Sunday, May 22, 2005

Down by the Old Mainstream Didja ever notice that the gossip shows (Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood, etc.) always talk smack about the evils of "the paparazzi" right before they show revealing pictures of Britney or Demi or Brad in some embarrassing pose?  Or that the sports shows will spend one night lamenting about how baseball (basketball, football) fans are losing their interest in the fundamentals of the sport and paying too much attention to home run derbys (slam dunks, end zone celebrations), right before they show a ten-minute spree of the aforementioned blight being committed again and again and again? Tonight ABC News showed a story about how few people care about the filibuster/nuclear option debate that seems certain to blow up in the Senate this week.  They interviewed a few regular-guys-in-the-diner guys who admitted that either they didn't understand what "those politicians" were blabbing about, or that the filibuster had nothing to do with the issues they really cared about, and so they weren't paying attention.  Then they dutifully brought on a pollster (Andrew Kohut) to share poll numbers about how few people were really paying attention.  The interesting thing about the story is that they got half the story right.  People really don't believe that the nuclear option mess has anything to do with their lives.  I don't, really, even though I understand the long-term damage that will result from Bush's looney-bin judges getting seated.  Most people don't really care about this issue - unless you're one of the people who would recognized James Dobson on the street - because it doesn't touch their lives directly.  This is only an issue to the right-wing evangelical fringe Republicans who pull the strings in the party.  The same fringe wing that Bill Frist and Rick Santorum are pandering to for the sakes of their future political dreams.  But suspending judicial filibusters won't help the soldiers dying in Iraq, or seniors worried about their Social Security being privatized, or any other real issues.  It's a phony issue.  But ABC got close to addressing this, and then they just threw their hands and went with the "gosh, nobody really cares" refrain.  I really resent the evening news for dumbing down political stories.  I believe people would pay attention to complex political stories if the mainstream media took as much care explaining them as they did explaining the Runaway Bride's getaway path, or how the finger got in the chili, or whatever.  Instead, they keep it in the corner marked "hard-to-explain political stuff" and bring in some political guy like George Snuffulapougos or Tim Russert to explain the facts, usually followed by some determined head-shaking or eyebrow-furrowing.  "Boy, it sure sounds like a mess, George." Meanwhile, voting numbers keep going down, and the news keeps lamenting how the average American is turned off to politics.  Small wonder, when the MSM keeps telling them that they don't care, and even if they do, it's too hard for their little heads to understand anyway.  7:25:18 PM     Speak up!  []