CNN’s Fareed Zakaria was on Charlie Rose recently and made the claim that America has become “antiquated” and the system our founding documents created is “dysfunctional.”

Zakaria begins by adopting the epic straw man of an arrogant American who thinks America is 100% perfect. Using the pronoun “we think” repeatedly he asserts:

Whenever we have a problem, we tend to think that our Constitution is the best ever created in the history of the world. The people who wrote the Constitution were demi-gods, it never needs to be changed. Our political system is the best in the world. The truth is we have a pretty complicated, antiquated system that’s grown pretty dysfunctional.

Wow, when you put it like that Mr. Zakaria, it’s a wonder we even made it out of the 19th century. Let’s go point by point.

First, the reason Americans revere the Constitution was that it, along with the Declaration of Independence, represented the first time people threw off the chains of a tyrannical government and truly put power in the hands of ordinary people. It was an intellectual revolution more than a physical one. From 1776 and 1789 on, numerous countries have taken our system and used it as a template for change in their countries. We have good reason to be proud. (more…)

Here at Big Journalism we’re pretty tough on the media when they behave badly, but we also try to offer kudos where they are deserved, even if that’s only with benefit of hindsight.

Yesterday I pointed out that three high profile network newspeople–Katie Couric of CBS, George Stephanopoulos of ABC, and Charlie Rose of PBS–had attended a party at the New York home of a convicted sex offender named Jeffrey Epstein. If you’re unfamiliar with the name, suffice it to say that Epstein isn’t your average offender. He’s a billionaire money manager who was accused of paying more than 40 teenage girls for sexual favors and, as I noted in yesterday’s post, transporting at least one teenager around the world as a party favor for his adult friends. Thanks to a plea deal offered by the FBI, he spent less than 18 months in jail.

As a father of two daughters, this is the kind of thing that gets me upset. It’s even more upsetting that reporters who should know better continue to treat him like a respectable member of high society. So yesterday I sent out tweets to the three news people who attended the party, asking them if they had any comment and/or explanation for their decision to socialize with a convicted sex offender. Late yesterday afternoon I received a message from Katie Couric in response. Because her response was made via a private channel, I believe she has an expectation of privacy. However I can characterize what she said as a sincere expression of regret. I still think Couric deserves criticism for attending the party, but she also deserves credit for not ducking the issue now that she has the benefit of hindsight.

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Just a couple of days after the Mideast peace-threatening incident between Israeli commandos and the “peace flotilla” headed to Gaza, Charlie Rose nabbed a great “get” yesterday when he reeled-in VP Joe Biden for an exclusive one-on-one interview.  Yes, Charlie Rose, a guy who has more kudos than the candy aisle at Costco, sat down with our Vice President — and almost nobody noticed.

Biden, the usually reliable, one-man-gaffe-machine actually came out and validated Israel’s actions against the flotilla saying;

Israel has an absolute right to deal with its security interests.

Only Fox News seemed to notice.

Saying the following to Charlie Rose, the Vice President displayed great clarity on the issue and deep knowledge of what actually happened, as opposed to what has been reported on MSNBC and CNN: (more…)

David Brooks is a thoughtful writer and, by all appearances, a nice fellow.

But on his February 9 appearance on Charlie Rose, Brooks painfully revealed the limits of his understanding and the poverty of his vision.  These failings are not exclusive to Brooks — rather, they are typical of the class with which Brooks self-identifies, the hyper-educated coastal elite.

Of the Tea Party, for example, Brooks told Rose, “It’s not conservative, it’s not pro-Republican, it’s just a recoil from what’s happening [in Washington].”  Has Brooks actually convinced himself of this tripe?  The tea partiers recoil from Washington precisely because of their commitment to small-government conservatism; because Washington now represents the antithesis of their deeply held conservative principles.  Brooks would know this if he actually talked to some Tea Party members instead of viewing them with horror and barely concealed disgust from his Beltway offices. (more…)