By Dr. Earl R. Smith II
Chief@ComeOnSense.com
www.ComeOnSense.com
I am appalled at the sorry state of the media these days. It is not just that the ‘media stars’ are no longer reporters – or journalists of any kind, for that matter. They are mostly ‘talk-show-host’ parading as journalists. It isn’t even that the media seems to have abandoned its traditional role – to inform – and has, in its place, decided that its role is to convince. No, it’s how wrong and/or irrelevant the media tends to be these days on may important issues – how many times they seem to be out of step with the American people – how much air time is spent, during these turbulent times, on issues and people that just don’t matter – how focused they are on minutiae and how often they just plain miss the meaning. Let me give you three examples of what I mean:
A neighbor is involved in the transition of the television signal from analog to digital. The big change-over is next February but the Federal Communications Commission is running pilot projects in a number of places – to test their ability to help citizens who are still getting their signals through antennas acquire and install the converter boxes necessary. One of the pilot projects was in Wilmington, North Carolina. The FCC representatives were required to spend considerable time in the Wilmington area and got to know the ‘locals’ rather well during their stay. In many cases they were in small and sparsely populated counties – the ones with the highest percentage of people who would loose their TV reception completely without a converter box.
After his first extended trip, my neighbor and I gathered for a cold beer and a cigar. I was interested in what he had found most interesting. Without a pause he said that it was the state of race relations which most startled him. “We live in a virtual world, they live in the real world,” was the way he put it. “I saw little or no race distinction – particularly among the younger people. There were some examples – particularly with teenagers – of racial divides, but for the most part they were all mixed in together – playing together – dating – and not paying much attention to the racial issue.”
After he left, I turned on the TV to find three ‘talking heads’ discussing racial relations in the United States. For all the world, it struck me as a time warp – that I was watching a talk show from a decade or more back – that’s how dated the ‘pundits’ seemed.
In the old view there were whites and blacks – and the other ethnic groups – a patch work of societal overlays. The melting pot was apparently not working and the dynamics between the groups was frozen in a kind of status quo. The discussion of these ‘media stars’ mirrored that vision. But my neighbor saw something quite different in Wilmington. He saw a society which was moving beyond the old way of looking at race. The media types were so concentrated on working through and signaling allegiance to the minutiae of the old orthodoxy that they completely missed the meaning of the first candidate for President who represents this new sensibility to racial issues.
A couple of days later I was watching another ‘talk show’. They had on two people who we supposedly ‘Hillary Clinton supporters’ and who were now committed to voting for John McCain. As I watched them, I was reminded of the man who, in order to gain possession of his dead father’s fortune, had to mount a campaign to put clothes on animals. I once saw him interviewed – it is truly pathetic what some people will do for money or notoriety. Here were two people paying with their dignity for their 15 minutes of fame. And here was the ‘talk show host’ with the magnifying glass – torturing the ants with a combination of obvious distain and glee.
It turns out that their organization had raised something around $50,000 – meaning that they were a publicity stunt and little else – but, with all the important stuff going on – you remember – the wasteful war in Iraq – the terrible state of the economy – the high price of energy – inflation – the successful attacks on the rule of law – the incredibility inability of the congressional democrats to understand that, without accountability, the Republic is at risk – this ‘talk show host’ decided that these two pathetic people should take up air time.
On another channel I found what I can only characterize as a ‘game show host’ interviewing Jerome Corsi – author of Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality. The ‘game show host’ was one of the new models – you know, female, in her late 30’s, attractive and clearly mentally challenged. No Edward R. Murrow she. In typical fashion, the ‘host’ was almost completely unprepared for the interview and botched it badly. She had a couple of ‘trick questions’ up her sleeve which Corsi challenged her on – and, being the bimbett that she was, left her without resources to respond. If you go to the dictionary and look up the word shallow you will probably find her picture next to it – or at least you should.
The result of this ‘interview’ was that Corsi ended up looking like the ‘sane and competent one’ while the ‘host’ looked like an amateur political hack – talk about a reversal of roles. So Corsi gets his publicity, the right-wing interest groups buy lots of the book and thereby drive it to number one on the New York Times bestseller list and the media obediently plays is subordinate and subservient role.
My point is that the media always seems to be either far behind the curve or in the process of submitting itself as a highly flexible and useful publicity tool – rather than informing the public. The founders saw a free press as the most effective way to protect the freedoms and liberties which the colonist has bleed to acquire. I am sure that they never in their wildest dreams considered the possibility that the press would abandon the responsibility to inform in favor of one to entertain – to support the orthodoxy of the times – and to serve as a publicity department for special interest groups and cranks.
Dr. Smith is a political and social theorist who lives in Washington DC
© Dr. Earl R. Smith II
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