Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan wasn’t hired as a reader’s advocate, to check the newspaper for accuracy and fairness. Instead, she often serves as a cheerleader for aggressive liberal advocacy, especially against President Trump. So on Thursday, her column hailed partisan CNN commentator Jeffrey Toobin for his "riveting" and “fiery analysis” of the Comey firing.
NewsBusters even drew a nod, if only to note that perhaps "sure-footed" Toobin was great because conservatives “tut-tutted” his tirade:
Toobin was critical, knowledgeable and sure-footed. For once, CNN’s pundit-heavy staff was paying off instead of embarrassing itself.
Toobin’s passion inspired some in the meta-commentariat to poke fun. “Jeff Toobin goes falsetto,” tweeted Politico’s Jack Shafer.
And the conservative NewsBusters site wagged a reproving finger: “His attitude and demeanor were over the top,” tut-tutted Nicholas Fondacaro in a piece titled, “CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin Loses His Mind Over Comey Being Fired.”
Sullivan concluded by admitting our man Fondacaro had a small point, but she liked Toobin in Rage Mode:
Well, maybe some of it was a little over the top. But at a surreal moment, when much of live TV was stuttering and stumbling, Toobin’s voice was both authoritative and riveting. [Italics hers.]
Sullivan insisted Toobin’s background gave him authority: “As a former federal prosecutor, an author, and a legal writer for The New Yorker magazine, he has significant expertise and actual knowledge. And as a regular analyst for CNN, Toobin knows how to talk for TV."
But what she’s not quite saying is she loved his liberal “passion,” and his background is all about liberalism.
Toobin is the child of two network news veterans, the late producer Jerry Toobin and anchorwoman Marlene Sanders. In his 1991 book Opening Arguments, about his service as a lawyer for Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, Toobin fondly remembered Watergate: "The aftermath of this bungled burglary attempt constituted the dominant political event of my childhood. I developed the disdain for Richard Nixon that was all but obligatory on the Upper West Side of Manhattan - I recall my first taste of champagne on the night he resigned, August 9, 1974, but the stories that captured my attention were of the young lawyers working for Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, who seemed, through the prism of television, like they were changing the world."
Toobin added, "The Mets (as well as others) had taught me that the good guys didn't always win, but Watergate seemed a happy exception to that rule...To my eyes, it looked less like a job than a crusade -- and I wanted to join the next one."
When he landed a job with Walsh's office, Toobin recalled playing an Elvis Costello song, "A raucous tune about the fall of a decrepit empire. Sure, I thought, we would prosecute some crimes and put some people away. But that would only be the start. The Walsh office would take on Reagan and all the President's men, with their contempt for the Constitution, disdain for the Congress, and hostility to the truth, the qualities epitomized by the diversion scheme. We had nothing less than a blank check to uncover and rectify the misdeeds of a corrupt and dishonorable administration. We wouldn't stop until we reached the top."
Toobin relished his role attempting to bring down the Reagan White House: "I spent most of my frantic first weeks in office trying to pretend I was having less fun than I was. Fencing with Ed Meese's minions? Playing chicken with the White House? Battling Ollie North? I was having the time of my life."
This is what the media love about Toobin. They're all about taking down the Nixons and the Reagans, and all about sounding exactly the opposite notes for the Clintons and the Gores.
In 2000, while employed as an ABC legal analyst, Toobin wrote a book called A Vast Conspiracy, outraged that someone would try to impeach Bill Clinton....as if Toobin didn’t play games like that. Even the New York Times review called a "highly partisan" and "willfully subjective" book. It noted Toobin presents the President as "A victim of 'extremists of the political right who tried to use the legal system to undo elections - in particular the two that put Bill Clinton in the White House.'" Clinton was "the good guy in this struggle."
The review added: "Toobin spends the better part of this book railing against Clinton's adversaries, who he says 'appeared literally consumed with hatred for him...They were willing to trample all standards of fairness -- not to mention the Constitution -- in their effort to drive him from office,' he says. 'They ranged from one-case-only zealots in the cause of sexual harassment to one-defendant-only federal prosecutors, and they shared only a willingness to misuse the law and the courts in their effort to destroy Bill Clinton."
In 2001, Toobin wrote a book on the Bush-Gore contest titled Too Close to Call, in which he bluntly declared “The wrong man was inaugurated on January 20th, 2001 and this is no small thing in our nation's history. The bell of this election can never be unrung and the sound will haunt us for some time.” The Democrats, he insisted in an NBC interview, weren’t ruthless enough: “The Republicans and their supporters were tougher, they were smarter, they were more ruthless. And the Democrats, whether it's Al Gore or Ruth Bader Ginsburg, were a little gun-shy and I think they paid the price.”
Does this sound like an "authoritative" voice? Or does it sound to most like a very partisan voice? In other words, does Toobin's career as a lawyer and author and pundit suggest he's one to lecture about the need for "normalcy" and impartiality in government?
