You, Me, and David Gregory
I think everyone understands the human phenomenon whereby we mistaken deem our own personal experiences to be more typical than they are. People who attended selective colleges tend to talk as if they don’t realize that the majority of the minority of Americans who go to college at all go to unselective institutions. People who earn a lot of money overestimate the number of people who earn that much money. And poor people tend to underestimate how rich the really rich people are. It’s easy to see how this happens and totally forgivable.
But part of what being a journalist is about—especially a journalist who covers public affairs in the United States—is to operate on the basis of actual factual information about the country. Thus, it’s been striking to watch press coverage of the Santelli mishigos and see how many wealthy media celebrities believe that the experience of a wealthy commodities trader is typical of the country. This was on egregious display yesterday during the Sunday shows, and it wasn’t the end of it. At one point, for example, David Gregory was making some point about the stock market and said something about how “it isn’t just the fat cats, it’s you and me” as if he, David Gregory, is a typical workaday American.
In reality, the median household income in the United States was $50,233 in 2007. That’s non-trivially less than I earn. And though I like to think that my blog is pretty neat, I’m pretty sure that being the host of Meet The Press puts Gregory well above me in the media totem pole. Meanwhile, Gregory’s wife Beth Wilkinson served for two and a half years as executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary of Fannie May until she resigned in September 2008 following the federal takeover. After this setback she became a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, a firm where first-year associates earn more than triple the national household median income.
And good for them. I think Gregory’s takeover of Meet the Press has been change for the better and some of my best friends work for high-paying law firms, and Wilkinson had a substantial career in public service before getting her payday. But the fact of the matter is that these are the fat cats—they host major network television shows, they’re partners at prestigious law firms, and their experience of the economy is quite a bit different than that of a typical American.
51 Responses to “You, Me, and David Gregory”
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February 23rd, 2009 at 8:55 am
Well, ok. Yeah.
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:55 am
“This was on egregious display yesterday during the Sunday shows, and it wasn’t the end of it. At one point, for example, David Gregory was making some point about the stock market and said something about how “it isn’t just the fat cats, it’s you and me” as if he, David Gregory, is a typical workaday American.”
Fergawdsakes, don’t speak of “the Sunday shows”.
MTP is the General Electric propaganda network that is designed to protect the business interests of GE’s manifold businesses, with finance being the largest of them.
Stephanopolous’ show, on the other hand, is an attempt to seriously talk policy, which is why Krugman and Roubini were on yesterday’s panel.
MTP isn’t idiotic because David Gregory simply forgets what the median American is like. Instead, MTP is idiotic because General Electric is paying Gregory to be idiotic in some very specific ways they think will help their corporate interests.
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:57 am
I couldn’t tell if he was joking but Santelli said the traders in the room with him were “a statistical cross section of America”. Think that takes what you’re talking about to even greater extremes
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:02 am
Correct me if I’m mistaking, but wasn’t Santelli’s hissy fit just a McCarthyist rant about America turning into Cuba? And the Sunday shows were agreeing with this nutjob? As if having no Democrats on this week’s MTP wasn’t bad enough, Gregory is a complete tool.
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:03 am
Given his nakedly partisan questioning (compare the kid gloves he applied to Jindal to how he treated Crist yesterday), why on earth do you say this?
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:05 am
MTP isn’t idiotic because David Gregory simply forgets what the median American is like. Instead, MTP is idiotic because General Electric is paying Gregory to be idiotic in some very specific ways they think will help their corporate interests.
This is exactly right.
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:06 am
I like the new ferocity in this blog’s tone. Makes me want to . . . want to . . . SING!!
“Arise ye workers from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.”
Nothing like a round of the Internationale to start a morning.
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:19 am
Awesome post Matt. It seems increasingly clear that the only Sunday show with any modicum of intelligent discussion is Zakaria’s.
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:21 am
Whether Petey is right or not, it shouldn’t prevent us from calling Gregory out for being a jackass. What kind of gall does it take to utter a phrase like, “it isn’t just the fat cats, it’s you and me” when individually you and your wife our in the top 1% of income earners, much less sorted by household income. Of course, there’s just doing their best to make television news completely irrelevant…
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:28 am
as if he, David Gregory, is a typical workaday American.
But you also said that the poor tend to underestimate how rich the rich really are. Here’s Gregory’s problem: he knows how rich the REALLY rich are, and knows he’s not in that league. You compare yourself to Gregory and say, “I’m not rich”. Gregory compares himself to people that make >$100M pa and says, “I’m not a fat cat.”
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:28 am
The pretense of “we’re just folks like you” really does need to be called, because it’s a lie propping up the whole television-news enterprise, and permitting its systematic distortion.
However, it’s also a lie that Americans have become very accustomed to. TV really doesn’t know how to admit that it’s *not* an accurate representation of the country.
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:29 am
“MTP isn’t idiotic because David Gregory simply forgets what the median American is like. Instead, MTP is idiotic because General Electric is paying Gregory to be idiotic in some very specific ways they think will help their corporate interests.”
Just in case folks are unfamiliar with the landscape, here are the percentages of revenue that the various networks get from news and entertainment:
- Time-Warner (CNN): over 90%
- NewsCorp (Fox): over 90%
- Disney (ABC): over 90%
- Viacom (CBS): over 90%
- General Electric (NBC, MSNBC, CNBC): under 10%
One of these things is not like the other.
We have four news and entertainment companies, and one large conglomerate that invests heavily in news in order to have a prominent voice in governmental affairs. It’s no coincidence that GE covers Washington and Wall Street far closer than the other four companies.
And don’t forget that GE’s largest subsidiary business is essentially a bank. Do we think, perhaps, that has some effect on how the GE networks are covering the federal government’s ongoing multi-trillion dollar intervention in the banking system?
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:37 am
NBC, MSNBC are doing their best to make CNBC’s Santelli famous; Robert Gibbs certainly helped out. I can’t say that I’ve seen the Santelli circus on the other networks.
I do think Matt makes a good point about David Gregory; he’s been affluent his entire life, I believe. Russert became a rich man, but seemed to remember working class life in Buffalo (as he reminded us often).
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:44 am
Being that DG works for GE and most of its revenue is derived from GE Capital, which received about $150 billion in bailout money….is it too much to ask that Mr. Gregory’s salary be capped at $500,000?
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:45 am
What MikeJ said. The top tiers is a kind of re-stratification of wealth on a grand scale, given that the 99th percentile starts at around $340k household income with a mean of $900k.
Does Gregory even have his Nantucket summer house yet?
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:46 am
You can’t really believe that…
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:54 am
I couldn’t watch Russert, may he RIP, much less Gregory. Russert loved the political game, but was shallow and vapid, looking for a sound bite and faux outrage more than anything else. Gregory is even worse.
Steph has gotten interesting and I quite enjoy Lord George Will getting his ass handed to him by the likes of Krugman and Roubini on a weekly basis, but Fareed Zakaria is a must in our house.
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:54 am
Of course Petey ignores that NBC has merged with Universal
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:56 am
Santelli is okay. Over the past few years he’s frequently been the only CNBC contributor to wade through the bullshit spouted by the Fed and the financial industry and talk reality. He’s always been theatrical in his presentation. So he disagreed with Obama on policy, Drudge runs with it, and now he has to be a dolt because god forbid anyone question whatever emerges from the White House (currently the tool of Wall Street favorites- big change there from Paulson, by the way). Yglesias is no better than any right wing blogger hack who takes his cues from the party leadership.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:02 am
I’m sorry, but I hope that you’re including your trust-fund income in what you earn, because if you’re getting paid more than $50K/year for this blog you’re seriously over-paid. It’s not that you do a bad job- it’s pretty good. But it’s not better than what lots of people essentially do for free.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:06 am
“That’s non-trivially less than I earn.”
And what is this?
A touch of ironic humor?
Utter cluelessness?
Pot meet kettle?
I would love an answer.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:09 am
“Of course Petey ignores that NBC has merged with Universal”
A bizarrely non-responsive response.
NBC/Universal is still part of General Electric.
As stated, GE gets less than 10% of their revenues from news and entertainment, while all the other networks are primarily news and entertainment businesses.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:11 am
I agree – the NBC networks are trying to use the Santelli thing as a promotional opportunity – that was clear on MTP yesterday, as opposed to This Week where they merely mentioned the incident as more of a media event.
Agreed – This Week has been much better lately. MTP has been just kind of uninteresting.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:15 am
Anonymous,
I’m not sure that Santelli’s incoherent red-baiting amounts to a valid disagreement on policy.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:19 am
“now he has to be a dolt because god forbid anyone question whatever emerges from the White House”
No, he’s a dolt because he’s sitting on the floor of a stock market surrounded by well-paid white people who are paid to make lots more money for far more well-paid white people talking about what a “cross-section of America” thinks about the plan and how average Americans are outraged.
One could say he’s pandering to the audience of his show and CNBC in general, which is of course nearly all well-paid white people. But it’s not intellectually honest.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:19 am
Spot on, Matt. I get annoyed when politicians, even progressives, talk about middle class as if that $50k number is the bottom of the barrel. They can’t even fathom the idea of a single mother raising two children on less than $20k a year without any federal assistance, which is how I grew up.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:29 am
In my experience, the determining factor for whether a well-off person considers themselves ‘middle class’ is: “Do I know someone richer than me?”
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:33 am
Matt, about those traders and their income level you should really check out Nate Silver’s comment; he points out that the guys in the pit at the Chicago Merc typically make $45,000–as you’d say, a nontrivial amount less than you make for sitting at a computer. If that’s our measure of connection with ordinary Americans, they’re a lot closer to being “ordinary” than you are.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:37 am
“So he disagreed with Obama on policy”
As a matter of fact, he didn’t, he just thinks he does. Obama’s plan doesn’t seem to help people who knowingly got in bad mortgages. In fact, a very real problem of the plan is that it may not help ENOUGH people. So there’s no policy disagreement, Santelli just THINKS there is- and that’s what makes him a dolt.
Well, ONE of the things that makes him a dolt, at least. He’s also a dolt for not recognizing the interconnectedness of our economy (if hundreds of thousands of people lose their homes, they won’t be the only ones to suffer) and for thinking he can gin up populist outrage about the government trying to keep people in homes from a trading floor (most people THINK they’re closer to the guys about to lose their homes than the guys on the trading floor). And, honestly, probably for thinking that a gimmicky protest 4 months from now instead of offering an alternative is a legitimate policy debate.
It’s not that he’s up against Obama (though trying to do a PR war with Obama is also pretty dolt-ish), it’s that he’s making a bad point badly.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:39 am
I’m reminded of a conversation with a Republican banker friend of mine who lives in the most luxurious gated community I’ve ever seen. Some of their neighbors have outright mansions with servants’ entrances, etc. We were respectfully talking politics and he rolled his eyes and chuckled at the ridiculousness of the idea that people who make over $250, 000 a year could be considered rich. I was speechless. If our household ever made that much in a year, I would consider us to be ridiculously blessed.
Four years ago, in another conversation in their enormous three-story home, his wife complained that if Kerry won, “it would be really hard for us!”
These are good people who we love, and they had lean years in their youth, but they’ve lost perspective on what wealth is and what hardship is really like.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:43 am
And let’s not forget Charlie Gibson during the presidential debates talking about a typical 2 teacher family making $200K a year!
Stephanopoulos rules. He actually puts on the left left instead of the center left every once in a while (Katrina vandenHeuvel, for example) all the more important because the left left has been correct about so many issues in the past few years (Iraq, financial crisis, etc…). And he does all this, putting policy makers, economists, etc… with providing the mandated balance. After all, he is watched far more closely than the others, having been literally the right hand man for Bill Clinton for 4-5 years, so if he doesn’t provide the balance, he will hear about it with lighting speed from the Freepers and their ilk.
BTW Fannie Mae is spelled wrong in this otherwise very good post.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:49 am
You think Gregory has improved MTP? Really? Everytime I watch it I feel like going to Russert’s grave and apologizing for goofing on him. For a future post I would love for you to explain how Gregory improves things. I just don’t see it.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:55 am
It’s fascinating to me that income is never discussed in the context of the earner’s cost of living. A woman making, say, $85,000 in Tulsa is living a lot higher on the hog than a woman making $95,000 in New York city, but that never seems to make a difference in our debates about bailouts and taxation and what have you.
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:01 am
is that the Wait Chapel at Wake Forest University? Kudos!
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:26 am
This morning on CNBC they were interviewing some commodities-trading blowhard from the floor of the Chicago exchange (at least I think it was Chicago), and his trader badge said “GOP” It was priceless.
More generally, Matt’s best posts usually have something in common: they cross the Rubicon and identify rent-seeking behavior as the basis for most discourse in the public realm. And because it’s considered self-serving to be self-dealing, the tendency (if not Iron Law) is to identify one’s own interests with those of the majority.
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:35 am
David Gregory taking the helm at MTP is in no way a change for the better. I can’t stand looking at that ass-kissing freak.
Of course he and all of the media believe represent the average American. Among all of the people that they know, they DO represent the average American, and all anyone has to do is to listen to them for five minutes to understand they do not have the imagination to look beyond their own click. This is why Digby naming them “the villagers” has taken off the way it has. Because it’s what they are. And they don’t care what is happening outside of their own village.
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:42 am
“More generally, Matt’s best posts usually have something in common: they cross the Rubicon and identify rent-seeking behavior as the basis for most discourse in the public realm. And because it’s considered self-serving to be self-dealing, the tendency (if not Iron Law) is to identify one’s own interests with those of the majority.”
Damn, that’s a great point.
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:48 am
Everytime I watch it I feel like going to Russert’s grave and apologizing for goofing on him.
Second. Sort of like how I cringe when I think of how much I used to bitch about Bill Clinton.
February 23rd, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Hey all,
Can someone explain what the following means…
they cross the Rubicon and identify rent-seeking behavior as the basis for most discourse in the public realm. And because it’s considered self-serving to be self-dealing, the tendency (if not Iron Law) is to identify one’s own interests with those of the majority.
I would like to understand this, but I don’t have the background to do so.
February 23rd, 2009 at 12:33 pm
-g, I’m happy to be my own translator!
Matt’s the only guy who points out that most Washington and media people advocate things that make them and their friends wealthier. They falsely claim to be like most Americans, hoping that we won’t recognize what they’re doing.
February 23rd, 2009 at 12:53 pm
To elaborate, that’s kind of like “crossing the Rubicon” only because it includes Matt himself, or at least it’s likely to if his career continues on track. What he’s saying would be the most boring kind of common sense coming from the manager of a McDonald’s or something.
FWIW, the median household income is more than I earn but only by a relatively trivial amount, and I’m just like Matt except I don’t have the Ivy League degree and I’m too self-conscious about looking like an ass in print. If I had the same personality as I do but more debt or different friends of my family, I’d be at a much more demanding job getting paid 60 percent of what I’m making now. It really is who you know and stuff like that rather than what you do.
Which is yet another way to put what Rich in PA was saying, sort of – Matt, unlike most people in his social circle or socioeconomic class, recognizes that.
February 23rd, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Rich,
Got it…thanks!
February 23rd, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Two things: seriously, a CAP blogger makes “non-trivially” more than $50,000 a year? Now I understand why you’d leave The Atlantic.
And second, this post must have made Petey’s head explode, because if our gracious host makes non-trivially more than 50 grand a year, that means he probably doesn’t need a trust fund to lead his hipster-middle-class lifestyle.
Full disclosure: I’m slightly below that $50,000 household median, but when I was Matt Yglesias’s age, I was way, way below it.
February 23rd, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Two things: seriously, a CAP blogger makes “non-trivially” more than $50,000 a year?
Well, it’s not all coming from CAP. Don’t forget about Heads in the Sand and the occasional editorial or whatever.
February 23rd, 2009 at 2:47 pm
It’s a valid point about how elite media assume that the middle of the income spectrum is a lot more affluent than it really is. But David Gregory doesn’t really think of himself as an average joe, he just says things like that so stupid people watching him on Sunday morning won’t feel like he’s gotten too big for his breeches. Most TV celebrities, even those who, like, say, Diane Sawyer or Oprah Winfrey, lead lives that are simply non-stop glamorous, routinely indulge their audiences with similar just-folks posturing.
That David Gregory feels like he needs to include himself among the middle class watching those economic storm clouds gather speaks less to the myopia of the media elite, and more to the terminal immaturity of American TV viewers/voters.
February 23rd, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Most of those guys behind Santelli in the pits are middle class. The median there (including the clerks and other non-traders) is probably not far off from the national median income.
February 23rd, 2009 at 3:22 pm
My income is almost exactly at the median cited; but I don’t pretend to be a “typical” American, economically or otherwise, because a statistical mean is not to be confused with a person.
I have no idea how David Gregory, or his wife, or Matt, or Santelli and his colleagues on the trading floor, compare with “regular” middle-class people as players in the economy. One of the wealthiest people I know (nine-figure net worth) buys gas and pushes a cart around Costco with the rest of us proles. I’m sure this person is a statistical anomoly. But so are most people, in one way or another. Everyone, except the truly impoverished, scrimps on some things and insists on the best for other things.
The issue here is whether big-time journos and pundits have the same understanding of household economics as the mass of their audience, or whether they have joined an economic/lifestyle elite. My impression is that most belong to the latter group; but if I were to learn that Gregory wears Wal-Mart underwear under his bespoke suits (more information than I require), I wouldn’t be too shocked.
February 23rd, 2009 at 5:00 pm
“Most of those guys behind Santelli in the pits are middle class. The median there (including the clerks and other non-traders) is probably not far off from the national median income.”
LOL Wow, Fred comes a long to prove he knows as much about traders as he does about sex.
February 28th, 2009 at 9:51 am
It’s about time that these rich people pay their fair share in taxes.
March 8th, 2009 at 4:30 am
Great Post, this stuff really is the next wave of the future.