The Strategic Blindness Of Chuck Todd

By now you may have read about the Chuck Todd interview in Rolling Stone, the purpose of which was to promote a special December 29 Meet the Press edition focused on the spread of disinformation in the Trump era.  Todd, the political director at NBC News since 2007 and host of MTP, has a well- documented history of playing the "neutral" "journalist" who, in fact, is simply a "both sides" cultist --  for example, notoriously claiming it was not his job to correct Republican lies about Obamacare, saying Hillary Clinton was "over- prepared" in a 2016 debate with the incompetent shitgibbon, and reinforcing the diversionary Republican narrative that the Mueller hearing was an "optics" disaster for Democrats.

Well, it seems the Rolling Stone interview became a moment of confessional clarity to Todd, who now realizes that he's been "naive" about Republican bad faith and lying all these years. But, Todd's not a slow learner.  He's just providing a little disinformation of his own.  Here's a small excerpt from Jay Rosen's epic takedown of the "naive" Mr. Todd in "Press Think":

Todd repeatedly called himself naive for not recognizing the pattern, itself an astounding statement that cast doubt on his fitness for office as host of Meet the Press. While the theme of the interview was waking up to the truth of Republican actions in the information warfare space, Todd went to sleep on the implications of what he revealed. It took him three years to understand a fact about American politics that was there on the surface, unconcealed since the day after inauguration. Many, many interpreters had described it for him during those lost years when he could not bring himself to believe it. (I am one.)

You cannot call that an oversight. It’s a strategic blindness that he superintended. By “strategic blindness” I mean what people mean when they quote Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”  (our emphasis)

Rosen goes on to pick apart Todd's rationale for sleepwalking* through his entire tenure as political director at NBC News, but it basically is captured in the Upton Sinclair quote above.  As far as Todd's "naive" excuse, Rosen outlines what many have observed for years about how Todd and others in the "elite" media have handled the asymmetrical devolution of the Republican Party into madness;  Rosen rebuts the naiveté argument in several areas (each has supporting narrative worth the read):

It’s not naive of him. It’s malpractice...

It’s not that he was naive. He did not care to listen...

It’s not naiveté. It’s a willful blindness to what the Republican Party had become...

He’s not naive. He’s an insider who thought his read was better...

It’s not naive. It’s a lack of imagination, a failure of insight... 

But, as Rosen says, Todd and his fellow news packagers across the "mainstream media" spectrum have no clue how to escape the cycle (Rosen calls it an "epistemological crisis").  Therefore, after Todd hosts his "special" MTP on disinformation, expect next week's guests and pundits to include those very same purveyors of Republican disinformation Todd now admits he was "naive" about.  Rest assured it will be the same on "Face the Nation" and "This Week" and on the op/ ed pages of your newspapers.  "Strategic blindness" is here to stay.
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*  We note the incompetent shitgibbon's epithet for Todd is "Sleepy Chuck Todd," a rare occasion we'll give him credit for accuracy.