This Spin Cycle Is Not for Delicates

No one feels Bill Clinton’s pain like James Carville.

Or regards Clinton as more of a pain than Susan Carpenter-McMillan.

Thus, no American will be surprised to learn that Carville this week dismissed all accusations against the president--from Paula Corbin Jones to Kathleen E. Willey--as “baloney.” And that Carpenter-McMillan--who is Jones’ traveling cheerleader--saluted Willey’s “courage” in putting more heat on Clinton.

Like, what else is new?

Joining a thickening porridge of opinion, speculation and reporting--in which it’s ever harder to distinguish one from the other--Carville and Carpenter-McMillan are part of a dialogue about Clinton that buzzes nearly around the clock, feeding TV’s “Jaws”-like appetite for gunk of any ilk.

The problem is that this scattershot material of widely varying quality and authenticity ultimately congeals in your mind monolithically as information, its bulk being just too great to sort through. The result is that we’re not as well-informed as we think we are.

The process includes instant polls and hour-by-hour audience surveys and call-ins based solely on short-term visceral responses: “Is she credible?” “Is he credible?”

It includes three 24-hour news channels--CNN, MSNBC and the Fox News Channel--to say nothing of talky CNBC and CNN’s “Headline News.”

It includes the network morning shows.

It includes some daytime talk shows.

It includes such syndicated series as “Inside Edition,” “Hard Copy” and even “Entertainment Tonight,” with just about anyone with a lens tearing off a piece of this story.

It includes local and national newscasts.

It includes that talk sponge, Larry King.

It includes late-night news programs and the trivializing monologues of David Letterman and Jay Leno, who Monday not only cracked his usual lewd sex jokes about Clinton on NBC but also ridiculed the looks of Jones and Linda Tripp, whom he compared to a horse. A guy with Leno’s homely mug snidely making fun of others? What male arrogance.

In any case, this tidal wave of Clinton noise features not only television but also the constant chatter on talk radio and the Internet, with everyone responding to everyone else, and information and disinformation both resonating equally.

The monster must be fed.

“James Carville joins us to defend the president,” announced the host of CNN’s “Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer” Sunday. Fulfilling expectations, Carville began by labeling charges against Clinton a “heap of foolishness.” He ended by saying about the president’s detractors, “Let them be obsessed with sex, let the president be obsessed with jobs.” In between, there was lots of trademark Carville yada-yada, with him looking weirdly at the camera as if even he could hardly believe he was still getting to spew all this bull on the air.

And when after doing her own tenacious spinning on NBC Monday morning, Carpenter-McMillan went on to fret about the relentless Clinton spin following the Willey interview, “Today” co-host Matt Lauer responded, “What did you expect them to say?”

*

In fact, what did Lauer expect Carpenter-McMillan to say beyond what she always says?

How is it that this irritating pair of loyalists--Carville, the unofficial White House spear carrier, and Carpenter-McMillan, the zealous anti-Clintonite--gets booked on news programs despite being entirely predictable and conveying nothing that is credible? What is their value?

The answer: show-biz.

Their shrill, animated, knee-jerk partisanship is viewed as good theater. And in too many news programs these days, the curtain is always up.

Not to all liberals or conservatives, however. Access to the Clinton debate is rarely granted those from the left, right or center seeking to engage the public in ideas rather than invectives (one exception being Tuesday’s appearance of historian Doris Kearns Goodwin on “Today”). The common wisdom among news executives is that deep thinking equals deep doo-doo. Instead, clear preference is given to slashers, like Carville and Carpenter-McMillan, whose low-brow snottiness and name-calling evoke emotional responses. No context wanted, and none delivered. What TV loves most is a good fight.

Yikes.

Howard Kurtz, the perceptive media writer for the Washington Post, is making the TV rounds talking up his new book, “Spin Cycle: Inside the Clinton Propaganda Machine.” The timing could not be better, given the White House’s counterattack against Willey following her Sunday interview on “60 Minutes,” when she repeated for the first time on TV her charge that the president had crudely pawed her in an Oval Office hallway in 1993.

That propaganda animal, Clinton senior advisor Paul Begala, is in the book, as is Ann Lewis, the robotic deputy White House communications director who could not be separated from her spin even by the Jaws of Life. Monday found her hitting just about every network in an attempt to peel back Willey’s credibility. If you listened carefully, you almost heard a beeping, as if Lewis were being guided by remote control. Meanwhile, Carpenter-McMillan held up her end of this cross-fire of spin by publicly supporting Willey and attacking Clinton on TV from morning to late night.

At least you know, from their constant exposure, who these warriors are and who they serve. They wear but one hat. Much more troublesome are those in journalism who are allowed by their bosses to wear two hats, sometimes simultaneously.

*

Let’s see, did you hear that lecture about the alleged Clinton scandal from ABC’s Sam Donaldson in his role as White House reporter or from Donaldson in his role as co-host of “This Week With Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts”? Or does it even matter, given that the Maginot Line between flat-out commentary and legitimate analysis--that fuddy-duddy thing that network correspondents used to deliver during their stand-ups in front of the White House--was long ago bypassed on TV?

Instead, too often we have people just gabbing. That’s the unlabeled spin--a process much more insidious than the buffoonish vamping of Carville and Carpenter-McMillan.