Buzz Bissinger is the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the bestselling book Friday Night Lights. He distinguished himself more recently by damning – in print and on TV – the way Penn State University conspired to cover up the predatory, pedophile abuses of former assistant Football coach Jerry Sandusky.
More to the point, Bissinger was nationally acclaimed until he wrote a column titled, Why I’m Voting for Mitt Romney, which was published at the Daily Beast a week ago today. Some of the criticism is understandable, of course, given that he professes to be not just a lifelong Democrat but one who “swooned” for Obama in 2008. But to read some of it you’d think Bissinger wrote a column titled, Why I’m Supporting al-Qaeda.
Not surprisingly his critics are all Democrats/liberals – who now consider him a traitor to all of their political causes. Indeed, it’s an indication of how much Bissinger has strained old personal, professional and political ties that Peter Berg, creator of the TV show Friday Night Lights that help make Bissinger’s book a cultural phenomenon, felt compelled to write an open letter to Governor Romney on Friday to make it crystal clear that, unlike Bissinger, he’s not a supporter.
Berg’s letter reads in part as follows:
I was not thrilled when I saw that you have plagiarized this expression [‘Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose’] to support your campaign… The only relevant comparison that I see between your campaign and Friday Night Lights is in the character Buddy Garrity – who turned his back on American car manufactures…
Please come up with your own campaign slogan.
Ouch!
For his part Bissinger has reacted to the ad hominem attacks by portraying himself as a martyr for the (FOX News-inspired) cause of exposing the liberal bias in the mainstream media. Never mind that, according to FOX News’s own chest-thumping reporting, the mainstream media is now dominated by it and other organizations for whom conservative bias is a virtue….
In any case, as an avowed liberal myself, I truly regret the attacks. But instead of making a cause celebre of the backlash against him, Bissinger would do well to reflect on what caused him to make a mockery of his journalistic credentials and reputation by writing such a self-indulgent and fallacious column that seemed scripted to incite that backlash. Here’s what I mean:
I felt reading this column the way admirers of former GE CEO Jack Welch must have felt watching him accuse this president of the United States of faking leading economic indicators for political purposes….
Bissinger informs his readers that he has “studied the issues assiduously” and therefore has a comprehensive understanding of where both Obama and Romney stand on them. But this is why it is so stupefying that the reasons he proffers for choosing Romney amount to little more than a preference for the “infectiousness of rejuvenation” he believes Romney has: whatever that means.
Frankly, nothing betrays how fickle, misguided and oxymoronic his “giving up on Barack Obama” is quite like Bissinger parroting the ironic whining of the super-rich who are simply fed up with “Obama’s constant demonization” of them. After all, the rich have never been richer thanks to Obama’s policies that have led to record highs on Wall Street and record profits for corporate bottom lines.
What’s more, he even admits that he agrees with Obama on the issue that is the raison d’être of Romney’s candidacy: extending the Bush tax rates that favor the rich. Specifically, Bissinger asserts that, like Obama, he thinks, “Those making more than $250,000 should pay more taxes, and that does include me.”
Beyond this, any fair-minded person (especially a life-long Democrat) would surely be far more turned off by Romney’s demonization of the poor (i.e., “47 percent” of the American people) as a bunch lazy parasites living off the taxes of the rich than by anything Obama said about the super-rich. But not Bissinger; instead he parrots the specious line about the poor paying no “federal income taxes” to justify Romney fomenting class-warfare with his insinuation that they do nothing but sit on their asses collecting welfare checks, social-security checks, and food stamps.
Meanwhile, he probably knows better than Romney that the poor have always been exempted from federal income taxes. Instead, they “contribute both as a patriotic obligation and skin in the game” – to use Bissinger’s condescending and patronizing words – by paying payroll and social security taxes.
As I referenced above, Obama’s critics have become so vested in seeing his presidency fail that even erstwhile respectable business leaders are now proselytizing doubts about the reliability of the BLS unemployment rate – in which they used to express abiding religious faith.
They went certifiably nuts a week ago Friday when the rate fell below 8% (7.8 to be exact) for the first time in four years. This sent Jack Welch on a manic rant – all over TV and the Twitterverse – claiming that Obama must have ordered his “Chicago guys” to cook the books to boost his re-election prospects. Sadly, this makes Donald Trump’s claim that Obama is a Manchurain president who was born in Kenya seem reasonable. But I digress.
The point is that Bissinger is now manifesting this kind of Obama derangement syndrome by claiming that, despite all Obama has done to rescue America from the precipice of another Great Depression and restore its standing on the world stage, he’s “not sure Obama really wants to be president in any practical way.”
The irony seems lost on Bissinger that Obama’s enviable record of accomplishments makes it self-evident that he wants to be president in every practical way. What he can be fairly accused of is not having much patience for the impractical traps of the office – like begging non-stop for campaign donations and stroking the egos of petty-minded congressmen.
Which brings me to what Bissinger claims is the “tipping point” for his switch from Obama to Romney: that debate.
Bissinger concedes that it’s perhaps naïve for him to believe that the way Romney flip-flopped on virtually all of his core policies, which left Obama famously dumbfounded, does not constitute a disqualifying display of political pandering.
Actually, he flatters himself. Because, instead of naïve, it’s willfully stupid for him to suggest that this merely reflected Romney’s “move [back] to the center” where his political soul resides. Hell, he is so committed to selling his soul to the far-right of the Republican Party that Romney now describes himself – with born-again zeal – as “severely conservative.”
More important, he has vowed that, if elected, among other things, he will abolish abortion rights (except in the case of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother), defund Planned Parenthood, repeal access to comprehensive healthcare for over 40 million Americans (assuring them, as he has, that hospital emergency rooms will always be there for them), oppose gay marriages, and pursue a unilateral, war-mongering and messianic foreign policy (which will lead inexorably to a march of folly into Iran that will make Bush’s misadventure in Iraq seem like a garden variety drive-by shooting).
Yet, after juxtaposing Obama’s “distracted” defense of his unassailable record with Romney’s engaging presentation of his yin-and-yang plans during that debate, Bissinger concluded that what America needs now more than ever is a man who will say or do anything to get elected.
Towards the end of his column he writes that he respects that Obama is a man of principle. But then he complains that this president lacks the political traits of “friendliness and compromise” that are necessary to lead.
When I read this I could not help thinking that, like Welch, Bissinger was suffering a sudden onset of political dementia and would have benefited from a more protective editor. Because it is plainly delusional for anyone to think that Romney has a friendlier disposition and is more inclined to compromise for the greater good than Obama. Not least because it was the preternaturally awkward Romney who took a public pledge that he would not compromise with Democrats to reduce the deficit even if that compromise granted 90 percent of the cuts in government programs his Republicans favor and only 10 percent of the increases in taxes Obama’s Democrats favor.
Ultimately, this “issues-based” endorsement of Mitt Romney seems more worthy of a clueless actress like Stacey Dash than a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist like Buzz Bissinger. He thinks he might be naïve. He tells his readers, with the relish of an agent provocateur, that even his wife thinks he’s a traitor. I think he’s just seeking more media buzz. Well done … Bissinger.