It's The Stupid, Stupid
By Brian Morton
Created May 8 2008 - 9:56am
Can this season's news coverage get any dumber?
Remember that in just about every newsroom in America there are people
called "editors." These "editors" make decisions about what you see, read,
and hear. And the decisions these people are making--and almost
exclusively
at the highest levels of their respective forms of media (radio,
television,
and newspaper)--have been extraordinarily shallow.
So Jeremiah Wright is a buffoon. So what? If we're going to tar people by
association, at this point wouldn't it be better to start with anyone who
has walked out of Dick Cheney's office over the last seven years--except
for
the fact, of course, that according to Cheney, he belongs to no known
branch
of the U.S. government, and thus we aren't allowed to know who those
people
are. But I guarantee you that, aside from the people who listened to
Wright's sermons, the preacher hasn't tortured anyone, has ruined no one's
energy policy, has defied no subpoenas, and has told no one to **** off on
the Senate floor.
Nevertheless, we get nonstop coverage of this man for two solid weeks from
major television, radio, and newspapers. And yet the worst of the lot,
television, when confronted with the fact that they were complicit in
disseminating Pentagon propaganda by using retired generals as paid ****lls
for the Iraq war effort, has less to say about it than Bill O'Reilly on
the
difference between a loofah and a falafel.
Part of the problem is that modern news editors hate "policy," because
"policy isn't news." But in times like these, it isn't hard to make a case
that, yes, policy is news--but today's media is too vapid and too hard up
for rapidly vani****ng eyeballs to care. Four months in a row of job losses
on the edge of recession calls for some sort of policy change (and the
president is doing the Charleston trying to avoid saying the R-word). Gas
prices are skyrocketing toward the $4/gallon mark, and two of the three
presidential candidates are saying that cutting the gas tax--in effect,
giving the money to the oil companies--is a great idea. This is a policy
discussion, but if you think you'll hear Mr. Gotcha, NBC's Tim Russert, or
ADD-man himself, Chris Matthews, give 15 minutes to a substantive
explanation and discussion of the problem on network television, then I've
got a collapsed bridge in Minnesota to sell you.
This is the time of year when national political coverage of the
Democratic
looks like a bunch of kids in an elementary school running from one part
of
the playground to another any time someone yells "FIGHT!" Nobody cares how
it got where it is; all they want to know is who's going to take the next
swing.
In the meantime, John McCain coasts along on his "I Love Everybody 2008"
tour, following the George W. Bush playbook of having lots of pictures
taken
of him with black people who would never vote for him in the first place,
and whose concerns he would forget as soon as he takes the oath of office.
It's the 2000 election all over again, and the campaign press is playing
its
part to perfection.
Has anybody mentioned that when McCain released his tax forms (after
clamoring at the Dems to release theirs), he didn't release those of his
wife? We all know how much the Clintons made in the last eight years--The
Wa****ngton Post made PDF files out of all of them and ran them all across
the top of its web page for two days, so anyone who wanted to could
download
and examine them at his or her leisure. But McCain's career has always
been
tied to his wife's fortune; as the heir to one of the largest Budweiser
distributors in the country, Cindy McCain's money has helped propel her
husband everywhere his ambitions took him. Literally--he gets to fly
around
on her company's private jet as opposed to a rented campaign plane. Is
this
"fair and balanced" coverage? If you ask John Kerry about how his wife got
treated four years ago, I don't think he would say that it is.
Sixteen years ago, James Carville coined the phrase the Clinton campaign
would ride to victory: "It's the economy, stupid." The point was to cut
through all the vapid culture and personality bull**** that the media
throws
at a candidate in order to focus on what elections really are all about.
Republicans love this stuff, because it allows them to avoid the tough
questions about what their policies actually do (create deficits,
hamstring
regulation, create tax giveaways to the wealthy), as opposed to what they
say they will do (grow the economy, shrink the government, expand
"freedom").
Now it's the stupid that needs to be cut through. It's cheaper and easier
to
talk about the ravings of some South Side Chicago preacher than it is to
discuss the economic reasons why lifting the gas tax for a month would
only
cause consumers to see pennies while the oil companies rake in billions.
Stupid sells. Policy doesn't.
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I
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Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an op****tunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are
at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
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