Michael Goodwin's Woman Problem

The New York Daily News still occupies a key place in New York political and media circles, even if its old core base of outer borough white ethnic types has died out: for one, it's got whatever "center" there is, between Murdoch's vanity publication on the wacky right, and the staid, liberal New York Times. For another, it's the voicebox of Mort Zuckerman, a hawkish media mogul B-lister.

The News suffers from an acute identity problem, a true personality crisis. The Archie Bunker base in New York has either died or moved away and the real working-class New Yorker is likely to be black or Hispanic or Asian and quite often, born someplace else. The News is out of touch with this growing, churning middle class economic powerhouse - a look at its opinion pages is a window into just how clueless the paper is. The News doesn't get this new middle class, and its lead opinion voice - Pulitzer winner Michael Goodwin - is cartoonishly out of kilter, pitching his faux dese, dems, and dose "common man" pablum to mere ghosts in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx.

Back in November, Goodwin's reaction to the Democrats' sweep was to throw out a hackneyed "Mommy Party" column in the spirit of the noted anti-feminist Maureen Dowd.

Republicans, with their macho men and muscular policy prescriptions, are in decline because they are out of answers. Dems are getting better at seizing their opportunities, and doing it with women playing a leading role.

Put another way, Mommy is taking over because Daddy screwed up.

This is blatant sexism; can Goodwin actually walk around this town in public after writing something like that? To put it another way, what's he smoking? New York's working class is filled with ambitious women; its professional class shows more and more numerical equality between the sexes each year. And Goodwin acts like an old, doddering man from another century with his "mommy class" tripe.

Then today, Goodwin loads his Obama-versus-Clinton column with a scat-like riff loaded with anti-woman downbeats.

He's everything she's not. He's warm, she's cold. He's a great speaker, even off-the-cuff. She's usually wooden and sticks to the calculated message. He's the fresh-faced outsider. She's the ultimate insider. He talks about uniting America across racial and political lines. She's a born-to-divide partisan. Her sense of inevitability makes you tired, Obama's charisma makes you pay attention.

Cold. Wooden. Calculating (and we know what that usually modifies, don't we?). Born-to-divide partisan. She makes us tired - you know who we are: blue-collar, outer-borough he-men, two-fisted drinkers down at the corner bar, at Archie's Place. That kind of us. She wears us out, because she's a woman and we don't want to hear a woman talk. Who does, you know?

No, I don't know. Goodwin is writing for some tiny slice of old male-dominated New York; he's incredibly out of touch and it rankles. Senator Clinton, to Goodwin, has no authenticity - whereas all her male counterparts don't get the same challenge at the gate, despite being career politicians. He even doubts her religion:

She famously wore a Christian cross around her neck, which was the equivalent of a flashing neon light that shouted “CENTRIST.”

When's the last time Michael Goodwin doubted the religious beliefs of a prominent male politician. Here's a gentle hint: never.

Then there's Iraq. It's obscene, frankly, that Mike Goodwin is battering Senator Clinton for her war vote when he wrote - just last summer - the following about the Connecticut Democratic primary:

So now that the wackadoo wing of the party has a bloody scalp, what are they going to do with it? Wave it at Islamic terrorists in Iraq and Lebanon and Afghanistan and Indonesia and Great Britain and Spain and Israel and New York and declare peace? That will work for sure. They better also wear armor and duck.

Lieberman is the first casualty of the war against the war on terror. If last night's results are a window on the party's tilt, then a huge slice of the Democratic party is ready to sit out the war to protect America. God help us if the Republicans also get the wobblies. Let's hope the Connecticut Condition isn't contagious. And let's hope last night's decision is overturned.

Yeah, the wackadoo wing, Goodwin. Nice perspective. (He means us, by the way - you and me). And oh yeah, we're in a world war:

World War III has begun.

It's not perfectly clear when it started. Perhaps it was after the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War ended. Perhaps it was the first bombing of the World Trade Center, in 1993.

What is clear is that this war has a long fuse and, while we are not in the full-scale combat phase that marked World Wars I and II, we seem to be heading there. The expanding hostilities mean it's time to give this conflict a name, one that focuses the mind and clarifies the big picture.

The war on terror, or the war of terror, has tentacles that reach much of the globe. It is a world war.

Within the course of half a year, Goodwin lambasts the Democrats for being weak on the war - "Democratic Party leaders want to pretend we can declare peace and everything will be fine" - and smacks Senator Clinton for being too hawkish!

Then again, Goodwin has always had it in for the Clintons. He demands absolute leaders, who don't employ nuance in their policies (we corner bar New Yawkas really love guys like George Bush - real men). This is what Goodwin wrote in 2004, defending the Bush Administration and attempting to relegate Bill Clinton to history's scrapheap in this, our new post-9/11 world:

American politics, like everything else, changed on 9/11. As the last election proved, the game is no longer about traditional standards of interest groups and issue positions. Biography, charisma and the polish of education matter far less than they did just four years ago. The new gold standard is at once more elusive and more precise. For every would-be leader, the test is this: Are you rock-solid? Those who cannot say yes, and convince voters, need not apply. Weakness, waffling, nuance, process - they're luxuries from a bygone era.

And for God's sake, no more parsing and blurring. It's a gut-check world now, and half-truths are no longer half true. They're damnable lies.

Bubba had his run. His time, and times, have passed. He isn't ready to accept that, but we must. The future demands it.

Yeah, charisma and charm don't matter anymore to Michael Goodwin - until they're exhibited by someone running against Hillary Clinton. Then they're worth a column. Because we can't have that woman in the lead, she talks too much, she's calculating (because women, you know, just are), and we don't want a mommy party. Not down at the corner bar. Not at the Daily News. Not in a New York that went away 30 years ago - the New York that Michael Goodwin and the Daily News still believe exists. Check those circulation numbers, and get back to me on that.

UPDATE: Good arguments in comments, where I admit I've been lying in the weeds on this for awhile - and Jim Wolcott also riffs on Goodwin:

Now that Zev Chafets has vacated the paper and A. M. Rosenthal has departed the planet, Goodwin, never the victim of an original thought, is the News's foremost purveyor of the painfully obvious and invariably incorrect. Column after column, he churns out consensus opinion at its most pernicious, cobwebbed, creaky, and self-satisfied. Sexism aside (though sexism has etched a reactionary smirk into his every banality about the Mommy Party and its mommy dearest, Hillary Clinton), it is particularly galling for Goodwin to chide Hillary for voicing "tired mush" vis a vis American involvement in Iraq. For years Goodwin, like the Daily News's editorial page, stood stalwart behind George Bush and mocked liberals and Democrats for being defeatist, myopic about the threat of Terrorism, politically emasculated; he ladled out his own mushy words of support as the bad news accumulated; then when the failure in Iraq became so unignorable that Goodwin himself slowly, grudingly gravitated to the point of view some of us had all along, he couldn't lay his Liebermanism aside, no, he saw fit to demand that everyone draw a shining arrow indicating which direction the U.S. should take to extricate itself from the mire. Just so he could find it insufficient.

Steve Gilliard follows Wolcott's downbeat, with his own take on the Daily News:

The News got a wake up call in the winter of 2005 during the Transit Strike. While White New York, now the minority, was engraged, the rest of New York was supportive of the union. Which shocked people. The borderline racist comments in the News started to backfire when someone realized, as anyone looking around the streets would, that the people who paid their bills were black and Latino.

When they depicted TWU leader Roger Toussaint as a caged animal, they crossed a line.

The News is likely to increase their transition from the dead world of Archie Bunker as they realize their economic survival depends on it. Mort Zuckerman is unlikely to make such changes until he gets smacked in the face.

The News was once the right wing paper and the Post the left. Until 1977, when Rupert Murdoch bought it. Suddenly, the News started tacking left slowly. But the paper, like a lot of institutions, are slow to realize that New York has changed and the people who run it are no longer the white middle class of the boroughs.

Comments

[Tom K]

Geez, I hope Goodwin didn't just slight you in some way: if this invective is sincerely in reaction to his writings, that's something at least. But your railure to edit at least 50% out of this diatribe suggests there's more at work . . .

I never read a word by the guy, so I'm no expert, but it seems about half of what he says about Hillary is true, which should put him in or near the upper quartile for the Daily Snooze.

[Tom K]

"your railure to edit"

That's rich.

[kitty]

I think he is writing for the guys in Joisy.

[brooklyn]

Tom K , have you ever read Goodwin before? Tom Watson's criticism is totally accurate. Why are you jumping to Goodwins defense? Did he do you a favor?

[elephty]

Historically the press followed the winner of each progression in the maintenance of the established order, referred to then as the establishment. The establishment was not left or right it was authoritarian. It was not left or right it was capitalist, and it was not left or right it was the special interests or the interests of the powerful and influential.

Then something happened. They became hypnotized by a false ideology used as camouflage for corruption on the highest levels of government and industry. When economics professors taught that the system is maintained by an illusion, and by faith, not by science or empirical data they were in earnest.

The media enjoys how expertly the right wing plays to the prejudices, superstitions, and uninformed opinions of people who cannot admit when they are wrong.

Therefore, the slavish devotion to a philosophy that must be supported by a pack of lies leaves me to wonder what they hope to gain from the betrayal of their fellow Americans.

[Tom K]

Brook:

Haven't read Goodwin; we Post readers seldom stoop to that rag, esp. the op-ed page.

I was just noting that:

(i) Tom W went on in a less disciplined manner than usual which, in light of his Flauberian devotion to precise wording and tight editing, suggested to me that some pesonal animus may be involved; and

(ii) reinforcing the above point, but also independently of it, the excerpts he provided seemed to me no more, and actually less, loopy than the average opinion expressed in the Snooze (going back, admittedly, many years to a time when I read it).

As to why I jump to Goodwin's defense, I think it is more accurate to say I am attacking Tom than defending G. Certainly, I'm more comfortable with it that way.

[Tom Watson]

TK - you may be reading too much into my unusual verbosity. There's a lot there, and I've been meaning to write about this for some time. Nothing against Goodwin at all personally, just his point of view.

[Slappy]

In other words:

"Tom W, why are you sounding so bitchy? We all know Clinton is a dyke."

[Tom Watson]

Slappy, you forgot cold and calculating....but yeah, I think you've got it.

[Tom K]

Tom:

I never really understood why people speculated on Hillary's sexual orientation. It's not only irrelevant, but uninteresting, to me. But it is silly to deny that her public image suffers from the perception that she is both cold and calculating.

Interestingly, a relative of mine by marriage, who is an evangelical Christian and certainly no Clinton fan, saw her speak and was struck by how charasmatic she found her in person. Even in dispensing unexpected praise, however, she noted how surprising this was because (while I don't recall her exact words), she always found Hillary, effectively, to appear cold and calculating on television.

[Tom Watson]

It's a distinct gender bias in the media - it's obvious and rather pathetic. How she's covered reinforces it. One on one, or in front of a group, she is indeed a seemingly warm and approachable person - as much as any politician I've met, frankly. Is she ambitious? Sure - just like all the rest. Does she calculate each decision and public remark - for the most part, yes. Again, like the rest - or the successful ones at least.

[b tween]

It's true, a guy like Biden could do with a little more coldness and calculation before he opens his sewer grate. But it's indeed a fact that the old media is institutionally sexist. There are a few standard bearers that attract the gender-defenders grenades, like MoDo and Goodwin, but they are representative of a deeper bias.
The only way a male politician could get critical coverages of the way he dresses is if he wore a dress. That same standard applies to females.
On the other hand, I think back to the Hall/Kelly race, and Kelly played the diminutive but powerful feminine role for all it was worth. She constantly reminded us she was a loving mother and grandmother, a schoolteacher at a time when it was a woman's gig til she got her MRS degree, yet was at the same time ready to fight for her districts rights like any back alley boxer.
It's all a sham.
Pols play it, then decry it. And I suspect they always will as long as it serves their interests to do so.

Goodwin, as he represents the 4th estate should not be played so willingly like the kazoo he is.

[Flop]

This is some good bile. But isn't it just safe to say that Goodwin is basically writing for the kind of people who read the Post?

I've always been fascinated by the Daily News' spot hamstrung between the establishment, liberal, upper-crust Times and the faux-populist, conservative Post. It always seems to be half-heartedly playing to the kind of Goodwin audience you cite, while the Post manages to pander at full volume.

Or is your objection that the Daily News, as a paper that at least attempts to be taken seriously, should provide a better columnist than Goodwin.

[dan]

The Daily News has some good columnists, like Juan Gonzalez and Felix Arbor, but you have to hunt through the inner pages to find them. The opinion pages themselves are a right-wing sewer.

[Big Cheese]

Good post, Tom. Goodwin is indeed a first-class jackass (or should I say "wackadoo"?)

[WardensWorld]

Goodwin is the reason I have been boycotting the News. He's one of those "I'm not a Republican" types but every column he writes betrays a severe anti-Democrat/progressive bias -- much like the entire editorial board of the News. And a word on Tom K. If you haven't read Goodwin or are familiar with him, then why bother offering an opinion or attacking Watson for his criticism. That really pisses me off. We can do without your "expertise" just fine this morning. Save your wisdom for another post. The fact that you admit to being a Post reader says it all about you. You're obviously part of the problem.

[Slappy]

"You're obviously part of the problem."

"That's rich."

LOL.

[Tom K]

"If you haven't read Goodwin or are familiar with him, then why bother offering an opinion or attacking Watson for his criticism. That really pisses me off."

Terribly sorry to have upset you, but I made plain that I hadn't read Goodwin, and was basing my comments only on the selected quotations Tom W had provided.

I thought that was why he provided them: so people could comment on his analysis, whether or not they were independently familiar with Goodwin.

My point was, based on the evidence Tom W picked, I didn't agree with his conclusions. If that bothers you -- not just because you disagree, but because you are "pissed off" on procedural grounds -- well, you must have a hard time getting through the average day.

[b tween]

Oh Tom K, when will you minority party whiners on the right stop your impotent bleating and accept that everything Tom W says is how it will be? If you don't like it, leave. Russia has a nice dictatorship where you may feel more at home!

[Slappy]

I can't wait for our Democratic President and Congress in 2009 so I can ironically use my favorite Republican line: "Love it or leave it."

[Sloppy]

Write on TW - It's a good thing these women have a man like you to defend them!

[TC@LeatherPenguin]

So what are you saying, Errol Louis is chopped liver?
Oy!

[Gerald Howard]

As someone who grew up in a household in deepest Brooklyn in the fifties in which the Daily News was the morning paper and the rabidly right-wing Catholic Journal-American the afternoon one, I can testify that the Daily News remains largely tone-deaf to the changed city and altered working middle class constituency it should be serving. Back in that era the phrase "the late, great Senator Joe McCarthy" was one you could count on reading on a regular basis and the adjective "Comsymp" was liberally applied. Those were the days . . . Really, the News editors need to take a long drive through the astounding ethnic patchwork that is Queens today, as I did last week after a first rate Chinese feast with some friends in Flushing, and start doing some hard, if belated, thinking.

[TC@LeatherPenguin]

"As someone who grew up in a household in deepest Brooklyn in the fifties..."

and now your decamped at RANDOM HOUSE?

Retire, you fossil.

[Tom Watson]

Hey TC, lay off Gerry - he's no fossil! (dinosaur, like me, perhaps - but fossil? feh!)