Perhaps it's serendipity. The story of John Adams is being televised into millions of American homes each Sunday evening just as we need to be reminded of the struggle, in every sense, required to found, develop and maintain a democracy.
With the obligation of inheriting the beacon of democracy nourished and protected by those who came before us, why are we allowing ourselves to be ill-served by so many in the media? Who knew there were so many lunatics in journalism or hired part time willing to undermine our future for a few minutes of prime time exposure?
Four thousand military men and women have died in Iraq. Countless civilians have perished in the violence. Gasoline and heating oil becomes more expensive by the day. Drought, poverty, illness and human despair are increasingly ignored. U.S. debt is soaring, in marked contrast to other countries in the developed world. Personal privacy is diminishing. Dissemblers remain ensconced in the White House, capable of perpetrating further harm on America and the world before they depart.
Stressed-out, hard-working Americans have less time than ever to sift through the variety of printed and online news sources necessary to decipher what is truly going on in these and other important areas. Instead, they stagger home from work, put their aching feet up, and attend to a nonstop onslaught of, to borrow a phrase, blathering inconsequence.
They hear "newscasters" preface opinions and vilifications that could and should be attributed to specific sources, if uttered at all, with negligent, cowardly qualifying phrases such as "Some people think..." and "Some are saying...." Too cheap and lazy to conduct real research, they regurgitate the same gaggles of "journalists," "strategists" and "political experts" night after night, saving their parent conglomerates huge amounts of money at the expense of our edification.
They pose silly questions about the future -- as if we can really learn by repeating them -- whether Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will one day run on the same ticket -- whether the Democratic Party is self-destructing -- or whether criticism leveled by one Democrat toward another will enable John McCain to win the election.
Over and over, the major channels dredge up the same paid commentators to tell us the same things and take the same gratuitous swipes at their target candidate or at each other. Indeed, some of them resemble pitbulls in a dogfight.
Television and radio remain uniquely capable of providing countless numbers of people with important, on-the-spot access to each presidential candidate's views, policy statements and actions. Failing that -- which is exactly what most of the major electronic media are doing -- we will end up with a president who assumes office by virtue of still standing when the onslaught of irresponsibility and ignorance has ended.
David McCullough's biography of John Adams reminds us that pathological politics during presidential elections is nothing new. But is exaggerating the low points the way we will identify the leaders we need to end the current madness? The fleeting thrill many experience when their favorite candidate nails another with a sound bite in lieu of intelligent analysis is not worth the potential loss to America and the world.
What can we as individuals do to raise the level of the national debate? Read more. Think more. Get up and turn off the television or radio when our leading "news" people or "commentators" promulgate the same old garbage.
How long will we continue to endure such idiocy -- or worse, to enjoy it? Look at what it gave us the last two times. Unless we get smart, we're destined to repeat that debacle one way or another. Far more than "some people" ought to be insisting that this is one price America cannot afford to pay.
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Great stuff, Dr. KR! You've clearly (and bravely) articulated the goal. What the troops need now is (a) strategic advice and (b) tactical advice. Give us the follow-up!
"Dr. WD
Oh how I dream of going back to the days of blissful know nothing. I could sleep well assured that our government was in control and taking care of us. Well those days are over for me. I have read to much and seen to much to ever believe what is said on the National News Networks. All the lies and the downing of the USA has me going crazy that most people don't see what is going on or worse doesn't think it involves them that we will be forever the best of the world. While countries are buying the United States of America piece by piece.
How can we be the best in the world while our country is crumbling beneath our feet, everything the New Deal gave us is being scraped away, why?
The elite live well while the rest of us live on salaries that are not keeping up with inflation while CEO's salaries and comps are more then 400% of the average worker, and if the company falls they still receive their huge comp's even if fired is something wrong with this? I believe so, why isn't the average worker just spitting in anger?
Remember the time when families lived well on one salary now they are scraping by on two salaries.
Wake up people or you will become serfs in this New World Order.
Agreed, Thank God for C-Span and ther internet.
Has anyone noticed how the morning network shows, "Today," "GMA," have changed over the last 10 years. I vaguely remember them , years ago, as being news-based shows. But, today they are all fluff. They have 3 minutes of real news, a couple minutes of moronic commentary and that's it. The rest of the show is devoted to Food Recipes, Dog stories and Money tips; for Good Measure, they throw in a medical story about the discovery of a new gene that accounts for the texture of one's toenails.
I view most TV network news as entertainment and rarely watch it. However, it"s been hard to find unbiased news reporting anywhere during this election cycle. If one prefers news via the Internet, as I do, you still come away most days with little more than sensational "sound bites" and little of substance. All sites now present selected news through their own preferred candidate bias.
This primary season should be an exciting one because of the candidates. We have the oldest candidate, the youngest candidate, who is black, and a woman candidate running for president. Something many thought they"d never see in their lifetime. These candidates" policy positions should be examined and dissected by the press, so that the voter can make an informed decision. But instead, the voter finds that whomever they may decide to vote for will make them an ageist, a racist or a misogynist. Which is ridiculous and yet seems to be the message given by most of the press coverage.
It would be easy to view being an informed voter as the same as being an informed health care consumer. However, the voter is really dependent upon the press to inform them and how does one, unless he or she is a political junkie, know that biases are tainting the news reporting. Where are the unbiased professional journalists?
McCain will be much better than Bush. :-)
RALPH NADER 2008
The problem is the MSM is owned and controlled by the war crime profiteering corporations.
There are 5 news outlets that are not war profiteering cheerleaders:
Air America, Olberman, Daily Show, Colbert, and Now.
Dear Ms. Reardon,
Beyond eloquent! thank You. Neil J. Robbins
TV is the opiate of the masses.
Contrary to our perception of the world the average citizen when they get home does not move to the news channels. They move to the entertainment channels, DVD, video games, religion or the net. Its escapism they seek. They know how bad things are, there living it. Basically you could improve the quality of the news channels 1000% and the impact on our fellow citizens would be minimal. If you can remember when journalists were trusted, the average citizen was still a mass of prejudice and half formed myths about the world and our right to run it.
Improving the quality of our media would be an excellent thing, but it won't resolve the basic issue of a nation full of people with a lack of curiosity about the world and our place in it. For even sakes millions still believe it was created in 6 days with the sabbath off for R&R!
Amen. People are being asked to choose the new president and the tools that they have are misleading advertising and misleading television news "journalism." It began with the blurring of news and entertainment, worsened with the blurring of news and PR, and now is simply a mess that serves no one.
Well said Kathleen, I couldn't agree more! Every day the media presents a another frustration, another hair pulling story of he said - she said, another stupid story full of fluff so the anchors can come up w/some ridiculous commentray -- oh goodness I could go on. I just turn the TV off!
Yet again, kudos to Kathleen Reardon.
If who we elect is truly representative of who we are, we are in deep doodoo! As you say, "unless we get smart we're destined to repeat that debacle one way or another". We have become sedentary, detached from community, overweight, unhealthy and ill-informed. With remote in hand controlling the big-screen we are satisfied and entertained. No engagement, little dialogue with a mouthful of Cheetos. "TV entertain me is" our mantra. And TV did just that. Titillation and gossip ran amuck, conflating the personal failings of celebrities into our water-cooler musings. We are now armed with the minitia of the unimportant while the truly essential is dismissed as "wonkish". We have been 'played' by the corporate world for 'suckers'. America's debts, trade deficits, energy addictions, weakened middle-class demand immediate attention now......or maybe after I watch American Idol!
TCC. Total Corporate Control. This is the agenda. Control the media, control the message, control the congress, control the White House, control the population. It simply is too late to stop it. No bought politician(all of them) would dare to offend their corporate masters. Why else would there be a Pizza Hut in Iraq?
This is an important post. I'm sure that everyone on HuffPro has been thinking the same thing, It is so hard to get good information from the MSM. But people are craving good information and that is why Huffington Post, alterNet, Progress Report, Daily KOS etc are so successfull. So many of the bloggers are so much more interesting than the talking heads on television. People are now taking an interactive role- which is great.
I am thinking that you are not entirely correct about that. I have seen on here and other places...it's the same thing, just on the web. Blogs and reports start to blurr, people's statements and commenting on anything they have, factual or not. Bias, or unbias.
"...people are craving good information and that is why Huffington Post... etc are so successfull"
Oh, Opus, honey, baby, sweetie, comrade-in-arms! Much as we all love HuffPo, it is only accidentally a source of "good information". This spot is mostly a source of opinion and, just because we happen to generally agree with the opinions here, we shouldn't -- like our counterparts on the Right -- mistake it for "good information".
WOW! Spot on.
Television makes you stupid. I've been preachin' it for years. Turn off your TV! Just turn it off. Find something else to occupy your mind. Go for a walk, write a letter, garden, visit your neighbors and family and friends, get out, find a charity. TV makes you stupid. I call it the stupid box, where all your thinking is snuffed out. Its a snuff box.
Thanks to EspritDeVoltaire, lucky54 and shiplett who've called attention to the sorry state of our national "mis"-education and linked it to our tolerance of journo-tainment. We understand the media has become nothing more than corporate vanities and agendas. (To my horror, in my town the major newspaper is being gutted by a new owner who believes it is better to write about puppies than maintain a Washington bureau because puppies sell papers.) But "the truth is out there"; we simply:
-lack skill at finding it (PBS, BBC America and, yes, Aljazeera are available) and there are libraries which are still, so far, open to all
-lack perspective to understand what is unfolding (it doesn't surprise me that most Americans were unprepared for civil war in Iraq, but I was appalled the President didn't know the difference between a Shia and a Sunni and so did not know why our invasion would be so "troublesome" -- not that it would've mattered to the WH except to better prepared our troops)
-lack patience to figure out the big words and think that by echoing the talking heads or dittoing a clever poster they are part of a common "knowledge", making some things more "common" than knowledge.
-lack respect for anyone who knows the difference between an adjective and an adverb; every little town on a dirt crossroad in America thought itself established when it built a schoolhouse -- when did we become so, not just anti-intellectual, but anti-education?
Lemeritus, your gushing hyperbole is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Even more perniscious than what they say is what they leave uncovered. For example, who has read the text of any of Bush's thousand odd signing statements? No one. Yet they represent an assault on the constitution fully as destructive as any in our history.
Who is aware that GAO has documented a multi-billion illegal propaganda campaign run by the Bush administration?
Who knows about Bush's plan to send a US spy plane over Baghdad with UN symbols painted on it if his propaganda campaign failed and he needed justification?
Who knows he lied to the Congress about the cost of his prescription drug "benefit" and threatened to fire the actuary in charge of estimating costs if he spilled the beans to Congress?
On and on. If the press had published the text of some of his signing statements, this man would have been impeached. He is the biggest single threat to democracy since the second world war.
I would really like a way to protest the media making decisions that are counter to our democracy.
I have watched the 24/7 cable news channels change into entertainment news and now political commentary news. Each cable channel staking a claim on a different sector of our population.
They gave us OJ and then two terms of Bush and the Iraq War. If I listen to enough of cable news the prejudice becomes so blatant that I can determine how their spin is not the truth and look for the truth "between the lines".
The media spin is now giving us Obama. After the nomination, their spin will likely become McCain.
Somehow the Clintons survived the spin after OJ which was the impeachment trial. The American people hated the constant demeaning of our leaders, but could do little to break through.
Obsessive behavior. The whole world comments and is discouraged that such an irresponsible people have so much power in the world.
And the media spins how wonderful to give the world a black face on an American president and that will solve the problem.
All image thinking. All PR thinking. Obsessive behavior.
Funny how who you support taints your perception of media spin. I see the media spin giving us Hillary, carrying her on in the campaign even though she is losing, telling us she will try to steal pledged delegates or somehow pull out another Rove smear to hopefully disable Obama so he would not be acceptable as a candidate. and how she is so tough and can pull it off.
And the media spins how qualified this woman is to be president after all her lies about her experience, the truly humongous lie about her life threatening visit to Bosnia, her support of McCain as president, her lack of character and integrity--now that is REAL spin.
I prefer voters having a chance to decide.
I prefer democracy.
Gov Sebelius, I was very disturbed to hear you attended the secret meeting in Istanbul, Turkey last year for the Bilderberg Group. Can you tell us what the agenda was and how your participation with this group should not alarm us? There are a lot of chattering voices out there talking about you as a VP pick. I do not want a Bilderberg plant in the WH. Please come clean about that meeting. Thank you.
???? Did you mean to go here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-alderman/the-new-york-times_b_93818.html
No, I realize my question for GOv Sebelius is OT, but it has been revealed by the 2007 Bilderberg Group attendance list that Kathleen Sebelius was there (along with TX Gov Rick Perry). Bill and Hillary have been members since 1991. You'll also find all the signatories of PNAC as long term members. This group is extremely scary. I want Obama to win and want to make sure everyone is aware The Bilderberg's have brought Ms Sebelius into their circle.
That was most excellent and spot on!
People today aren't simply tired and havn't the time to pay attention to politics they are also spoiled by too much "light" entertainment. I'm waiting to hear someone say, "Yup, we're living in hell, but the foods good." That seems to be what corporate America has decided to be our fate. Make the fools
satisfied just enough to not recognize where they are, or even care.
"One of the basic troubles with radio and television news is that both instruments have grown up as an incompatible combination of show business, advertising and news. Each of the three is a rather bizarre and demanding profession. And when you get all three under one roof, the dust never settles. The top management of the networks with a few notable exceptions, has been trained in advertising, research, sales or show business. But by the nature of the corporate structure, they also make the final and crucial decisions having to do with news and public affairs. Frequently they have neither the time nor the competence to do this. I am frightened by the imbalance, the constant striving to reach the largest possible audience for everything; by the absence of a sustained study of the state of the nation.
The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.
Good Night and Good Luck " Edward R Murrow
Wonderful article. Thoughtful, truthful writing.
Yes, pathological politics is a phrase that says it well. The news is like a parady of middle school reporting. It i insulting and useless.
And, the political parties play into this idiocy to get their way on the play ground with comments like, "as far as I know" or "if he were my pastor"................
interesting that on the subject of pathological politics, you only quote hillary as if she is the only one guilty of it. while that is what the media is feeding us, the whole point of this article is not swallowing the medias slanted line.
Today we live in an age of Neo-Barbarism. The primary cause of this is the deliberate dumbing down of education which occurred as a direct result of the protests against the Vietnam war. In the "60s and early "70s, the US government was faced with a relatively educated populace opposed to its foreign policy. The solution to this problem for the government and for Wall Street investors, the actual owners of this country, was clear. It was to narrow public education to rudimentary reading skills, simple Mathematics and minimal Science. Gone were the studies of the Arts, Literature and World History as well as anything else which might lead to having critical analysis skills.
Replacing them also was an onslaught of teachings which were overt boosterism of the godliness of the nation. Nothing in US history ever had any causes; things just happened. The best example of this is how 9/11 could not possibly have anything to do with 50 years of oppressive international intervention by the CIA and US military. We were told, "They hate us for our freedoms" and people actually believed it. An ignorant populace is a docile populace which can be easily manipulated as we all saw in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Make the realm of education so narrow that the citizenry can run the machines, total the accounts and read the propaganda fomented by the government and spread by the corporate media owned by the investor class. Period.
EspritDeVoltaire
Great post.
I was shocked recently to hear the statistic that only 25% of Americans have a college education. Even with education- if you have no sense of curiosity you become a passive observer in life. I was fortunate to be raised by parents that would encourage us to "Question Authority", "Don't believe everything you read or hear", "Don't judge a book by it's cover" etc.-- in other words we were encouraged to think critically.
I know it sounds like such a harsh term but we have to wake up- FASCISM is detroying this country. Corporations control the elections, the media and the policies. Nothing will ever change if we don't first identify the problem.
Excellent post as always from you Esprit. Like you, I believe we have become an ignorant populace and it truly is easier for people to get their misinformation from the biased media. It is so much easier than having to open a book and read about our history and the problems we continue to have due to lack of learning from it. I don't believe that Americans have the ability to even THINK for themselves anymore. We have solved that problem in this household - we no longer turn the tv on to anything other than Animal Planet for our political information because we can learn more from the lions and hyenna's than our so-called "reporters". We absolutely cannot figure out what the media is "reporting" today other than their ignorant personal views and biases, and until they can stop the BS, we figured they have nothing of importance to addADD to our lives.
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Posted March 27, 2008 | 09:56 PM (EST)