, Robert Bork, transformed televised Senate confirmation hearings into a stage for political fights over abortion, race, gun control, and every other hot-button issue. As noted earlier, during the Bork hearings, Senator Ted Kennedy unleashed his own inflammatory attack on the nominee. “Robert Bork’s America,” the senator said, “is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens.”
Talk shows began to combine the techniques of news programs with entertainment shows. Phil Donahue’s TV show, which was syndicated nationally for a record twenty-six years, set the standard for putting serious conversations on the air in the afternoon, but his show also became known for tackling taboo subjects and bringing lightning-rod personalities on to discuss them. Up-and-coming TV producers followed in his footsteps and often took the format to greater extremes. Geraldo Rivera had his nose broken on an episode of his talk show dealing with “teen hatemonger
s,” which featured a member of the White Aryan Resistance Youth and a black guest. Maury Povich became known for revealing the results of paternity tests to couples on live TV, with all the predictable emotional outbursts and tears. Jerry Springer’s show actually rang a bell as guests regularly jumped from their seats in rage to fight one another. Oprah Winfrey’s show became the genre’s most popular in the nation as a more respectable talk show for suburban female viewers, yet it has never strayed far from family feuds, Hollywood’s latest celebrity crisis, and talk about sex and health. But Oprah realized ratings gold in clashes over the day’s explosive social issues.
As talk shows became TV sensations, radio programming turned up the volume too, with insults, sex talk, sensational political stories, and caricatures of what hosts saw as politically incorrect politicians. Don Imus and Howard Stern soared in the ratings with a combination of humorous put-downs and a willingness to make controversial, even insulting, statements to incite their audiences. Imus’s focus was political, with senators, congressmen, and business leaders often joining him to trade gossip, jokes, and put-downs. Stern rode the persona of an overgrown schoolboy skipping class with his friends to have a smoke in the boys’ bathroom and trade titillating locker-room talk about sex. The wild success of both shows inspired countless imitators in local radio markets. And the success of these shows led to the explosive growth of reality television, pitting people against one another to reveal that which is most base, primitive, jealous, and violent in us, as reality TV devolved from shows like Survivor to The Real Housewives and Jersey Shore.
As far back as the late 1970s, Patrick Caddell, a political adviser to President Carter, recognized this critical shift in the media, and its power contributed to a change in the nature of governing. He warned the president that it had the power to drive trends and opinions of such force that they could swamp even the most sincere and able leader. Caddell told Carter, “It is my thesis that governing with public approval requires a continuing political campaign.” That meant that even victorious candidates, once in office, had to keep campaigning; they needed to see governing as a separate, sometimes secondary, task if they wanted to hold on to the power that comes from strong public approval. In that sense, a permanent campaign became the equal of a Hearst-Pulitzer circulation battle, a ratings war, and a competition between brands—a quest to seize eyeballs, to capture hearts, and to stir passions. Politicians need to absorb the lessons of the media about tapping into the biggest possible audience and holding that audience. The key lesson is that there is nothing less dramatic than a few people talking rationally, ignoring extremists and know-nothings, while making steady, incremental improvements in public policy. Even an uninformed, uneducated rube can beat a brilliant statesman in opinion polls if the rube has passion, presents himself as a victim of Washington’s arrogance, and is willing to take a stand and put on a show of populist outrage.
In politics, the heated media culture of the 1980s and 1990s saw the rise of three major political personalities who fit the mold of provocateur—Jesse Jackson on the Left, Pat Buchanan on the Right, and Ross Perot as a political independent.
Jackson had first used the power of television in the immediate aftermath of Dr. King’s assassination, when he appeared on air the next day wearing a shirt that he said was stained with Dr. King’s blood. Throughout the next several decades, his public statements and appearances on TV and radio spoke of his ambition to become the next Dr. King. By the 1988 presidential campaign, Jackson was widely acknowledged as the “president of Black America,” a meaningless title except in its power to command the attention of the media and win Jackson his own cable TV show.
Pat Buchanan, a former aide to President Nixon, positioned himself as a social conservative and a man of principle willing to lead the charge in what he called “the culture wars.” It was Buchanan who had coined the term “silent majority.”
Buchanan became a regular on political TV and radio shows and eventually landed his own. He was one of the original cohosts of the cable TV shouting match Crossfire, which created the spit-flying, barbed-put-down, Left-versus-Right template for political panels and programs that have come since. He ran a lucrative newsletter aimed at conservatives seeking hard-line right-wing views.
Like Jesse Jackson, Buchanan made a run for president. In 1992 he used his hard-right stands on social issues to attack President Bush as a political moderate who made “backroom” deals with Democrats and did not deserve a second term.
Ross Perot, like Jackson and Buchanan, also ran for president. In an amazing turn, the wealthy corporate executive ran as a populist, a man trained by his success in business to get things done. The hero and protagonist of a best-selling book and TV series, On the Wings of Eagles, about how he organized the rescue of employees being held hostage overseas, Perot presented himself in the news media as a serious leader. He spoke as a no-nonsense pragmatist with a particular distaste for President Bush. In nonstop media interviews, including regular appearances on cable TV’s Larry King Live, he labeled President Bush a weak leader with no economic know-how and lacking in strong principles.
“This city [Washington] has become a town filled with sound bites, shell games, handlers, media stuntmen who posture, create images, talk, shoot off Roman candles, but don’t ever accomplish anything. We need deeds, not words, in this city,” Perot said. One of his most telling campaign pledges fit the ever-escalating media culture of the time. He said that as president he would govern by participating in “electronic town halls,” where people could speak out and also register their preferences for policy and legislation.
But Perot’s erratic behavior, dropping out and then reentering the presidential race in a media frenzy, and his charge that government agents had tried to ruin his daughter’s wedding, as well as his choice of the unknown and out-of-his-depth Admiral James Stockdale as his vice-presidential running mate, undermined Perot’s candidacy. Nonetheless, he won 19 percent of the vote, a record for an independent candidate.
But most of all, Perot, Buchanan, and Jackson left an industry of extreme political pundits in their wake, politicians and talk-show hosts who gained a level of wealth and political power never known to earlier political commentators such as Will Rogers and H. L. Mencken. They prided themselves on being outside observers of the process.
The current crop of provocateurs, too—from Glenn Beck to Arianna Huffington—have become players in that process. They are rewarded for being the ones who shout the loudest and make the most outrageous attacks, who garner the highest television ratings, the largest radio audiences, and the most Web site traffic. They net lucrative book contracts and receive rapturous standing ovations at political conferences. And they have discovered they can make or break like-minded political candidates with their commentary and endorsements. Voices of moderation and calm persuasion have a hard time being heard over the loud, grating voices of today’s political provocateurs. And the Internet and the communications platforms it has created—from Facebook to blogs—have supported the emergence of even more provocateurs: people paid for screaming out any controversial idea, any conspiracy theory. Most of these agitators act without fear of being held to account for distortions or outright lies. When challenged on the facts, they run behind the First Amendment and charge that their freedom of speech is being taken away. The acolytes in their audience could care less about spin and distortion—unless it is committed by their political foes. They just want to hear a rousing speech by a talk-show host who agrees with them.
This psychological phenomenon is one surprising result of technology’s ability to deliver more cable channels, more radio stations, infinite Web sites, and Twitter feeds. With the greater variety of platforms to get news and opinion, most readers, viewers, and listeners are drawn to platforms and personalities of their choice, in the same way hometown audiences become fans of a baseball team. They believe their team can do no wrong. They revel in the company of like-minded thinkers. They really don�
�t want to hear news that makes them question their political prejudices. They don’t want opinions that challenge the logic of their political thinking by giving a contradictory point of view. They want consistency. They are glad to dismiss critics, the loathsome “mainstream” or “right-wing” media, and opposing political parties. They bond with others as outsiders and get a kick out of personalities who use mocking tones to debase the insiders or elite who disagree with them.
It is this new political culture that produced Al Franken and Rush Limbaugh, stand-up comic and disc jockey with brash political views, two funny guys who have risen to unbelievable prominence in the nation’s highest councils of serious political debate.
Limbaugh is the loudest of all the voices in the conservative media echo chamber. A college dropout and failed disc jockey, he created a one-man political show made possible by the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. Radio stations no longer had to air opposing views, and Limbaugh is credited with being the first and certainly the best to take advantage of the new law. He beats one ideological drum for three hours a day—the drum of social conservatism. He has made himself into the voice of opposition to everything liberal, from abortion to war protests to concern over torture of captured terrorists and civil rights activists. He lambasted women’s rights activists as “femi-Nazis,” declaring, “Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society.” He mocked AIDS activists by introducing any discussion of the disease with Dionne Warwick’s hit song “I’ll Never Love This Way Again.” On Limbaugh’s show, members of the military who did not agree with President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq were “phony” soldiers. He showed no fear of making the kind of racial politics put-downs of black people that have sunk other talk-show hosts. Limbaugh once told a black caller to “take the bone out of your nose and call me back.” His take on the majority of black Americans identifying with the Democratic Party? “They’re only 12 percent of the population. Who the hell cares?” One time he remarked that all composite pictures of criminals look like Jesse Jackson. A big football fan, he nonetheless disparaged the large number of professional players who are black by saying: “The NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons.” This episode was cited as one of the reasons NFL power brokers blocked Limbaugh’s attempt to buy an ownership stake in the St. Louis Rams football team in 2009. After the plan fell through, liberal comedian and talk-show host Bill Maher joked that this had dashed Limbaugh’s lifelong dream of one day owning black people.
Juan Williams Page 20