The Good, the Bad and the Lame From 2012

With the dawning of a new year fast approaching, it’s worth taking a look back at some of the people, personalities and events that made 2012 memorable. While some individuals (winners) merit praise, others (losers) merely earned our collective contempt.  Here’s my list of some top standouts.

The Winners:

Barack Obama
Obama is by far the most obvious winner of the year having survived a hard-fought presidential campaign in a tough economy to be re-elected to a second term.  He is now posed to become one of the most consequential Democratic presidents in history. His decisive electoral college sweep left Mitt Romney and the GOP stunned and confused.

Bill Clinton
Bill stepped back into the national spotlight in grand rhetorical style with his delivery of a truly awesome Democratic convention speech, by far the best of both party conventions.  He in no small measure deserves considerable credit for helping to get Obama re-elected, and Obama knows it.

Gay Marriage
The cause for marriage equality had a great year in 2012 with the number of states legalizing same-sex marriage expanding to nine total.  The most significant victory came from three states (Maine, Maryland, Washington) where voters, for the first time, supported ballot initiatives on marriage equality. Now that the U.S. Supreme Court will review the decision striking down California’s Prop 8 as unconstitutional, full nationwide recognition of same-sex marriage is likely less than a year away.

Nate Silver & Polling
Numbers expert Nate Silver was bashed by the Right for daring to offer sound polling-based predictions about the likelihood of an Obama presidential election victory. His methods and pitch-perfect predictions prevailed, making conservatives look whiny and foolish. Election polling isn’t magic; it’s a scientific means of collecting opinion data on a large group.  When done correctly, it’s often surprisingly accurate.  The simple truth: Politicians who whine about polling results are usually the ones who know they are losing.

David Axelrod and David Plouffe
These two Obama campaign gurus deserve high praise for their sheer campaign genius.  They helped forge a formidable re-election strategy, voter coalition and ground operation that dwarfed any well-financed efforts by Romney and the GOP.

The Losers:

Mitt Romney
Romney learned the tough lesson that having lots of money is no guarantee of election victory, no matter how long you‘ve been running for high office.  Also, having a strong business resume is no substitute for a lack of political integrity and personal authenticity. This political phony struggled from the outset of this campaign to connect with voters. In the end, they wisely rejected him and his disingenuous attempt to recast himself as a moderate late in the campaign.

Lindsay Lohan
Enough already likely sums up what most people probably think of Lohan and her endless saga of reckless and self-destructive behavior. My advice: Go to rehab; see a shrink; just please stop tormenting us with your celebrity antics. And by the way, even with a good makeup job, Elizabeth Taylor she is certainly not.

Rush Limbaugh
This always obnoxious rightwing windbag reached a new low when he crudely and reprehensively denigrated college student Sandra Fluke because of her advocacy for women’s contraceptive rights.  Limbaugh’s toxic rhetoric pollutes the air with angry hate-filled drivel that does a disservice to both his party and our body politic. It is long past time for this arrogant and polarizing loudmouth to leave the stage.

People Who Camp Out at Apple Stores
I mean, really? It’s just a phone people -- get a life. 

Tea Party
Thankfully, after a over-hyped rise to power in 2010, the tea seemed to have cooled for this bunch of renegade leaders. Their unwillingness to embrace sensible compromise did nothing but make efforts to get things done in Congress all the more difficult.  But in the aftermath of having suffered big loses in the November election, this party and all its extremist nonsense may be over.

Religious Right
This once powerful Christian conservative group doesn’t seem to pack the punch it used to for the GOP. As a key constituency of the Republican base, candidates still kneel at the group’s alter for electoral support.  But with issues such as gay-marriage clearly on the rise, the group has lost its persuasive voice on social issues. Figuring out how to straddle the line between appealing to more socially liberal young voters while satisfying the demands for moral purity from their religious base will be a difficult task for GOP candidates. All I can say is, “good luck with that.”

Nancy Grace
As HLN’s queen of exploiting human tragedy for entertainment Nancy Grace is herself a disgrace.  Her characteristic faux outrage and overbearing tone is nothing more than a thinly veiled cover for shameless sensationalism. Viewers have heard enough from this phony drama queen and her tabloid news antics.  HLN needs to eliminate her show and give that time slot to someone of far greater value.

Karl Rove
Rove was once considered to be a master Republican political strategist for the electoral wins he helped orchestrate for the GOP under George Bush. Today, he has become a overrated has-been who raised a campaign fortune but still failed to deliver a GOP election victory. His embarrassing Fox News meltdown on election night when he protested Ohio being called for Obama showed just how out of touch he was with political reality. Rove once audaciously proclaimed his goal to achieve a permanent Republican majority in Congress. And just like this plan to regain GOP control of the U.S. Senate, things didn't work out so well.

Chick-fil-A
After bad publicity from a much-publicized boycott in response to views expressed by the fast-food chain’s owner opposing gay marriage, the restaurant learned the hard way the value of keeping personal views separate from company business interests, which is selling a product that turns a profit and not moralizing about social issues.   

GOP and Math: Their Problems Go Beyond Poll Number Blindness

Much has been mentioned since the results of the recent presidential election about the GOP’s problem with math. More specifically, about the apparent willingness among many conservatives to blatantly shun polls numbers and other data before the election that had pointed to the high probability of a President Obama win. Many conservative pundits and commentators, especially those broadcast on the Fox News Channel, asserted with unflinching certitude, even gleeful self-assurance that Mitt Romney would “win in a landslide!”  Of course, Obama’s commanding Electoral College sweep proved those predictions to be not just wrong, but dead wrong.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow believes the party’s shock and denial about the election was the consequence of living in a Republican bubble fueled by a rightwing spin machine. She noted that the election result “was not magic; it was just math -- math that was completely invisible to the political right.”

But the GOP’s problems with arithmetic goes well beyond absurdly false predictions and partisan skewing of poll numbers. Conservatives made fundamental miscalculations across the board about the electorate, political issues and changing cultural attitudes in the country. The party’s challenge moving forward will require a major re-calculation of the political landscape that today is quite different than one the party has long relied on to win elections.

Having often been indifferent to the concerns of minority voters, the GOP got a rude awakening by the sheer growth of Latino, black and Asian voters as a percentage of the overall electorate this year. And even more shocking was the astounding level of support these group gave to Democrats over Republicans: More than 90 percent of blacks and nearly three-quarters of both Latinos and Asians voted for Obama.

But this demographic trend showing a burgeoning minority presence in the country, particularly among Latinos, has been apparent for years. The GOP, with the exception of George W. Bush who received about 40 percent of the Latino vote in 2004, simply chose to ignore it. Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer suggested two years ago that the GOP’s challenge with Latino voters was more of a long-term problem for the party and not an immediate concern - again another gross miscalculation.

And like the Latino vote, the GOP completely misread the emerging youth vote, which overwhelmingly backed Obama by 60 percent, a slightly larger margin than in 2008.  The flawed assumption was that young voters, who had expressed some disappointment with Obama, wouldn‘t come out in mass in 2012.  The fact that young voters don’t have a strong history of voting consistently may have also aided the GOP’s flawed assumptions. But as with minority voter turnout, their political calculation completely missed the mark.

On the economy, Republicans made another political blunder.  Mitt Romney staked his entire campaign on pitching voters a gloomy narrative about the state of the U.S. economy under Obama, claiming it was worst than it was four years ago. His calculation was that a "bad" economy meant certain election defeat for an incumbent president. The problem, however, was that his dubious claims didn't square with current economic reality: a declining unemployment rate, consumer confidence at a five-year high, increasing housing prices and improvement in economic growth. Sometimes reality simply trumps political spin.

On the social issue front, the GOP suffered yet another miscalculation.  Despite polls that had been showing a dramatic shift in public attitudes toward gay marriage acceptance, with a slight majority now supporting it, GOP opposition persisted.  Conservatives even touted the fact that whenever same-sex marriage was put before voters, it was always defeated.  And that held true until Maine and Maryland and Washington all approved marriage equality for same-sex couples on Election Day. The result offered more evidence of an American society holding ever more moderate views on gay marriage and other social issues. This shift is being fueled in large measure by a more socially liberal young generation. But while this seismic cultural shift continues, the GOP clings to a rigidly conservative base and outdated approach to some social issues that fails to resonate.

So yes, the GOP has a math problem.  But the issue isn’t just that they sometimes choose to ignore inconvenient facts such as polls; it’s that too many things they advocate and represent as a party just doesn‘t seem to add up. Conservative strategist and commentator Matthew Dowd said it best in describing the current GOP’s challenge as a “Mad Men party in a Modern Family America.”

“Mad Men” is of course a reference to the popular AMC drama set in 1960s America where white men ruled and women were relegated to being stereotypical housewives. ABC’s successful “Modern Family” depicts a prominent married gay couple raising an adopted daughter. The former is a throwback to a time long past and the latter captures family life in today’s more tolerant society.

If the GOP expects its party’s fortunes to improve it must start by re-calculating how to adapt its message and policies to align with this new cultural and political reality. Only time will tell if their changes add up to any value by the next election.

George Will's Shameless Racial Theory of Obama Presidency

I have long regarded conservative columnist George Will as a rational and thoughtful intellectual, but both of those attributes were betrayed by his shameless recent Wall Street Journal column, in which he suggests President Barack Obama may be re-elected simply because of his race.  What Will fails to acknowledge in his insulting essay is that there are numerous objective assessments one may use in deciding whom to support for president.  Will’s list of select so-called Obama “failures” is skewed to support his own narrow thesis.  One can just as easily produce a listing of substantive Obama accomplishments that include: health care reform, student loan reform, financial regulatory reform, credit card reform, successful auto industry bailout, rescuing the economy from the precipice of collapse, ending the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law, etc.  These may be considered irrelevant achievements from Will’s perspective, but they could be among the many factors influencing how others choose to view the president. 

It’s also important to note that presidents sometime face the electorate with mixed records, leaving voters to weigh the pros and cons of their accomplishments while in office.  On balance, the judgment rendered so far seems to tilt in favor of the president over his challenger this election cycle. Personal characteristics such as likeability and charisma no doubt factor into voter assessments as well.

Glaringly absent from Will’s narrative was any substantive critique of Mitt Romney's shortcomings as a candidate, someone Will himself once called a “recidivist reviser of principles.” The reality is that the GOP ran a weak general election candidate routinely regarded as an unprincipled flip-flopper who speaks in platitudes and whose ideas (tax plan and entitlement reforms) have so far been rejected by many voters.  Romney has also run an incompetent campaign filled with numerous gaffes and political miscalculations, not the least of which was making a poor choice for his vice presidential running mate.

So if Will wants a more plausible reason for why Obama might win despite the country’s economic woes, blame the sadly deficient candidate GOP voters chose to challenge him.

Should Struggling CNN Become a Liberal Version of Fox News to Survive?

Is there value anymore in nonpartisan broadcast news? That’s the question cable news giant CNN must ponder as the network tries to figure out a way to reverse its precipitous decline in viewership over the last several years. As Fox News has risen to the top spot in cable news followed and MSNBC, the once dominant CNN struggles in third place. Its ratings decline is startling: CNN averaged 519,000 total viewers in July, which is a 42% drop from July 2008. By comparison, Fox News averaged more than 2 million viewers in July with MSNBC attracting 855,000 total viewers.

Attempting to be neutral in an increasing partisan news environment today has become more difficult. The disconcerting reality is that viewers seem to want news with an ideological slant. This became apparent to me when I conducted a qualitative media study while in graduate school in 2005. The study, which involved conducting focus groups research on distinct political groups (Democrats, Republicans and independents) to assess how they used partisan news and opinion sources to make voting decisions, proved quite revealing.

Republican focus group participants, in particular, complained about there being too much opinion in major network news, yet they seemed perfectly content watching the unabashedly conservative learning Fox News network. One self-defined independent described major network news as “bland” because it was hard to discern their point of view. Just recently, during a discussion about cable news, a friend described CNN as “boring.” He much preferred the left-of-center tilt of MSNBC’s coverage. I concluded that viewers are fine with news bias so long as it tilts in their perceived ideological direction.

Such reflections make CNN’s quandary all the more difficult. How does one stake out a middle ground in news coverage when viewers seem to prefer partisan extremes. As an opinion journalist, I certainly appreciate the value good political commentary can offer news consumers. Thoughtful and intelligent commentary as a supplement to news, can help enlighten the public with insightful perspectives on importance issues. And while such commentary does exist on the Left and the Right, what viewers are more often subjected to on cable networks is a constant barrage of vitriolic partisan loudmouths seeking to inflame rather than responsibly inform, e.g., Sean Hannity, Bill O‘Reilly and Chris Matthews.

We can thank Fox News for poisoning the political commentary well with its bellicose and rancorous commentary over the years. The network has also shown little regard for the value in distinguishing reported news from opinion. As a result, the lines between the two are so blurred that viewers can probably no longer tell the difference.

MSNBC has of course gained viewership by becoming a more outspoken liberal counterpoint to conservative Fox News, a necessary but still regrettable development. If the 24-hour news cycle is going have one dominant conservative cable news network, it only seems fair that an equally dominant liberal alternative be available.

Of course this bring us back to where CNN fits into this partisan news landscape. I strongly believe that there is still great value in a neutral news source, and I commend the network for its commitment to maintaining such a journalistic standard. However, to be competitive, CNN will need to carve out more broadcast space for partisan commentary. Such shows can be separate and distinct from its reported news coverage. Instead of trying to have balanced liberal and conservative commentary within one program, which has failed to attract viewers, e.g., the Eliot Spitzer and Kathleen Parker flop, the network should consider a slate of purely liberal and conservative political opinion shows. This approach still allows the network to maintain balance while attracting viewers who crave a partisan viewpoint.

It’s unfortunate that cable news has taken such a sharp partisan turn, and CNN deserves credit for its attempt to maintain a balanced approach to its news coverage. But as the cable news environment has changed, CNN -- no longer the only cable news source -- must adapt. The good news is that it can still feed the partisan commentary beast and take a middle-of-the-road approach to reported news. Let’s hope that formula works, if for no other reason than to dethrone Fox News.

Music Legends Leave Legacies Today’s Artists Can’t Match

With the recent passing of singer Donna Summer, I was compelled to reflect, with a sense of sadness and nostalgia, about the many great vocal talents we have lost in recent years. In addition to Summer, a few others of particular note include: Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson and Luther Vandross.

Each of these iconic singers possessed a truly unique vocal style that not only created phenomenal music, but had a profound impact on popular culture and music history. Their musical legacies will undoubtedly live on for decades and generations to come.

As the anointed “Queen of Disco,” Summer’s distinctive sound helped define an entire genre of music that was popular in the ‘70s. The long-haired songstress, who scored many memorable hit songs, clearly left her mark.

Jackson, as the well-earned “King of Pop,” was a music sensation like no other. Along with his groundbreaking dance moves, he delivered a string of hit songs, dynamic stage performances and spectacular music videos that still reverberate across the contemporary music scene.

Houston, arguably one of the most gifted female vocalists of our generation, leaves behind a treasure trove of great songs with her trademark powerful voice.  Her rendition of “I Will Always Love You” was a vocal triumph, easily ranking among the greatest hits of all time.

And Vandross was a modern crooner extraordinaire.  His soulful voice and impressive range set a new standard for male vocal excellence.  His songs were melodic and lyrically rich. Not many of today’s male singers can match his strength as an R&B vocalist.

Contrast the enduring greatness of these talented industry titans with the pre-packaged, studio enhanced and mediocre singers we hear today. Will anyone be talking about the musical significance of Beyoncé, Justin Bieber or Rihanna decades from now?  Are their tunes destined to become “old-school” favorites that future generations of music lovers will be listening to – not likely?

And then there are all the wannabe instant-fame seekers who made their way onto the music scene via “American Idol,” “American’s Got Talent” and other TV talent shows that promote the notion of overnight stardom at the expense of honing great talent through years of hard work and artistic dedication to one’s craft. As a result, much of today’s music is more about image than substance; and market packaging as opposed to genuine talent.

Rest assured, the vocal talents of Summer, Jackson, Houston and Vandross weren‘t manufactured in recording studios. As true singers, each were just as vocally strong on CD as they were in live performance. But what further sets them apart from their industry contemporaries is that the scope of their influence goes beyond being the fad of the moment. Their music evokes memories of significant times and places in pop culture history, transporting listeners back to cherished periods growing up.

  For those who came of age in the ‘70s, hearing a song by Summer probably takes them back to the sounds, colorful fashions and imagery unique to that cultural period. Likewise, for those of us who grew up as teens in the ‘80s, we witnessed the Jackson phenomenon first hand. The experience was akin to our generation’s “Beatles” moment.

And speaking of great moments, I’m heading to the Los Angeles Greek Theater in July to hear two luminaries of the music industry: Natalie Cole and Gladys Knight. As these classy singers grace the crowd with their amazing vocal talent, I’ll be thinking about their respective rich musical legacies and those of the great singers who are now gone but not forgotten.

Summer, Houston, Jackson and Vandross all left an indelible mark on music history. As new industry trends and artists come and go, their music will live on for future artists and music fans to appreciate.