Another Post-Mortem for Crossfire

One of my favorite columnists, Michael Kinsley, holds forth on the demise of Crossfire in this column in today's Washington Post. Kinsley, of course, was one of the first hosts of the show, and he's honest enough to admit that he got good and sick of it after six years. He also does a good job of eviscerating Jon Stewart's somewhat hypocritical denunciation of the show, noting that Stewart criticized the program for "hurting America," but then (in Kinsley's words) "repelled any counterargument by retreating into his shell like a turtle and declaring that he was jes' a littl' ol' comedian, boss."

So far, so good. But I think Kinsley goes wrong when he tries (somewhat half-heartedly) to justify the show's "shoutfest" format. Here's his defense:

The conceit that there are exactly 2.0 sides to every question, one "left" and one "right," is a genuine flaw of "Crossfire"-type shows. So is their "Groundhog Day" quality: The argument goes on forever, and nobody's mind is ever changed. But this format has a great advantage over other variations of TV talking-head journalism in terms of intellectual honesty. . . . The building block of "Crossfire" and its imitators is the tendentious question: a question from an explicit point of view. This is liberating. You don't have to pretend that you have no opinion on the subject you're badgering a politician about, and you also don't have to pretend that you know all about some topic that had never crossed your mind until that morning's paper.

First of all, the notion that the hosts of Crossfire are "journalists" is pretty dubious. I'll hold my nose and grant that Bob Novak and Tucker Carlson are journalists of sorts (on the grounds that they make a living primarily by writing prose for publication or for recitation on the air). But aren't Paul Begala and James Carville primarily political advisors or consultants? Or you could say that they've metamorphosed into that vaguer entity, the "celebrity," defined as a person whose fame has gradually become untethered from its original source in some form of achievement. Either way, they're surely not "journalists" in any sense of the word.

More seriously, though, I question the notion that the format of Crossfire helps the cause of "intellectual honesty." It may liberate the hosts from pretending to be politically neutral, but it destroys any possibility of intellectual honesty on the part of the guests by forcing them to approach every question not as a topic for serious inquiry and debate, but simply as a competitive shuttlecock to be knocked towards the opponents' end of the court.

In practice, this means reciting your team's talking points on the issues of the day, changing the subject as quickly as possible whenever the other team interjects one of their talking points, and above all never suggesting that there could be some third point of view with even greater validity. The upshot is that any experienced viewer of Crossfire can predict with ninety percent accuracy what both guests are going to say--a sure sign that virtually no one involved is doing any actual thinking.

This kind of game is sometimes fun to watch, and of course I like cheering when "my" team scores a few points. But it really has nothing to do with either journalism or the pursuit of truth, which is why the demise of Crossfire won't diminish either one.