Ep 244: The Authenticity Affect (Part II) - The Dopey, Power-Flattering, Media-Created "Maverick" Politician

Jack Mirkinson (0:03)

This is Citations Needed, with Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson.

Nima Shirazi (0:08)

Welcome to Citations Needed, a podcast on the media, power, PR, and the history of bullshit. I am Nima Shirazi.

Adam Johnson (0:15)

I'm Adam Johnson.

Nima Shirazi (0:17)

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Adam Johnson (0:51)

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Nima Shirazi (1:05)

Goldwater follows his maverick path, boomed the Associated Press in 1964

McCain the rebel could be facing last stand, announced the Atlanta Constitution in 2000 I'm not a progressive. Fetterman breaks with the left, showing a maverick side, insisted NBC News in 2023

Adam Johnson (1:28)

For decades, American media has designated certain political figures mavericks, celebrating their willingness to buck party orthodoxy, eschew labels and make their own rules. These rebels, we're told, don't mindlessly follow party leaders or rigid ideology, nor do they accept the left-right dichotomy in the first place. Instead, they take risks and do what they believe is right, no matter what those sheeple partisans might think.

Nima Shirazi (1:52)

But what exactly do these mavericks believe is right? What's so important to them that they must challenge their party labels?

Historically, the answers have been war, racism, border militarization, and destruction of social programs, just to name a few. Indeed, somehow, the policymakers were supposed to believe our scrappy independent thinkers just happened to support the most heavily funded, highly prioritized, and dangerous causes in US politics.

So, what explains this discrepancy? And what role have media outlets played in maintaining this fiction?

Adam Johnson (2:28)

On today's episode, part two of our three-part series on the media's authenticity effect, we'll examine the history, development, and purpose of the maverick characterization, discussing how it disguises lazy, racist, and security state bolstering politics as fresh, intrepid, and morally upright, allowing the most noxious and power-serving lawmakers to appear as enraged outsiders when they are, of course, anything but.

Nima Shirazi (2:51)

Later on the show, we'll speak with Jack Mirkinson, senior editor at The Nation magazine and co-founder of Discourse Blog.

Jack Mirkinson (2:59)

It really flatters the tendency of the beltway media not only to regard itself as the guardian of this supposed lost era where politicians were brave and willing to speak the hard truths and all of that nonsense, but also that they, the journalists themselves, are really able to pick out the next wave, identify the people who really get it, unlike everybody else who's just towing the line.

Adam Johnson (3:36)

So this is a spiritual successor to episode 147 and 148, which we did on the Republican Party's right-wing populism rebrand, which falls into a broader category we've discussed in the show, which is what we call Blink 182 politics, which is to be edgy but not subversive. It's kind of the mother's milk of corporate media. So you want to, it's a kind of Bill Maher, right? You want to offend people, but the people you want to offend have to be either kind of middle class or poor or lower down the totem pole of power. So you sort of go after liberal niceties and liberal pieties, but typically ones that are arranged around opposing racism and sexism.

And this is edgy, right?

Nima Shirazi (4:18)

Right. You're just telling it like it is, man.

Adam Johnson (4:21)

But you're not going after centers of genuine power. You're not challenging the axioms of US empire or Zionism, or challenging the axioms of capital or capitalism.

So this is the sweet spot of US corporate media because it creates controversy, it generates ratings and scandal and people paying attention. And it appears like you're taking on sacred cows, but really you're sort of just picking on the margins of liberal niceties. And a subset of this dynamic, which is one we've touched on but have not done an episode on, which is why I'm excited to do it, is the concept of the political maverick. The maverick who is bucking trends and bucking conventional wisdom and bucking party orthodoxy to take on his or her own party, presumably at their peril on pain of being not supported.