|
Let’s blame the media? I scrolled down and there it was. Another titillating story on Sarah Palin’s $150,000 wardrobe construction. I pulled up Word and innocently glanced around. Luckily, I was in a corner of the library’s ITC, and it was a low-foot traffic time of day. Beads of sweat materialized on my forehead. Fixing my gaze on the pure white, blue, and cursor that was my column, I rationalized. It’s just this one time. I have to read it now, or I won’t be able to get my mind on anything else. I’ll read a policy story and watch PBS today to make up. If I don’t read this, who knows what I’ll do when all this suppressed need comes out — I’ll probably end up at Perez Hilton. Piously struggling with my writer’s block for five minutes merely made my surrender that much sweeter. What has this campaign done to me? In the primaries, I scorned stories about Hillary’s cackle, Biden’s hair plugs, and Romney’s all-around creepiness. This is what is wrong with The Media, I had idealistically said. But that’s just blaming the messenger. What really drove me nuts about TMZ stories in Washington Post clothing was that they reminded me how much the public loves infotainment. More likely, it’s also that they reminded me how much I’m tempted by those stories. But bitching about The Media was better, I decided. It justified my weak-willed slide into sinful sensationalistic surrender. It’s not my fault — I can’t help it if The Media have become “Entertainment Tonight: Washington.” I suddenly realized this was why I really loved to hate The Media. Looking down on something so universally reviled allows insecure intellectuals like me to exorcise our self-satisfied elitist tendencies. Hell, The Media are probably the most useful cognitive tools known to American politics. It’s no longer kosher to imply you are a superior human being than people who believe differently (what’s an asshole to do in this politically correct age?). But if you argue that The Media are hoodwinking your ideological foes, you are now simultaneously making them innocent victims and channeling your rage to an appropriate source. Despising Keith Olbermann/Kos or Bill O’Reilly/Drudge is much more defensible than hating the audiences they cater to. In a time where loving thy country is a necessity for most public discourse, The Media become an outlet for national self-loathing. Say it out loud: I love Americans, but I just can’t stand what the liberal/corporate/sensationalistic/Mormon-appeasing media are doing to them. That’s so much better than: Dammit, I hate those lying/elitist/knuckle-dragging/gracefully effeminate [insert hated group here]! Of course, when I say The Media, I’m referring to those relative few journalists in TV (mostly), print (some), and blogs (a handful) who set the day’s agenda. Producers at MSNBC, Fox, and CNN likely start their day with marketing research before looking to see the day’s news. Competition has reduced their ability to dictate the news agenda. They know that above all, consumers love to be told that their assumptions are right. Why else would they’ve grouped themselves into the left network, the right network, and the least-of-three-evils network? To be sure, the press has to be called out for specific failures, like the run-up to the Iraq war and the John Edwards affair fiasco. Even if the agenda often is, individual reporters aren’t primarily driven by market forces. But broad attacks on The Media always struck me suspiciously. Moralizing a large entity is like blaming the wind at a baseball game. Economists don’t blame recessions on corporate greed, doctors don’t blame food poisoning on the bacteria itself, President Bush hopefully doesn’t blame pretzels for near-death experiences. As my nonexistent charming Southern alter-ego would say, them dogs just won’t hunt. But what else is one to do when one finds oneself at the end of a weeklong bender of salacious shopping stories with only fragmented memories of naughtily indulgent forwarding and illegal-in-48-states (the lower ones) comment boarding? |