We mastodons who still receive our daily dose of New York Times when the dead-tree version lands on our doorsteps with a dull thud got a special treat Tuesday, a textbook case of the way “the newspaper of record” goes about its business these days. The front page headline read: “Comey Role Recalls Hoover’s F.B.I., Fairly or Not.”
In one respect, the headline seemed almost banal. Why not compare James Comey with J. Edgar Hoover on the front page of the Times? After all, they’ve both worked as director of the FBI—Comey currently, of course, and Hoover for nearly half a century, from 1924 to 1972, though it seemed longer.
Yet there the similarities surely end. Comey, just for starters, is more than six and a half feet tall. Hoover would have had to wear lifts to qualify for the Lollipop Guild. Hoover, moreover, was a petty, paranoid bureaucrat who abused his self-bestowed power in shadowy secrecy. Comey is a law enforcement officer who has unintentionally created a commotion by trying to make his actions as transparent as possible.
To fully understand the headline, it helps to know that the Times has a relationship with its readers that is best described as “Pavlovian.” After years of careful training, the newspaper has only to ring a bell to raise the appropriate response from its audience: joy, terror, laughter, sorrow, approval, revulsion, running the gamut from lol to smdh.
The name J. Edgar Hoover, a Times reader has learned, is shorthand for all that is dark and sinister in 20th century American history, which, given the internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two and the trial of the Scottsboro boys, is a sorry history indeed. Hoover means racism and misuse of power and sexual repression and middle-class hypocrisy. Place the name before a Times reader and instantly he will feel a shudder of horror and push away his morning bowl of Muesli in disgust.
So what’s the Times‘s case for likening Comey to Hoover, “fairly or not”? (That phrase, fairly or not, is an exquisite touch. It is the Times‘s famous fairness and balance in action—a lot like Donald Trump’s simultaneous commingling of insinuation and denial: “That’s just what I’m hearing. I’m not the one saying it.”) It turns out the Times‘s case is pretty thin, which is my balanced way of saying, non-existent.
For some reason, it took two reporters to invent the story. After a brief rehash of Hoover’s villainy in the first paragraphs—just in case the reader missed Prof. Pavlov’s bell—the third paragraph concludes: “[T]oday, after his second sensational public statement on the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email, some critics and historians are comparing [Comey] to Hoover.”
And then here it comes, exhibit A, an actual quote from a properly certified “critic and/or historian,” Sanford Ungar by name, “a Georgetown scholar.” What mother doesn’t dream of her baby boy someday growing up to be a Georgetown scholar?
“I don’t mean to smear Comey,” Ungar says, by way of smearing Comey, “and it may be an unfair comparison. But Hoover would weigh in on issues without warning or expectation. I just wonder how Comey sees his role.”
This Ungar isn’t much of a fire-breather, is he? Certainly not the Savonarola the Times reporters were hoping for. But you work with what you’ve got. And sadly, as you read along, you realize that Ungar is all they’ve got. Indeed, his frail, scholarly body must bear the weight of their entire story. And even then, Ungar’s only example of the Comey-Hoover resemblance is that both of them “weigh in on issues without warning or expectation.” Can they impeach him for that? I’m just asking.
Then the Times‘s reporters insert the usual “to be sure” paragraph, the journalistic equivalent of the Trumpian denial of responsibility for an accusation he’s just made. “The parallels to Hoover,” they write, “… may be quite a stretch.” They may be a stretch, but there they are—or aren’t—on the front page of the Times. “People who know Mr. Comey well dismiss out of hand that he acted to tip the election …”
Well, that settles that then. Can we move on to Gail Collins now? Or that nice Mr. Blow?
No! We’ve got 18 more paragraphs to go. The resourceful reporters fill them with a retelling of the story of Comey and the Clinton emails and his various public statements, information that any half-awake reader of the Times has already read half a dozen times. Then they resume the history lesson, pointing out that other FBI directors have gotten into political hot water too. Learning new things is always fun.
And here comes another scholar, a “professor emeritus” from Marquette University. He doesn’t mention Hoover at all, much less compare him to Comey. Then there are more recitations of Hoover nefariousness, along with the disclaimer that Comey’s actions bear no resemblance to Hoover’s.
“Unlike Hoover’s clandestine efforts for [Thomas] Dewey in the 1948 campaign,” write the reporters, “Mr. Comey’s actions have been very public and directly related to legitimate FBI business.”
The reporters take a crack at one more “critic or historian” before their story limps to a close. He’s Stephen Gillers, a law professor at NYU. He “specializes in legal ethics.” So he’ll know all about the ways James Comey is just like J. Edgar Hoover.
“He made a terrible, terrible error,” Gillers says. He’s talking about Comey. He doesn’t mention Hoover.
The last “critic or historian” is neither. Michael Chertoff is one of those Republicans who’s voting for Hillary Clinton. The Times is always coming up with these guys. Chertoff doesn’t mention Hoover.
For anyone keeping count, that makes a total of four quoted sources and one comparison of Comey to Hoover.
Anyway, here’s Chertoff’s opinion: Comey has provided “fodder for a lot of unsubstantiated allegations and half-baked accusations.” And the story ends.
Is the Times being ironic here, using the quote to close a story about a half-baked allegation raised by nobody but the Times? Probably not. Irony is not big with Times reporters, I’ve noticed.
Instead, the reader who has managed to resist the Pavlovian bell will put aside the article thinking that the newspaper of record is run by a bunch of shameless, not-terribly-bright, partisan hacks. Fairly or not.
