The White Hawk Club

Who got to preview and review President George W. Bush's State of the Union address?

To answer that question, I channel-surfed across ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and cable news channels CNBC, CNN, Fox and MSNBC. That's a lot of surfing for one TV viewer, so I may have missed a few faces. But by my conscientious but unscientific count, there were 76 American talking heads and three foreigners (seasoned correspondents interviewed on ABC Nightline).

Of the 76 Americans, 72 were white, one was an Arab-American and three were African Americans. That's 95 percent white, five percent were "other."

As a group, the white talking heads were far more eager for war than white America as a whole (see polling data below). As for the Arab American and three African Americans, they didn't begin to reflect the unease in their respective communities.

A word on my methodology: If someone appeared on more than one network or channel, I counted once for each network/channel he or she appeared on. I also counted anchors and hosts, who may be the most important talking heads of all, because they influence or determine outright who gets to pontificate. All of these crucial "gatekeeper" positions were reserved for whites. I did not count as "talking heads" the cross-section of ordinary Americans who gathered in the NBC and MSNBC studios and got to spit out some brief soundbytes. Someone else might wish to investigate why Tom Brokaw (who now turns to Rush Limbaugh for election-night analysis) deems it appropriate to use Frank Luntz -- a rightwing, highly partisan Republican pollster -- to organize and moderate NBC's "voice of the people" segments

The Talking Heads Roll Call

First, a list of who was on and on which channel:

CNBC: Larry Kudlow, Jim Cramer (a Krauthammer admirer who represents "the left" on Kudlow & Cramer show), Ron Insana, Alan Murray, Ed Gillespie, Martha MacCallum, Brian Williams, Andrea Mitchell, Howard Fineman

NBC: Tom Brokaw, Tim Russert, Frank Luntz (Republican pollster), Ted Kennedy

Fox: Brit Hume, Tony Snow, Fred Barnes, Mort Kondracke, Juan Williams, Cece Connolly, Jim Angle, Bill O‚Reilly, DeeDee Myers, Michael Waldman, Bill Bennett, Peggy Noonan, Sean Hannity, Allen Colmes, Jon Corzine, Kay Bailey Hutchison

MSNBC: Chris Matthews, Peggy Noonan, Pat Caddell, Donna Brazile, Dick Armey, Norman Schwarzkopf, Barbara Boxer, Howard Fineman, Rahm Emanuel, John Warner, Dianne Feinstein

CNN: Larry King, John McCain, John Warner, Dianne Feinstein, Bill Frist, Joe Biden, Mitch McConnell, Aaron Brown, Christiane Amanpour, Judith Miller (New York Times reporter), Kevin Peraino (Newsweek reporter), former senators Alan Simpson and George McGovern

ABC: Peter Jennings, George Will, Cokie Roberts

ABC Nightline: Ted Koppel, David Gergen, John Podesta (I think); foreign journalists Justin Webb of the BBC, Tom Buhrow of ARD German TV, Said Arikat of Arab daily Al Quds

CBS: Dan Rather, Fouad Ajami

PBS: Jim Lehrer, Mark Shields, David Brooks

PBS Charlie Rose: Joe Lieberman, Fred Thompson, Alan Brinkley, Roger Cohen, David Brooks, David Frum, Jim Hoagland, Michael Kinsley

Pro-war Trumps Anti-war

The range of views of the 76 talking heads didn‚t come close to reflecting the thinking of the public at large. According to the latest Newsweek poll, four out of five polled (81 percent) want the United States to join its major allies and get full U.N. support before possibly attacking Iraq, and a majority approve of giving U.N. weapons inspectors more time.

While 77 percent of those polled agree that Americans would be safer and more secure if Saddam were ousted, sixty-six percent think it's more important to allow more time. Only 32 percent say moving forward quickly with military action is the only way to effectively deal with Iraq."