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Following up with a partisan cheerleader Saturday, Jun 28, 2008 By David J. Sanders The other day I pointed out how a couple of Democrat-leaning journalists who'd penned lengthy pieces extolling the virtues of Gov. Mike Beebe and his administration not only went overboard with their praise, but in doing so sacrificed objectivity and ended up sounding like partisan advocates. I didn't write the column to hold myself up as a paragon of virtue. In fact, before taking their work to task, I acknowledged my own past sins of a similar sort. I tried to follow Christ's admonition to remove the plank from my own eye before pointing out the speck in someone else's. As it goes, one target of my criticism, John Brummett, the senior columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau, used his column to respond to mine. He criticized his critic with a little name-calling and complained that I didn't have the nerve to call him out by name. I did omit his name, not out of cowardice but as a professional courtesy. I figured since he'd done so for me in a column a couple years ago when criticizing my work, I ought to do the same. The name-calling wasn't limited to me. He reminisced how reading my column transported him back to the days when he, the heavyweight, had sparred in print with the former editor of the statewide daily and its Pulitzer Prize winning editorial page editor. He named names and described both as "featherweights." In fairness, not all of his words were overtly critical of me. He claimed that I had advanced a worthy discussion since, "It is quite true, as Sanders laments, that Gov. Mike Beebe is getting a largely free ride from a supportive, even at times adoring, press. It's mostly because he's doing a good job, which, actually, members of the press are entitled to observe." He surmised that my criticism of him was born out of deep disdain for Beebe and because the small band of Republicans left in state government had been rendered irrelevant. But mine was more of a particular criticism leveled against the work of two individuals who possess some measure of distinction earned from their years of reporting on the state Capitol's goings-on. Brummett suggested that his work in the new business quarterly was simply the musings of a passive observer using his pen and pad to report on the good governance occurring in the Beebe administration. I would describe what I read much differently. Think of it this way. If Gov. Beebe were Darren McFadden sprinting down the football field, avoiding less talented defenders on one of his many touchdown runs, then our journalist in question would not be one of the stone-faced sportswriters up in the press box taking note of the tailback's deceptive speed and defenders' imperfect angles. Instead he would be one of the cute cheerleaders down on the sideline waving pompoms, doing great damage to her vocal cords cheering D-Mac as he flashes his tattooed biceps for the cameras after spiking the ball in the end zone. A cheerleader, as opposed to an objective journalist, ascribes greatness to a governor who has served less than half of his four-year term - the same governor who, thus far, has been spared the hard task of governing during tight times because he entered office with budget surplus totaling near a billion dollars, and who governs with a Legislature packed with members of his own party, and some in the other party who, at times, can't do too much to try to earn his good graces. A closing point, less on substance and more on style, only a cheerleader would describe his subjects' mode of dress using by the words "sartorial signature" and "starched shirts ablaze in spotless white" in the same sentence. Woooo, Pig! Sooie! ------- David Sanders writes twice weekly for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock and is a host of the Arkansas Education Television Network's "Unconventional Wisdom." His e-mail address is DavidJSanders@aol.com. |
