FROM THE
JULY 31, 2000 ISSUE

KATE O'BEIRNE
Gore's Missing Men

JONAH GOLDBERG
Biased Gumbel

t's an old tactic used by the KGB, the CIA, and even the Symbionese Liberation Army: the brainwash breakfast. Before that first cup of coffee, a person's psychological screening mechanisms simply don't operate that well. It is a most vulnerable hour, and this might explain why network morning shows are universally the most liberal, biased, and propagandistic news organs in America. The kids are screaming; the garbage needs to be taken out; there's a carpool to orchestrate and Pop-Tart ooze to remove from your last clean shirt — under this kind of stress, there's just no way you'll be able to filter out Charlie Gibson's mellifluous and non-threatening bilge about gun control or Katie Couric's baby-bottom-soft agitprop about girls' soccer. ("When I got this assignment, I thought, 'Whoa, slow news day!' But the importance of the sports bra to American women really cannot be overestimated," Couric exclaimed last year. That's hard enough for a fully alert, rational brain to compute.)

But occasionally this brain-addling system breaks down, and something sufficiently jarring upsets this indoctrination for the SUV-and-bottled-water crowd. A good example was when Bryant Gumbel recently mouthed on national television, "What a f***ing idiot," about a guest with whom he disagreed.

Gumbel, the co-host of CBS's ailing Early Show, took exception to Family Research Council spokesman Robert Knight's opposition to gay scoutmasters. The interview itself was fairly hostile, but when it was over, the camera accidentally caught Gumbel offering his editorial judgment as he was getting out of his chair. It's hard to hear the remark, but if you look at the video it's pretty clear that he's saying it.

The same day, Gumbel went on a vacation and has refused to comment or apologize. CBS has taken a more Clintonian tack. "He was making a casual remark of some sort," said CBS's statement. "But it is unclear what the comment was and, in any case, it bears no relevance to the content of the Early Show."

Actually, Gumbel's dismissive profanity reveals not only his own attitude toward anybody to the right of, say, Paul Wellstone, it highlights his role as the master chef of petit déjeuner liberalism. For 15 years at NBC's Today Show, and now on CBS, Gumbel has accomplished something truly remarkable in the history of American media: He has earned the distinction of being the single nastiest and most biased big-time anchor on television. Moreover, he's set the standard for everybody else.

Gumbel is probably most famous in conservative circles for his hatred of Ronald Reagan. His compulsion to assign blame to Reagan borders on obsessive paranoia; his outbursts about Reagan-era "greed" and "excesses of the 1980s" often come way out of left field. For example, five years after Reagan's presidency ended, Gumbel asked a spokesman of the American Medical Association: "In the greedy excesses of the Reagan years, the mean income of the average physician nearly doubled, from $88,000 to $170,000. Was that warranted?"

But Gumbel's true gift to the morning genre is the legitimization of the wildly biased question. Whatever complaints you might have about the Sunday shows or 60 Minutes, nothing compares to the glibly biased banter championed by Gumbel. "In light of the new welfare-reform bill," Gumbel asked Marian Wright Edelman, "do you think the children need more prayers than ever before?" In an interview with African-American GOP congressman J. C. Watts, he took a different approach: "You're aligned to a party which owes many of its victories to the so-called Religious Right and other conservative extremists who are historically insensitive to minority concerns. That doesn't bother you?"

Always confident, relaxed, and prepared, Gumbel has earned high marks as a TV talent. "If not the best live interviewer in television, he is surely in an elite group at the top," wrote New York Times TV critic Bill Carter. Gumbel was widely given much of the credit for Today's ratings-war victories in the 1980s and again in the 1990s. And, as the most envied morning host in the land during his 15-year run at Today, it's not shocking that his tricks of the trade would be picked up by others. On every network (save Fox), morning-show interviews seem to be Gumbel-inspired: "Do you think the American people are not ready for someone who is as accomplished and career-oriented as Hillary Clinton?" asked Katie Couric. "Bush is using this term 'compassionate conservative' as he campaigns, which is an interesting juxtaposition of two seemingly contradictory terms," mused Good Morning America's Charlie Gibson in a conversation with William Safire.

But there's a larger question: How can the news divisions get away with such unfair content? One partial answer is that no one really pays attention to the politics amidst all the prattle about the proper use of sunscreen and fun ways to organize your closet. Another possibility is that the audience contains a disproportionate number of liberal soccer moms who favor such things as gun control. The medium itself might deserve some blame: Live television is a serious high-wire act, and requires a strong ringmaster to manage the situation. If the ringmaster is a typically biased journalist, the morning-show format will give him many opportunities to vent his opinions.

Gumbel is a case in point. He is a thoroughly dogmatic and thin-skinned liberal with a huge chip on his shoulder about race, and also about his own reputation for arrogance. "This test is not going to tell you whether you're a racist or a liberal," cautioned Gumbel, previewing his special, "The Racial Attitudes and Consciousness Exam (race)." This is ironic; he was regularly mocked on the old Fox skit show In Living Color as one of the whitest black men in America, but he is actually more like an Al Sharpton in khakis (and minus 100 pounds). Gumbel declined to condemn the Los Angeles rioters, instead blaming their "frustration" on years of Reagan neglect.

In 1995, when Gumbel's golfing buddy O. J. Simpson was acquitted, NBC News president Andrew Lack refused to let Gumbel interview him. Gumbel walked off the show for three days in protest. Upon returning to the show, he said (on air): "Two weeks after his acquittal, we'll see how O. J. Simpson is still being treated as if he were guilty." A year later, he asked O.J. lawyer Johnnie Cochran, "Why do you suppose it is that one year after his acquittal, most white Americans at least, cannot accept the idea that he's out walking around free, refuse to let him live his life?" Three days later, Gumbel had Cochran on again, and asked him: If O.J.'s victims had been his first (black) wife and his (black) friend Al Cowlings, would there be so much media attention? "Absolutely not," Cochran replied, "and I think any person who wants to be honest about it would say the same." Gumbel's follow-up: "Why? Because America doesn't care about black victims?"

Gumbel even invokes racial paranoia to dispute his reputation for arrogance. In numerous interviews, he suggests that "arrogant" is a "code word" used by whites who are uncomfortable with successful blacks. "I think nothing in this country happens absent of race," he told USA Today. "I do think there are a great number of Americans who are more comfortable with blacks [as] comics, jokesters, always laughing, never taking the world or themselves too seriously." "Do I display any more arrogance than Peter Jennings or Ted Koppel?" he asked in a profile in the Washington Post. "If everyone in this business has a big ego, why does the label accrue only to Bryant Gumbel? There are people in this world who are not comfortable with people of color who are self-confident and good at what they do and comfortable with themselves." (One is hard-pressed to find many instances of white anchors like Peter Jennings or Dan Rather being called "humble.")

If Gumbel comes across as arrogant, it is because he's just being himself. And that's the point. When Gumbel, Couric, Lauer, Gibson, and the rest jerk their knees every morning, it's because they're just being themselves. Katie Couric's sober potshots at Republicans come as naturally as her giggly pronouncements about sports bras. There's polish involved, but that just makes their natural liberal personalities shine.

Indeed, Gumbel is widely praised for the extent of his preparation for every interview. He takes copious notes and plans everything out beforehand. He cites, often, his own "professionalism." All of this may be true, but it simply underscores the point that he devises all of his nasty "when did you stop beating your wife?" questions with unprofessional, premeditated malice. The only thing unusual about his "What a f***king idiot" remark was its spontaneity; he was still just being himself.

Columns / Current Issue / Goldberg File / Nota Bene
Washington Bulletin / Subscribe / Ad Info / Home