Driving to a lunch meeting today I tuned the car radio to the local public radio station and one of the topics being covered was the upcoming Democratic primary in South Carolina. The show’s host was interviewing an editor of a South Carolina newspaper about poll results showing Obama was ahead of Clinton in the polls, and how Obama was surprisingly popular with women, but that what really showed through was that Obama was popular with young men and women. In other words he owns the young voters. Blah, blah, blah.
What really caught my attention and almost caused me to run off the road was when the host asked about John Edwards. The editor said that Edwards was popular with issues-oriented Democrats, but that not enough of those existed to help him win. Further, he said that the average Democratic voter was more focused on candidates’ images (morals?) than on their stances on specific issues. So even though Edwards was the first candidate to offer any substantive proposals for things like health care reform it wouldn’t do him any good in getting elected.
Sadly I think the editor was right. Average Americans just don’t seem to give a rat’s ass about issues outside their immediate daily lives. It’s not that we’re all stupid it’s just that most of this stuff is boring and we have so much going on in our lives that if we’re given the choice between watching American Idol while sucking down a couple of adult beverages or trying to wrap our brains around some big-picture economic policy I think most of us opt for killing brain cells.
On the other hand maybe more of us would pay attention to these big issues if they were actually communicated to us in ways that are digestible. Perhaps someone could put together a scorecard that says something like, "On health care Obama believes this, Clinton believes that, Edwards this; on raising the minimum wage Obama says this, Clinton that and Edwards this, etc." But no, what we get from our esteemed Fourth Estate is akin to what the sports pages give us in the run up to the Kentucky Derby. "Clinton looks good because exit polls in Vermont showed that left handed feminists with moles on their left buttocks liked her so she ought to do well in parts of Florida." Sounds a lot like "The filly Absurd is going off at 2-1 based on her last run at Aqueduct which has a similar track to the one in tomorrow’s race" doesn’t it?
I’m not the only one who thinks the press has botched their political coverage. Matt Taibbi writes in Rolling Stone:
This 2008 presidential race looked interesting once, a
thrillingly up-for-grabs affair in which real issues and real
ground-up voter anger threatened to wrest control of America’s
politics from the Washington Brahmins who usually puppeteer this
process from afar. And while the end result in Iowa — a
historic and inspirational Obama victory, coupled with a
hilariously satisfying behind-the-woodshed third-place ass-whipping
for status quo gorgon Hillary Clinton — was compelling, the
media has done its best to turn a once-promising race into an
idiotic exchange of Nerf-insults, delivered at rah-rah campaign
events utterly indistinguishable from scholastic pep rallies. "If
there’s policy in this race," one veteran campaign reporter tells
me with a sad laugh, "I haven’t noticed it."
And while it’s tempting to blame the candidates, deep in my
black journalist’s heart I know it isn’t all their fault.
We did this. The press. America tried to give us a real race,
and we turned it into a bag of shit, just in the nick of time.
Actually I think Taibbi should include we average Americans in the blame game. If we demanded better coverage of the issues from our media, if we rewarded smart stories about the issues with our attention then maybe the media would deliver it. Sure we’re all tired after a long days work and yes it’s easier to mindlessly watch crap like American Idol, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t tune in for a half hour of informative television about something that will affect us for the next four years or more.
But it’s a kind of chicken and egg thing isn’t it? You could argue that the reason we aren’t more engaged is because the best the media can offer us is Tim Russert and company, or you could argue that the media would give us more informative programming if we’d show that we’d consume it. Whatever.
Actually we might already have a solution (or two) at our fingertips: Comedy Central. With its "news parodies" The Daily Show and The Colbert Report the network that gave us South Park is also giving us the only television that comes close to covering the issues. By skewering the blowhards on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC and taking the self-centered politicians to the woodshed on a regular basis these shows unwittingly educate us in the process. So I guess my little rant here is really worthless. Just listen to the other Jon and we’ll be OK, because if you don’t we might just end up with another Bush.
Here’s a little Daily Show sample to enjoy over the weekend:
Befuddled 