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March 6, 2000: Without question, Dick Morris has one of the best minds for strategy in America. And even if you dislike him, as many people do, it is impossible to deny that he's fun to listen to on Fox News -- and undoubtedly a good person to have as an ally and advisor, at least in the short term. Unfortunately, Morris has also shown himself to be a craven character. He's the man who betrayed his friend, Bill Clinton, by creating a high risk personal situation that dragged the presidency into a media scandal. He then went from being Clinton's chief strategist to a role as a commentator for Fox, where he did a slow striptease that revealed much of what he knew about the White House. Morris only added to his negative résumé with his web site, Vote.com, where visitors are asked to vote on issues, with the promise that the results will be sent to public officials. As Slate magazine has pointed out, Vote.com depicts itself as a new form of direct democracy that allows a kind of Internet voting when it is really a form of manipulation in which Morris picks the questions and frames the issues. The site's basic strategy is the one used by virtually all politicians and people in the media -- talk democracy while you covertly control events. In many ways, it offers a media burlesque of democracy, which is hardly unique since, for every cultural and human phenomenon, there now seem to be hokey media caricatures -- Claritin commercials that offer a travesty of religion; TV judges that dispense "justice" in counterfeit courtrooms, TV marriage, fake investigative reports of nonexistent UFO cover-ups, and so on. American society has become a giant black mass in which forms are imitated while values are inverted. I think this helps explain why Slate writer, Mickey Kaus, has a link to Morris on his web site, kausfiles.com, that contains an unexpected and very demeaning reference to Morris' personal life. The reference is mocking, insulting, and invasive, and it labels Morris as a person who can legitimately be debased while other public figures are treated with more respect. In short, it classifies Morris as a scapegoat who lacks the same moral rights other people have when it comes to the treatment of his image. Kaus undoubtedly indulged in this taunt because there is a ring of truth in its depiction of Morris as foolish and childlike. As a minor work of caricature, it tries to convey an emotional truth that conforms to some people's perceptions, cutting through the media world of fake-everything that Morris is so much a part of. At the risk of getting pretentious, I think it is an effort to make something right by mobilizing the power of a crude putdown to call something by its right name. But it isn't only the power of truth that can be used to justify Kaus' comment. Some would undoubtedly also argue that Morris left himself open to such an attack by making these private matters public in the scandal he generated. And Morris is himself connected to the Fox News Channel which hasn't exactly been a respecter of the privacy rights of public figures. Even so, Kaus has stepped over a line with this petty insult by joining in the culture of privacy invasion and personal abuse that has poisoned the media and politics. He can't try to inflict this kind of crude public humiliation on another person as a device of persuasion and also claim to be part of the solution. The fact that he is telling a small truth doesn't justify the symbolic violence he visits on his target. I have a word of advice for Kaus when it comes to this little taunt, although it also applies to a good deal of what Morris is up to at any one time: "Don't".
Ken Sanes |
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