New American Prospect article: What the anti-Rosie backlash says about the myth of the “liberal media”
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Posted by Jennifer L Pozner May 1st, 2007 |
Hey, all: Thanks to my stellar editor, Ann Friedman, I have a piece up at The American Prospect today, focusing on the way that the vitriolic treatment of Rosie O’Donnell by the media gatekeepers exposes the myth of the “liberal media.”
I’m copying the piece below. I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments field below, but I’d also appreciate you clicking over to The Prospect’s site so that they know readers are interested in feminist articles. If you wish, you can email letters to the editor of The American Prospect here: letters@prospect.org
Note to editors: If you’re interested in reprinting this piece, contact WIMN at info[at]wimnonline.org or use this form to begotiate reprint rights.
Rosie the Riveter
Why do right-wing pundits hate Rosie O’Donnell so much? Because she was the lone ardently progressive voice in corporate news programming.
By Jennifer L. Pozner
The American Prospect
Web Exclusive: 05.01.07“Boy, I’m going to miss attacking her,” quipped MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson after Rosie O’Donnell announced that she will leave The View in June over a contract dispute with ABC.
Carlson isn’t the only journalist who will miss the woman who served as conservative cable news hosts’ favorite punching bag for the past year. “I could always count on Rosie O’Donnell saying something completely out of her mind insane every day,” Glenn Beck, CNN’s resident anti-Rosie ranter, mused, “And for a guy who does three hours of radio every day, do you know how much money I’ve made off of that?”
Indeed, Beck and his bombastic broadcast buddies have spent the last year bashing the mouthy talk show host all the way to the bank. During her eight-month tenure on The View, a Nexis search shows O’Donnell was berated 186 times by Bill O’Reilly and 91 times by Sean Hannity — who once called her a “fat, ugly, bully, pimp, loser, ignorant, terrible person, animal. Did I say fat?” — on Fox News, 71 times by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and 41 times by the now-wistful Carlson. If that’s not bad enough, a whopping 2,911 local, national network and cable news stories have quoted Donald Trump trash-talking O’Donnell, calling her “disgusting,” “crude,” “arrogant,” “pushy,” “self-destructive,” “a degenerate,” “a stone-cold loser” and so hideous that her wife must be grossed out “having to kiss that every night.”
Considering this collective vendetta, it’s no surprise that O’Donnell turned down a reported $30 million rather than commit to three more years of this treatment — nor that the news of her departure was greeted with a rousing chorus of “Ding dong, the witch is dead.” But while the rumor mill is buzzing about why she’s moving on, the more compelling question is why she aroused such agita in the zeitgeist from the moment she began offering her uncompromising views.
It’s tempting to write off the media’s ridiculously vehement reaction to O’Donnell as solely the result of good old-fashioned sexism on the part of arrogant boys who aren’t accustomed to sharing their celluloid sandbox with a girl — especially a non-girlie girl who cares more about what comes out of her mouth than what color lip-gloss adorns it. That bias has absolutely been in play — but there’s more beneath the rage of her detractors than simple macho hazing.
The anti-Rosie backlash is indicative of nothing so much as the stiflingly limited range of debate allowed within the corporate media, whose garrulous gatekeepers want to erase true leftist dissent in America. Over the past year, O’Donnell has brought a consistently progressive, feminist voice to ABC’s kaffeeklatsch and, in doing so, allowed daily television viewers entree into discussions wholly missing from the mainstream media lineup. She burst onto the public stage like a lefty tornado, loud and insistent, using her daytime post like a bullhorn at a peace march. (Who else on network television would have allowed actress Olympia Dukakis to declare that “The world can’t wait to drive out the Bush regime” during an interview about her latest romantic comedy?)
O’Donnell has regularly denounced the Iraq war, blasted government-sanctioned torture, and spoken out adamantly against the president not only for the war but for what she considers his racist failure during Hurricane Katrina, his corrupt ties to corporate string-pullers, and his stoking of anti-Americanism abroad. And she says this at a time when opponents of the Bush administration are still being branded “un-American.” Indeed, on Scarborough Country last month, guest Danny Bonaduce actually suggested that, “If anybody had a rope thick enough, I think that Rosie should be strung up for treason.”
But unlike MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, whose ballyhooed liberal ire is mostly targeted at Bush’s war, O’Donnell has also been an outspoken advocate for women’s reproductive freedom, gay rights, gun control, mental health care, and a variety of other issues rarely discussed on TV from a feminist perspective. Besides, have you ever heard a prominent media figure declare, “I’m fat and I’m gay” in the same blithe manner as she trades parenting tips or ponders who should be booted off American Idol?
O’Donnell was an instantly controversial figure because she dared to upset the traditional TV balance of fiery conservatives debating centrists and, occasionally, tepid liberals (think The McLaughlin Group, or actually, the pre-Rosie View). In this climate, the talking heads treated O’Donnell’s daily ruminations as if she was speaking in some sort of Martian code, rather than recognizing her simply as a passionate progressive woman who advocates her beliefs with the same vociferous zeal as do right-leaning O’Reilly, Scarborough, Hannity, Beck, Carlson, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and many other network news show hosts and pundits every single day.
Despite their dominance over the journalistic landscape, the overwhelmingly male punditocracy were so threatened by intellectual competition that they began gunning for O’Donnell’s job shortly after her View debut. Back in September — her second week on the air — two Scarborough Country episodes encouraged ABC to censor or even fire her for saying that radical Christianity is as dangerous as radical Islam. Guests like GOP strategist Jack Burkman called O’Donnell’s comment “one of the most mindless and terrible things ever said on American television! I think this is so serious, I’m shocked that she’s still on the air.” MSNBC’s faux-liberal media analyst, Steve Adubato, insisted that O’Donnell “cannot be allowed to get away with saying that… she has to be held accountable,” while Scarborough echoed: “if she does not back off of her statement, she needs to be forced from The View. That is not free speech. That is lunacy. And it is dangerous and it spreads hatred.”
Their overwrought reaction lays bare the hollow yet persistent myth that the media are liberal. Put one actual feminist on TV — even on a women’s chat show — and all the blustering boob tube boys line up to run off the radical interloper. If O’Donnell had a modicum of political company anywhere in mainstream corporate news programming, the reception to her would never have been so extreme.
Nor would such double standards have abounded. I was a recent guest on Fox’s Hannity & Colmes to discuss O’Donnell’s right to talk about gun control in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings. The segment opened with Sean Hannity saying that O’Donnell’s “immediate rush to politicize something for an agenda is so offensive to me.” What viewers couldn’t have known was that I initially declined the appearance, offering to connect producers with gun control experts who could offer insights into reducing violent crime in America, but all they wanted to discuss was Rosie. Who, would you say, was pushing their agenda?
The hypocrisy here is laughable. The name of O’Donnell’s show explicitly delineates her views as subjective. She’s an entertainer, albeit a politically-minded one, with a very different mandate than the responsibilities of journalists to present the news-viewing public with factual information and well-researched opinion. Yet the same news wonks who have ranted about the “hateful,” “irresponsible” and “inaccurate” opinions O’Donnell expressed on The View have been guilty of far worse under the guise of informed journalism. Bill O’Reilly, of all people, complained that she “does not feel the responsibility to back up her statements with facts, and she feels personal attacks on people are fine” — this from a guy who misled his viewers about non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, called Katrina victims “drug-addicted… thugs,” and blamed an 18-year-old girl who was raped and murdered for being “moronic” and inciting her killer by wearing a miniskirt. Joe Scarborough lambasted O’Donnell for being mean-spirited and misrepresentative, yet he devoted an entire segment to the housekeeping skills of Sen. Hillary Clinton and once used his show to allow Arnold Schwarzenegger’s gubernatorial campaign to smear a woman who accused him of sexual assault, falsely claiming she had a record for prostitution and narcotics. And where does Glenn Beck — who has called Hillary Clinton a “bitch,” Katrina survivors “scumbags,” and suggested that “good Muslims” should “shoot the bad Muslims in the head” — get off critiquing anyone’s on-air behavior?
Yet Rosie O’Donnell has uttered “the most mindless and terrible things ever said on American television.”
I didn’t always agree with O’Donnell (all feminists don’t all think alike, after all). I was certainly disappointed by her over-the-top 9/11 conspiracy theories, and her indefensible, racist mocking (”ching chong, ching chong”) of Asian accents. I was also surprised that she defended Don Imus in the wake his “nappy-headed hos” controversy. Sure, comedians tend to stick together, but Imus hasn’t been spewing “humorous” hate speech in some dank basement with a two-drink minimum — this was a guy who admitted hiring a producer to do “nigger jokes” on a show featuring political and journalistic bigwigs.
But I greatly appreciated O’Donnell’s fearlessness. I was often pleasantly surprised to find her far more well-informed than I expected a celebrity comic to be. Though she isn’t a journalist or a scholar, she took her platform seriously and turned a fluffy morning show without much information, interest, or disagreement into a real forum for hard-hitting discussion about the pressing issues of the day… at least, as hard-hitting as one can expect in between segments about where to buy the latest product-placement Capri pants. That’s why women loved watching her — because she spoke her mind, and because she treated her female viewers as if they had more than three brain cells to rub together at any given point.
This is all very confusing to the beltway boys. On the night she announced her departure, I appeared on Scarborough Country, the only woman among four men scratching their heads about why O’Donnell was so popular in the first place. How was she able to bring up “very, very heavy issues” on “a women’s talk show, a gabfest,” Scarborough asked. MSNBC’s Steve Adubato, Newsweek’s Richard Wolffe, and Los Angeles Times online columnist Tom O’Neil joined him in wondering why O’Donnell had been able to bring “a pretty tough brand of political dogma” about such serious topics to daytime television. They never did come up with an answer.
Scarborough wouldn’t let me into that part of the conversation (why ask the woman about what women watch?), but I was dying to expose the elephant in the room: Daytime audiences are predominately female, while cable news commentators are predominately male. If certain media men don’t understand O’Donnell’s popularity, it’s not just because they’re out of touch with millions of liberal and progressive Americans — it’s also because they thoroughly underestimate the intelligence of the female viewing public. Underneath their bewilderment is the ugly belief that women who watch daytime television are mostly stupid, concerned only with the latest fashions, celebrity gossip, and sex tips, while men are interested in the “hard news” of politics, economics, labor, science, and world events.
In fact, female daytime viewers are just as concerned about most of the same issues as nighttime (assumed to be male) viewers. More women than men report to pollsters their desire for peace and an end to the Iraq war — and issues such as gun control, abortion, health care and the environment resonate extremely strongly for women. So it was hardly a surprise that The View’s ratings skyrocketed when O’Donnell elevated the discussion with real content. As I told Scarborough, we should seek to foster more debate, not less. O’Donnell’s departure will leave a gaping hole, as discussions she initiated during the day often sparked nightly news stories about progressive topics otherwise marginalized on in corporate media. Without her, next year’s TV news lineup promises to be extremely boring — at all times of the day.
[CORRECTION: We incorrectly attributed the quote about O’Donnell being a “fat, ugly, bully, pimp, loser, ignorant, terrible person, animal. Did I say fat?” to Joe Scarborough. The quote was by Sean Hannity. We regret the error.]
Jennifer L. Pozner is founder and executive director of Women In Media & News, a women’s media analysis, education and advocacy group, and manages WIMN’s Voices, a women’s media monitoring group blog. She lectures on women and the media at colleges and communities across the country, and is working on a book about reality TV as cultural backlash against women.
NOTE: THIS ESSAY IS COPYRIGHT JENNIFER L. POZNER. CONTACT WOMEN IN MEDIA & NEWS AT info[at]wimnonline.org or use this form TO NEGOTIATE REPRINT TERMS — DO NOT REPRINT WITHOUT PERMISSION.
May 1st, 2007 11:44
You nailed it, girlfriend!
May 7th, 2007 21:14
[…] What it is May 7, 2007 at 6:14 pm | In the forg, hawaii, poverty, breaking news | I ain’t no spring chicken when it comes to what will and won’t get media coverage. I also know how important it is to get alternative messages into mainstream media. But will someone please tell me what is alternative about this article by Jennifer L. Pozner? The anti-Rosie backlash is indicative of nothing so much as the stiflingly limited range of debate allowed within the corporate media, whose garrulous gatekeepers want to erase true leftist dissent in America. Over the past year, O’Donnell has brought a consistently progressive, feminist voice to ABC’s kaffeeklatsch and, in doing so, allowed daily television viewers entree into discussions wholly missing from the mainstream media lineup. She burst onto the public stage like a lefty tornado, loud and insistent, using her daytime post like a bullhorn at a peace march. (Who else on network television would have allowed actress Olympia Dukakis to declare that “The world can’t wait to drive out the Bush regime” during an interview about her latest romantic comedy?) […]
May 28th, 2007 20:39
Your essay itself is proof positive that “liberal media” exists. Where else can someone who says and does some of the most ludicrous, vitriolic, and utterly insane things still be praised as some kind of bastion of progressivism and feminism.
One can only imagine what a site like this would say about some white conservative man who spouted insanity and spewed hatred all the time. When it comes from a gay woman then I guess you just judge it a minor character flaw (and thus no big deal) based on this article.
You’re website is also a joke, claiming to have a “diverse online community” of women. The viewpoints on this website are about as homogeneous as it gets at least when it comes to politics. True diversity would have been to have at least a few women have the courage to stand up to a lunatic like Rosie and say she DOESN’T represent feminism.
May 28th, 2007 21:32
Dave, clearly you skimmed my article, rather than reading it in its entirety. Because if you had read the full text, you’d understand that I was talking about the corporate/mainstream media in my critique, not small, left-leaning online magazines such as the one that published my commentary. The only “liberal media” that exists is the alternative/independent press.
As for the our website, again, read fully before you spout off about. We specifically state that this is a *feminist* media monintoring blog in which a diverse online community of women blogs from a progressive perspective. Our writers are diverse in terms of ethnicity, age, class background, religion, field of expertise, and profession.
As for what we’d say “about some white conservative man who spouted insanity and spewed hatred all the time,” we have a good, solid record of exposing such folks in the thirteen month tenure. And, FYI, we also critique liberal and centrist media personalities who spew hatred on air and in print. But, unlike you, we rest our critique on journalists’ and news outlets’ biased framing, inaccurate statements and misleading representations — not on their sexuality.
I get it — you don’t like Rosie O’Donnell because she’s gay (why else would you single that out in your comment?). But you think you’re better qualified than a feminist media analyst to determine who and what should represent feminism? Give me a break.
May 30th, 2007 15:45
FYI - We have removed, and will continue to remove, comments that are not based on content, and include slurs like “big, fat, pathetic lesbian.”
WIMN’s moderation poplicy for comments includes the following:
“Voicing differences of opinion and providing countervailing information or analysis is encouraged – however, hate speech will not be tolerated. WIMN maintains the right to edit or not to post reader comments at our discretion if… they include racial, gender-based or sexualized slurs or attacks, aggressive harassment or abuse of blog authors or fellow commenters, or threats of violence.”
June 4th, 2007 20:15
Jennifer, I’ve considered this reply for several days, and since I had never heard of you before researching the hulla balu regarding the latest remarks by Ms. O’Donnell that led to her departure. I watched your video transcript of the DC Madame on Hannity & Combs. I thought your responses were articulate and I think I would agree with your position regarding what would be and would not be news worthy.
But the unfortunate fact that for profit media is motivated not by ethical standards makes defense of either the mainstream or alternative news channels tough regardless of one’s views, liberal or conservative. We have reached a point where every media position is, by necessity, polorizing since this sells advertizing, or product. As you said hypocricy abounds, but I would tell you it is not limited to the conservatives.
All that aside, I have to say your support of Ms. O’Donnell and her increasingly radical expressions of anti-American sentiment is unfortuate. Ms O’Donnell has, for the past seven years attacked the legitmately elected government of the US on a personal level, not advocating for constructive change, but in a manner that reflects her personal hatred.
At what point do you seperate the personal from the professional in the role of “entertainer?” The first amendment right to free speech is clearly a right of us all, but I doubt our founding fathers would have anticipated the instantanious global gossip shop we have created. When we are unconstrained by ethics, integrity or a sense of community, public debate transends into simple name calling. “Progressive Feminist” versus “Religious Conservative” with out of touch talking heads claiming to speak for groups they have little in common with.
As long as Ms. O’Donnell continues to believe that her right to attack on a personal level outweighs the need to inform and entertain she will act as a lightening rod for those who feel the same way regarding attack politics.
June 4th, 2007 20:36
John, just wanted to thank you for your thoughtful reply. We disagree on a couple of key things, but your comment is reflective and respectful, and that is something in short supply with dissenting opinion in the blogosphere. I wish all conservative men who wrote in could similarly express themselves without vitriol, insults and threats - unfortunately, respectful disagreement like yours is rare.
You’re absolutely right about the commercial motivations of for-profit media corrupting news content — this has been a theme in the media analysis and advocacy of our organization, Women In Media & News, since our founding. But, just to clarify, I think you and certain others have missed the main point of my Prospect article, which was not about supporting O’Donnell per se (though often she deserved support), but about noting and exposing the extreme dearth of progressive feminist voices in news and public affairs programming. It is the lack of any consistent progressive feminist voices in news programming that made the reaction to O’Donnell so extreme. Conservatives have a wealth of representatives to turn to for articulation of their perspectives, both in terms of hosts who deliver and filter the news and the pundits and experts who offer opinion and commentary. Feminists have zero regular feminist voices to turn to with a daily platform in corporate mainstream news media representing their perspectives. That is why an opinionated person like O’Donnell was so popular among women — even though she’s not a trained journalist or politico, just a comedian offering her views on a chat show. It wasn’t that progressives and feminists agreed with everything she said all the time (I certainly didn’t — as I said in the Prospect article, there were a variety of key instances where she made statements with which I strongly disagreed), but because on many instances she articulated feminist ideas that never saw celluloid (at least outside of small-circulation, left-leaning independent publications on the margins).
To your point about O’Donnell making personal attacks, I am not sure to what statements you’re referring (do you have examples I could evaluate?), but I can say this: even if she *had* made personal attacks, that is not why she became a lightening rod. Think of how many times people like radio and TV news men such as Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Neil Boortz, Sean Hannity and their ilk have made personal attacks — yet they have not been subjected to the kinds of personal attacks that were leveled on O’Donnell this past year. That was simply because of two things: a. her outspoken and passionate left-leaning, pro-feminist commentary, and b. the fact that she’s a lesbian, which many people just couldn’t tolerate. (Based on our comments moderation policy, for example, I had to remove several comments just from this post from hateful people ranting about how they were glad that the “fat lesbian bitch” was off the air and even insinuating that rape might turn her straight.) That is simply not the kind of treatment that straight white men in news and public affairs programming receive, even when they make public attacks in their professional or personal lives.
June 18th, 2007 13:47
[…] A minor controversy is buzzing over Walters stooping to a homophobic joke On Wed.’s “On-Air with Ryan Seacrest” radio show: in a desperate attempt to keep tongues wagging about the chat show, Walters quipped that “There are things we’ve been able to discuss that we weren’t able to discuss with Rosie, like heterosexual sex.” The comment isn’t just anti-gay (if all Rosie ever talked about was lesbian sex, the cable news stations wouldn’t have been bashing her all year), it’s also inane. Does anyone really think that Walters, Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and the show’s writers sat around “The View’s “writers room and said, “The Big Bad Lesbian is gone! Yee-ha, now we can talk about getting it on the good, old-fashioned, man-woman way!”? But, more to the point, the comment was clearly contrary to the content of the show itself, considering that nearly every starlet, singer and actress who appeared on “The View” over the past year was interviewed about her love life, which usually involved some discussions about heterosexual sex. […]