The Cable News Patrol: Rounding Up the Usual Suspects and Subjects

Already, my life feels like it has been reduced to a cheesy Internet banner ad: "New York Man Watches TV at Home – And Is Paid for It, Just Like a Real Job."

On Monday, I began my masochistic regimen of watching cable TV news for 12 hours a day in a valiant effort to...err...I dunno...maybe...probe the subterranean depths of the American political psyche. In truth, my motivation had something to do with frustration at being stuck at home recovering from Achilles tendon surgery (I told them that they could start the Trojan War without me). Perhaps others in my situation might be reading the Iliad in the original Greek. But I choose the less-traveled path of compulsively monitoring CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. Believe it or not, these cable channels were a novelty to me in that I almost never watch because I stubbornly prefer to read newspapers (off-limits during this experiment) or troll Internet news sites (also verboten).

A rueful confession: On Tuesday, this Ace Reporter got a late start. In calculating my theoretically inflexible 12-hours-a-day rule, I neglected to allot enough time for writing up these entries and to factor in a lengthy doctor's visit (like a hit Broadway show, I am now into my second cast). So after being in a news void all day, I eagerly turned on Chris Matthews on MSNBC to discover all the exciting life-changing developments that I had undoubtedly missed. (Just for context, my viewing started before the Haitian earthquake struck at 5 p.m.)

Guess what? Matthews' special guests were John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, the authors of Game Change, the 2008 campaign book that has launched a thousand TV food fights. Thirty three hours earlier, when I began my cable odyssey, there were Heilemann and Halperin on "Morning Joe" talking about their Harry Reid scoop-let. Now they had migrated to "Hardball." I felt like Rip Van Winkle waking up after 30 years to find out that the pundits were still obsessively talking about George Washington's chances in the 1788 election.

Since repetition is as rare on cable TV as blonde day-time anchors, Matthews moved on beyond Harry Reid to embrace a talk-show topic almost as riveting as accusations of racism – assessing the character of Hillary Clinton in light of the primary battle with Barack Obama. There was indeed something comfortably familiar about watching vintage footage of an October 2007 Democratic debate and an angry December 2007 on-camera exchange between strategists Mark Penn (Clinton) and Joe Trippi (John Edwards). During this trip in the Wayback Machine, I was seized by an epiphany. Cable news anchors – and their viewers – are happiest in the middle of a presidential campaign. As a political reporter, I plead guilty to the same character failing. But I also recognize that the arcane and non-telegenic details of the subsidy levels in the health-care bill are far more important than the early-bird Iowa poll numbers about the 2012 GOP nomination.

At the end of the Hillary discussion (which was followed by, believe it or not, a Sarah Palin segment), Chris Matthews said to John Heilemann, "We're pumping your book here." Ripped out of context like many video clips shown on all three cable networks, these five words might suggest that Matthews was inappropriately in the tank for Game Change. In reality, the comment came after a bit of banter between Matthews and Heilemann over which of them was actually calling Hillary Clinton "ruthless." As Matthews correctly put it to the authors, "You guys have portrayed her in pretty rough terms" -- and, by implication, should take responsibility for what they wrote when they are hawking it on TV. I mention this because of my continuing puzzlement over why supposedly media savvy TV viewers seem airily unconcerned about the context of gotcha video clips that are as integral to cable news as angry shouts of "Don't interrupt! Let me finish!"

To avoid looking like (yikes!) I am in the tank, I should mention here that I have known and liked Chris Matthews since eons ago we were both Jimmy Carter speechwriters. He is, in fact, the only major figure on cable news with whom I have a pre-existing relationship. Until I volunteered for the Eye-Glaze Chronicles, most cable hosts were merely disembodied names to me. Before Monday night, for example, the only time I had seen Rachel Maddow was in an NBC promo video broadcast on those hyper-annoying TV screens with hard-to-find off buttons that Mayor Mike Bloomberg (seemingly unconcerned about the psychological health of New Yorkers) put in the backseats of all taxicabs.

As part of my fair and balanced rotation among the cable channels, I next dropped in on "Special Report" with Bret Baier on Fox News. At the top of the broadcast, I was finally exposed to my first new fact of the day – a Rasmussen poll showing that Democrat Martha Coakley's lead in the Massachusetts Senate race was down to a frail 2 percentage points. Now I tend to be skeptical of all polls before special elections since it is devilishly difficult to predict who will turn out, but amid the thin gruel of cable television news I should not complain when I find the occasional raisin.

"Special Report" struck me as a more-than-respectable newscast featuring Fox News correspondents like Major Garrett at the White House and Greg Palkot in Yemen doing stand-ups. The show serves as a reminder that there is a major distinction on Fox and MSNBC (as well as on CNN during Lou Dobbs' reign of error) between news shows and the networks' top-rated opinion-mongers. The only heavy-handed example of conservative slant on "Special Report" Tuesday night was in the stacked-deck composition of the show's panel discussing the Massachusetts Senate race. This was a classic Fox News version of a fair fight – conservative newspaper columnist Charles Krauthammer, Steve Hayes a columnist for the conservative Weekly Standard and the non-ideological A.B. Stoddard from The Hill. Not surprisingly, the panel ran the gamut of opinions from A to B.

By the time I clicked over to "CNN Newsroom," anchored by Jessica Yellin, the first frightening reports from the Haitian earthquake had begun to dominate the evening on cable. There is sadly not much to say other than to offer the fervent (and almost certainly futile) wish that human suffering from poverty in places like Port-au-Prince would receive a fraction of the sustained television coverage devoted to human suffering from an act of God. And, yes, I realize that newspapers in their foreign coverage also have always been more willing to devote more resources to covering wrecked buildings from earthquakes than wrecked lives.

It is a truth universally acknowledged – there is no graceful transition from a devastating earthquake to Sarah Palin's inaugural appearance as a Fox News commentator on the "O'Reilly Factor."

Yes, there was, of course, a sycophantic tone to Bill O'Reilly's questions: "You're the governor of Alaska, the former governor, the former vice presidential candidate. You're a politician. You're a Mom. You're an American. What's the threat [to Democrats]?...Tell me what the threat is?" But just minutes into the interview, O'Reilly realized that Palin's banal answers ("They don't like the common-sense conservative solutions that I think I represent...as I explain what I believe are some solutions to the great challenges facing America") could not possibly justify the hype.

So O'Reilly, apologetically to be sure, began asking Palin about the dim-bulb accusations in Game Change that she thought that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attacks and that she did not know the difference between North and South Korea. Waving off the charges, Palin said, "The rest of America doesn't care about that kind of crap...We are concerned about a 10-percent unemployment rate." Obama, by the way, said roughly the same thing (minus "the crap") about how the Harry Reid furor was a distraction from the real issues facing America like high unemployment.

Now for a fearless prediction, the kind that cable TV pundits make all the time with scant risk that they will ever be called to account for their dim-bulb crystal ball. Before her paid gig with Fox News is over, Palin is going to wish that she played against type and signed on with, say, MSNBC. If she allowed herself to face a hostile questioner, Palin's political survival instincts would naturally be on high alert. But the soothing tone of fellow conservatives on Fox News is a potential formula for trouble. O'Reilly, for example, tried to lure Palin into saying that she would support an Israeli raid on Iran's nuclear program. Trapped between encouraging war in the Middle East and disappointing red-meat conservatives by sounding mealy-mouthed, Palin took the safer and wimpier road: "I think that we can still head in that direction of the financial sanctions and the sanctions on petroleum, the refinery projects."

At 9:00 I had planned to devote the full suspender-snapping hour to Larry King on CNN. But with King presiding over Haitian earthquake coverage and reliable information still sketchy, I could not resist clicking back to Fox to watch an event that encapsulated every nightmare vision of what cable TV news represents. If the point of prime time is to give the people what they crave, then Sean Hannity has become the modern-day P.T. Barnum. Tuesday night Hannity hosted a soft-voiced and high-minded debate between Ann Coulter and Al Sharpton over Harry Reid's purported racism. Even by the steel-cage standards of cable talk shows, this was an epic battle among ego-driven air hogs. The three of them may have set a world record by screaming at each for nearly 30 seconds – with barely a comprehensible word – before someone got in a complete half sentence. This reporter was, by then, too dazed to notice exactly who won the give-me-the-mike competition.

It may have been coincidence not editorial comment, but this segment was immediately followed by a movie commercial for The Hurt Locker.

Day 1: A New Survivor Show: Watching a Week of Cable News and Living to Tell

Day 2: The Cable News Patrol: Rounding Up the Usual Suspects and Subjects

Day 3: The Cable News Patrol: Sound Bite Skirmishing Silenced (Mostly) by Real Life Tragedy

Day 4: The Cable News Patrol: Glenn and Rachel Become My New Best Friends

Day 5: The Cable News Patrol: My Long National Nightmare Is Over!