Waiting for the Kent Brockman Award

The tendency of journalists to present each other with multiple awards--usually named for journalists, living and dead--reminds THE SCRAPBOOK of the scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen, complaining about the self-congratulatory culture of Hollywood, imagines a prize for "Best Fascist Dictator: Adolf Hitler." Of course, given the downward trajectory of the news business these days, who can blame them for a little logrolling?

We thought of this last week when we learned the glad tidings that Katie Couric, news reader of the CBS Evening News, will be awarded the 2009 Al Neuharth Award for Excellence in the Media, recognizing her "lifetime achievement." This is yet another feather in her cap for Katie, who garnered an Edward R. Murrow Award last year, as well as this year's Walter Cronkite Award (Special Achievement for National Impact), and the 2009 Gracie Allen Award, given by American Women in Radio and Television (AWRT) for "exemplary contributions to the [broadcast] industry." (For our younger readers, Gracie Allen was half of the old vaudeville/TV comedy team of George Burns and Gracie Allen.)

THE SCRAPBOOK's initial reaction to this news was to ask, what's next? If there are journalism awards named for such professional blowhards as Neuharth, Murrow, and Cronkite, there must be one coming soon for, say, Chris Matthews or Keith Olbermann. For that matter, why not name an achievement award for the best anchorman on television, Kent Brockman of The Simpsons?

But that, of course, would be cynical. Instead, THE SCRAPBOOK chooses to acknowledge these prizes, and Katie Couric's excellence, on their own terms. The Neuharth Award, for example, is named for the longtime Gannett boss Allen Neuharth, founder of USA Today and the Freedom Forum, which runs the Newseum in Washington. And recipients of the Neuharth Award over the years include such distinguished journalists as Larry King (1993), Garrison Keillor (2005), Helen Thomas (1991), and Neuharth/Gannett employees John Seigenthaler (1999), John Quinn (2007), Ken Paulson (2007), and Charles Overby (2008).

We're betting on Katie Couric for the first Kent Brockman Award.

Another Good Reason to Drive

The Washington Post reports that the transit agency overseeing the bus and subway systems in the nation's capital has taken a "harder line" on "applicants' criminal, driving records." "Under the old policy, a would-be bus driver was disqualified by two felony convictions within three years of applying or by three felony convictions within 10 years. Now, a single felony conviction in the previous 10 years would prevent someone from getting a frontline job, such as bus driver or train operator."

Gee, that's reassuring. So in the future, would-be bus drivers and train operators will need to plead their second felony down to a misdemeanor before applying. And those with multiple felonies will have to stick to non "frontline" jobs, like dispatch and -safety inspections.

THE SCRAPBOOK's lifelong preference for the private automobile has been reinforced.

The 'Death of Conservatism'?

Sam Tanenhaus's new book, The Death of Conservatism, is all set for publication--and it's already been mugged by reality. Listen to the news or look at the polls, and it's clear that reports of conservatism's death have been greatly exaggerated. Still, the book is good for a laugh. Here's Tanenhaus on page 23:

The primary dynamic of American politics, normally described as a continual friction between the two major parties, is equally in our time a competition between the liberal idea of consensus and the conservative idea of orthodoxy. We see it in the Democratic Party's recent history of choosing centrist, explicitly nonideological presidential candidates (Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama), as contrasted with the Republicans' preference for ideologically committed ones (Goldwater, Reagan, George W. Bush).

The sophistry here is breathtaking. Tanenhaus not only conflates his own political preferences with the American "center." In order to prove that only the Democratic party nominates "centrist, explicitly nonideological" men for the presidency, Tanenhaus (1) puts Obama--Barack Obama!--in the "centrist" camp, and (2) totally ignores Democrats Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, and Al Gore, as well as Republicans Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, and John McCain. Indeed, when you look at all the major party presidential nominees since 1960, you actually find that more "proud liberals" than "red-blooded conservatives" have run for the office. Furthermore, it's actually rare for the GOP to nominate a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. Even the hated George W. Bush ran in 2000 as a "compassionate conservative" who promised more federal spending on education and religious charities.

The book's more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tone is belied by blurbs from such noted well-wishers of conservatism as Chris Matthews, Jeffrey Toobin, Jane Mayer, and Leon Wieseltier. Sheesh. We wish somebody would give us cash for this clunker.

The American Sociological Association held its annual meeting in San Francisco recently and, according to Inside Higher Education, the mood was sour because President Obama has not been paying sociologists enough attention:

For sociologists who want to see social science influence public policy, these should be heady times. The president of the United States is someone who isn't afraid of being called an intellectual and who worked at and lived near a top university for years. His late mother was an anthropologist. He likes to talk to experts.

But the mood in many sessions here at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association was one of just a bit of hurt and disappointment. With a few exceptions, sociologists aren't getting called by the White House--and if many imagined that calls from Washington in the last administration might land them in Guantanamo Bay, this time around, they want to be called.

Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, a sociologist from UMass Amherst, was frustrated that Obama didn't appoint any prominent sociologists to his administration. Obama's election had brought "a sense of possibility," Tomaskovic-Devey said, but "as a sociologist I was pissed off." Jerry Jacobs, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, concurred. "It's not that the president is short of advice," he explained, "but there is a lack of legitimized and organized social science at the highest levels of policy formation." The University of Delaware's Maggie Anderson was similarly disillusioned, saying that the administration's discussion of the economy takes place "as if the economy were race, class and gender neutral."

Mind you, the sociologists don't blame Obama for any of this. They blame the economists, who they claim are disproportionately represented in the administration. Surveying the economists granted entrée into the White House, Tomaskovic-Devey griped, "I have economist envy on a good day and worse things on a bad day."

Jacobs grumbled that "the right economists are still not as good as the right sociologists." We'll take his word for that.