Where are the adults, and where are the children? And how do we distinguish between the two?

"Orcs have no love of daylight, so he covers the face of the sun to ease their passage along the road to war. When the shadow of Mordor reaches this city it will begin." -Gandalf, Return of the King. 


Two days ago, Gloria Borger of CNN published the article "Where are the Adults?"  Perfect content creation.  I should know.  I write copy for a online catalog of scientific equipment.  It is the eternal challenge of the internet content creator, whether they be lowly copy-writer or featured columnist, to walk the narrow line between the need for specifically useful information and the need to sensationalize, simplify and package for the widest possible audience.  This article, like so many from news sites like CNN, does a good job describing the deadlock surrounding the budget talks, yet it's overall premise is shoddy.


First of all, if you're like me and believe that the Republicans shoulder most of the blame for the impossible situation this country has been put in (both in a greater sense as well as with regard to the debt ceiling issue,) then your heart likely dropped when you saw the title of Ms Borger's opinion piece.  "Here's another fake fairness article," you sigh to yourself.  Another opinion piece that refuses to distinguish between the wildly different tactics and beliefs of the Democrats and Republicans.  Actually, it's worse, as it mostly just blames Obama.  Here's an excerpt.

Call me old-fashioned, but when the president and congressional leaders get into a tussle over who should be "leading" the country in matters of real national consequence, I feel like sending them to their rooms.

"Call me naive," President Obama said at his news conference today. "But my expectation is that leaders are going to lead."

Mine, too.

So imagine my surprise when the president came to his own press conference -- which he called -- without anything much new to say on possible ways get to a deal to raise the national debt ceiling. Plenty of talk about gamesmanship, about deadlines and about how even Sasha and Malia are mature enough to do their schoolwork before it's due.

A few lines later: 

And it's not that [the President is] wrong about Congress ducking responsibility; it's just hard to see how that counts as news.

Well, that is news.  The media needs to hammer home the crazy and unprecedented partisan attack by the Republicans.   But wait, what's this?:  

What might actually have counted as news is if the president, as the nation's leader, had proposed a definitive way out of the budget mess -- or at least drawn some lines in the sand.

Instead, we learned that we need a "balanced approach" to the debt mess. That Obama is willing to "tackle entitlements" (presuming, of course, that nothing is done to touch Medicare beneficiaries). And that taxes -- the kinds that affect "millionaires and billionaires," corporate titans and their personal jets -- should be on the table.

Okay, now we're talking.  Yes, Obama, please draw a line in the sand -- although, he has made it clear that extending the Bush tax cuts any further is unacceptable.  I think.


Look, the point is that it's all well and good to get on Obama's case about not being forceful enough, but why spend a whole article called "Where are the Adults" on that theme?  It's not just that the Republicans are acting more childish.  They are acting SO much more childish that they now exist in a completely different dimension than the Democrats do.  So when Barack Obama gets up and chastises the Republicans for not doing their homework, it is because he sees that they are acting like children, and is therefore calling them to task for it.  The act of calling someone to task about acting like a child does not automatically lower one to the same level.  


Republicans have been holding up even the most routine house and senate votes in order to stall the government and prevent it from fixing the horrible economy.  Never before in living memory has one party gone to such extremes.  They've forced the debt limit issue, which had never been an issue (Republican lawmakers voted to raise it SEVEN times when Bush was in power, without anyone paying attention.)  Everything they're doing is partisan and extreme.  They are creating a crisis in the middle of a downturn to force their agenda and destroy Barack Obama by keeping the economy in the pits.  Their game is dangerous, cynical and callous.  They are acting like immature schoolyard bullies.  The same cannot be said of any Democrats who dare speak up against the din, however timid and unsatisfying they appear to be.   

But Republicans can now count on cover.  For whenever a Democrat gets up in one of our many halls of state to lambast these crypto-feudalists, there will always be Trusted, Impartial reporters who have decided that everyone gets heat for speaking up against the wrong-headed actions of others.  It's so much simpler that way.


When mainline journalists like Ms Borger report within the fake-fairness, each-side-is-equally-irresponsible mindset, people loose sight of the specific actions of each side.   Unintentionally or not, fake fairness provides a cover, a black cloud beneath which the orc armies of the right wing can march into our public discourse and lay siege to reality, democracy and everything a free society stands for.