Podcast: CNN offers an old opposition-research file on Speaker Mike 'theocrat' Johnson

Before we return to the never-ending saga of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and his efforts to create a totalitarian theocracy that destroys democracy in America, let’s pause for a Journalism 101 case study.

Don’t worry, this is directly related to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in).

Now, gentle readers, are any of you old enough to remember Marabel Morgan, the evangelical superstar who wrote “The Total Woman,” which sold something like 10 million copies? Morgan was an anti-feminist crusader clothed in pink (as opposed to something else) who had a knack for infuriating blue-zipcode elites. Here is a quick flashback, via the Faith Profiles website:

An editor at Time magazine once confided in Marabel Morgan that he came away from a cocktail party with high-heel marks all over his chest at the mere mention of her name.
And what heinous crime did Morgan commit that could provoke such a sharp reaction? Morgan wrote a book in the early 1970s that sold more than 5 million copies about how she salvaged her marriage. The widespread belief was that she proposed that women rekindle their marriages by such innovations as greeting their husbands at the door dressed in Saran Wrap or having sex under the dining room table.
Whee!

During my early 1980s religion-beat work at The Charlotte News, I ventured out to a suburban megachurch where Morgan spoke to several thousand fans. I left that meeting absolutely furious, my mind packed with outrageous punchline quotes from her (I had to admit entertaining) speech.

Driving back to the newsroom on deadline, I started figuring out what would be in the crucial first two or three paragraphs of the story. Then I realized that, if I followed my own prejudices, I was going to frontload this story with stuff that would fire up my editors and others who detested Morgan and her tribe.

Thus, I decided to attempt a story that opened with material that included (a) what Morgan said that I knew would appeal to her critics and (b) what she said that drew cheers and applause from her supporters.

'Total Woman' redux: Obscure white evangelical says stupid things and it's national news

About the time that I started teaching journalism in Washington, D.C., I saw a movie in which Beltway professionals (including speechwriters) played a rather cynical bar game. I think the movie was “Speechless,” with Michael Keaton and Geena Davis.

If my memory is correct, the game was called “Spot the soundbite.” The goal was to watch a long, complicated political speech and then to accurately predict the tiny, often sensational 5-10 second “bite” that would make it into television news reports.

The message, of course, was that substance and nuance didn’t mean much in public life. Emotions and feelings linked to a fleeting soundbite — which could be funny or emotional or whatever — were what mattered. All together now: “Where’s the beef!” It was also clear that it was easy for journalists to pick good, sharp soundbites from “good” candidates and bad, stupid soundbites from “bad” candidates.

This brings us to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), in which host Todd Wilken and I discussed the latest example of a preacher getting caught, in the age of YouTube and social media, failing to understand the rules of “Spot the soundbite.”

I heard about this epic news story when a former student — who has national print and television experience — sent me a wry email that said: “It’s weird that this random preacher’s sermon merits an NBC News story, no?” Indeed. In the world of short attention spans and tiny online news reports, this sermon by an unknown preacher, in a tiny church, in the middle of nowhere, in an obscure denomination, deserved a 900-word report.

My witty former student knew, of course, why this sermon received lots of national news coverage — including staff (not wire service) coverage in The New York Times (we will get to that shortly).

Yes, this preacher said some genuinely bizarre and disturbing stuff about women and marriage, especially when viewed through a #ChurchToo lens. However, was it national news that an unknown pastor said these things? Well, it is if the sermon contains the word “Trump” and this pastor can be turned into an archetypal symbol of white evangelicals in flyover country, the rubes many journalists blame for electing Orange Man Bad in the first place.

This preacher did not understand how to play “Spot the soundbite.”