Panic Mode

There’s a really interesting analytical article in the current Rolling Stone by political writer Matt Taibbi (articulating better than anything I’ve read or heard) about how the media, with its preoccupation with manufactured controversies, distorts the political process, particularly in the current Democratic race for president.

(Taibbi also appears regularly on Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, which is must-viewing for its candor and willingness to hold pols and the media to account.) His prose and commentary is rife with juvenile profanities, which will turn some people off, but look past it because this is, in a nutshell, the story of our culture right now.

“Through scandal after idiotic scandal, the election process has become a painfully prolonged, deeply irritating exercise in policing conventional wisdom . . . keeping the public in a state of heightened, dumb animal panic, and ultimately turning the election itself into a Darwinian contest. . . .

“What we’re getting with all of these scandals isn’t a sober exchange of ideas but more of an ongoing attempt to instill in the public a sort of permanent fear of uncomfortable ideas, and to reduce public discourse to a kind of primitive biological mechanism, like the nervous system of a squid or a shellfish, one that recoils reflexively from any stimuli.”

Taibbi seems to be in Obama’s camp, but this is not merely about Rev. Wright and “God Damn America.” Taibbi also has no patience for the Geraldine Ferarro contretemps and the uproar over John McCain’s end-of-days preacher. And that’s the point—it’s a game all the campaigns play to because they know the media can’t resist.

Taibbi is appropriately critical of the public and the campaigns, but this is a media-driven trend, uniquely exacerbated by talk radio and cable TV networks with hours of “news programming” to fill and no budget to do any real journalism.

Ultimately, our plethora of choices has degraded the discourse, not improved it.

Comments

[Bill Lindeke]

I am with you on Real Time. Also, the quality and range of Maher's guests is continually impressive.