The New Blue Media: How Michael Moore, Moveon.Org, Jon Stewart and Company are Transforming Progressive Politics
by Theodore Hamm
The New York Press, £17.99
THE New Blue Media ounds either like a compendium of the newest Tory blogposts or a collection of Mr Jacqui Smith’s favourite night time viewing. In fact it’s neither. It’s a fascinating look at what for many of us are the relatively uncharted waters of the American left’s use of new (and some old) media to defeat the Republicans. As anyone who has watched election night programmes will be aware, in the US blue is red and red is blue – the blue states are Democratic and the red states are Republican.
Because of the impact and success of the Obama online campaign many observers on this side of the Atlantic have assumed that utilising cyberspace to trounce the Republicans was a phenomenon only associated with the new US President. In fact, as this book by American media academic Theodore Hamm makes clear, the left began using the media to get its message across at the very start of the Clinton presidency when the right wing press launched an onslaught against Bill (and later Hillary).
In this breezily written book Hamm takes us through the history of American politics over the past 20 years by tracing the successes (and the failures) of the left-of-centre media. The book begins with the Onion newspaper which, while always rather more satirical than political, captured the mood of the left. When George W Bush defeated Al Gore in 2000 its headline story ran: “Our long nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over” and, as the post-war situation in Iraq deteriorated they headlined one news report: “Dead Iraqi would have loved democracy.”
Air America was an attempt by the left in the US to combat the popularity of right wing talk shows. But while his narrative about Air America is helpful Hamm fails to address the central question – why does the right dominate the talk show airwaves? An appropriate answer to that question might have helped Air America survive and prosper. However, what Hamm could not have known is that Al Franken, one of the driving forces behind Air America is, this month, on the verge of winning a seat in the US Senate (assuming the courts do not do a 180 degree turn on the challenge to his election) which will give Obama the 60 seats necessary to enable him to get legislation through Congress without encountering a Republican filibuster in the Senate.
Hamm describes the success of Michael Moore in using documentary films for cinema distribution – and in the process creating a whole new genre – as is the rise of the so-called Netroots. These were the online campaigners and bloggers – Moveon.org, Daily Kos and so on – who coalesced around the campaign by Howard Dean to win the Democratic nomination in 2004. Despite the fact that their man (Dean) lost to John Kerry, these online campaigners stayed true to the Democratic cause and campaigned for Kerry, one of contemporary America’s worst campaigners.
Cable TV saw the rise of two sharp left-leaning comedy shows, The Daily Show, presented by Jon Stewart (and available every night over here on More4) and Stephen Colbert’s The Colbert Report. Hamm relates how Colbert’s finest hour was probably when, in cabaret at the White House correspondents’ annual dinner in 2006, he failed to follow the tradition of offering only gentle gibes at the President by telling him why they were so similar: “I believe the government that governs best is the government that governs least. And, by these standards, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.” And: “I’ve never been a fan of books. I don’t trust them. They’re all fact, no heart. I mean they’re elitist, telling us what is or isn’t true, or what did or didn’t happen.”
But, despite the fun, this book has one major flaw. It was published in the United States in 2008 – a risky time to publish anything about politics and the media since it was at the very start of the primary campaign and hence is unable to give any sense of the huge significance of Obama’s use of new media.
Blue State Digital, the company which ran (and runs) Obama’s online campaign, had two fundamental insights, both of which were crucial to his success and have lessons for us here. First, that new media (or old for that matter) don’t win elections; people do. New technology is not an end in itself but simply an effective way of achieving that end. “Yes We Can” is a good slogan to read at the top of a website, but it is even better when you hear it from a friend or neighbour who has just signed you up to the campaign. Second, that new technology means the centre can no longer control everything – even if it ever could – and that’s a lesson that is proving hard for Labour to learn.
One clear message from this book that Labour would do well to learn is the absence of any attempt by any of the Blue State media activists to use the sort of smear tactics that Damian McBride and Derek Draper were cooking up for their Red Rag website. Ends did not justify means in getting Obama elected and nor should they in the drive to get Labour re-elected here. Unfortunately, though, as New Labour is now demonstrating, once the philosophy of “ends justifying the means” becomes accepted, then the means become the ends and there is nothing left worth fighting for.
Ivor Gaber
