Asked of the media's "feverish speculation" about vice presidents, Lehmann responds with a condemnation and a telling analogy:
The reporters and editors who are composing these inane pieces are pretty much talking to each other ... Imagine if you were covering the baseball playoffs and you wrote that there was massive speculation about who was going to win. It’s manifestly moronic because you’re writing about a scheduled event that is going to take place on a known timeline. You’re contributing nothing. It’s the opposite of news; any useful public information is entirely missing. But that’s the way the press bubble operates. Not only do reporters write about what they’re talking about, but they’re writing about each other.
Asked about expected "bounces" Lehmann notes an unconstitutional aspect of a recent bounce event
... It’s the same thing with all the discussion about who won the Saddleback debate. The only important issue about Saddleback is that the Constitution specifically forbids any religious test for office, so why are you having an evangelical minister asking the two candidates about their relationship to Christ? ...
Asked about the intensity of the media coverage, Lehmann says
... Market share dictates the witless coverage, which is largely for the media’s own amusement. You see that all the time on the Sunday political chat shows, which are always about the polls and who is performing better in strategic terms. The only constituency that cares about that is the media.
When questioned about the current relevance of the coverage:
... The reason so much political coverage on cable is crap is that there is an effort to portray the campaign as this floating spectacle; it’s devoid of public interest. Not to be too conspiratorial, but there is an economic interest at stake because you want people to come back and watch the same drivel the next day ... That’s why the VP speculation is so perfect for cable; you can fill up all that airtime without any reporting. There are studies of the content of cable news that show that something shy of 10 percent of the coverage is original reporting.
While answering questions about narratives (the novelization of political "reporting") becoming self-fulfilling prophecies Lehmann proffers an answer that will surely come to the attention of Bob Somersby and the erstwhile staff of The Daily Howler:
It’s not a stretch to say that the media largely defeated Al Gore. They burrowed in with these idiotic memes about him being uncomfortable in his own skin and about his claiming to have invented the Internet and Naomi Wolf advising him on how to be a he-man. Most of it wasn’t even true, but that didn’t matter because the press is so invested in its own narrative that it all becomes self-fulfilling; these things are repeated like mantras. In the same way, it never seems to matter that John McCain is the wealthier candidate and represents economic interests that are in many ways aristocratic; it’s always Barack Obama who is the “elitist.”
Be still my heart. A truth teller. I don't look to see him working for the Washington Post, the New York Times, cable news, or any of the stalking heads chattering classless shows EVER.
Of course, he did not name names - MoDo would be atop any such list fo' sho'.
