I was watching MSNBC this morning. Scarborough and friends were dissecting the "John McCain Possibly/Probably/Certainly Had an Affair With a Lobbyist" story in The New York Times. The show started with that story, and by the time I had showered, had breakfast, cleaned the kitchen, made the bed and did a load of laundry, Scarborough and friends were still talking about it. Or, rather, talking around it. The conversation went this way: Should the Times have put the story on the front page or on page A17? Should the Times have run it at all? Was The New York Times acting like the National Enquirer? Was the Times trying to scuttle McCain? Was the story worthy of the front page above the fold? Why did the Times run the story in a boxed column on the left, instead of on the right? Who did Bill Keller think he was, allowing innuendos about an affair with no on-the-record sources? Could a "romantic" relationship be platonic or did "romantic," in news speak, mean a physical affair?
After my second load of laundry -- we're now more than an hour into this -- the talk continued: Should McCain have dignified the story with a press conference? Did the Times put a box around the story to announce this was a "meet the candidate" piece, not a news story? Was the Times feeding this story to the tabloid press? Were they trying to emulate the tabloids? Should Hillary have been at Bill's side when he said he did not have sexual relations with that woman? Was it fair to print photos of the lobbyist in a gold lame dress instead of a business suit? Since McCain denied the allegations, would the Times be forced to get the allegations on-the-record in order to defend the paper? Who was lying, McCain or the Times, and how would we ever know? There was more of this story-parsing -- they might as well have been discussing what the definition of "is" is -- but I'll spare you because I know you get the picture. I turned off the television around the time Pat Buchanan was proudly claiming attendance at Columbia University 'J" School.
I'm not judging the merits of this story, although in my household if you have to choose between the The New York Times which is printing a story they know will be incendiary during a critical moment in a closely watched Presidential campaign, or the word of a possibly philandering husband -- war hero, or not - common sense tips the scale in favor of the Times. What I am interested in is this: Why can't we all just shut up?
The insanely long primary schedule has produced an insanely long and noisy cadre of talking heads explaining things we already know, or ought to know, or things we don't want to know at all. I respect the fact that Scarborough needs to fill time on his daily morning show. I feel for the guy and his ilk -- these shows are the video equivalent of the ever-looming, impossible daily newspaper column -- but isn't enough enough? Or in this case, isn't enough too much?
It isn't just Scarborough, of course; he does this sort of thing better than many. It's the proliferation of political talk shows and the aggregating chatter that turn information we might want to know into mind-numbing confusion. It was tolerable in the good old pre-millennial days when the blather was only on Sunday morning, but thanks to the need to supply content to what seems like two million cable stations, the blather is everywhere and all the time.
The pressure to be smart and analytical, engaging and wise, must be brutal for these commentators and their expert panelists who night after night or morning after morning have to find ways of explaining things in our political world we can mostly figure out for ourselves. Do we really need bar graphs and pie charts to show how many low-income women over the age of 40, with blue collars and two children and no college education who use breath mints instead of chewing gum voted for Obama rather than Hillary in every electoral district in Wisconsin? Unless, careerwise, you're planning to follow in Frank Luntz's wobbly footsteps, I think not. I know we want an informed electorate, but isn't most of this information what my daughter would call an "over share"?
The saddest part is there's no longer time in these news cycles for original thought, or thinking at all. Most of what we hear in the morning on Scarborough we hear re-hashed by different experts on Wolf Blitzer or Lou Dobbs or Keith Olbermann or God help us, Bill O'Reilly, a daisy chain of repeated information that often becomes misinformation by the time its cycle is over. And then it becomes fact simply because we've heard it so many times. The origins of the story are generally un-cited, if remembered at all.
It's not just TV commentators. It's radio, it's internet; it's everywhere. The ability to blog on the internet is both the good news and the bad news; I have just contributed 861 words to the problem, not counting the title.
We may have past the point in our strange political process where it's enough to dial down the volume. Maybe it's the mute button we need. My grandmother always said you can only learn by listening, and you can't listen if you're talking. With our country in its current condition, it seems to me we've got a lot to learn. Maybe it's time for all of us to listen to grandma -- at least for one teeny tiny news cycle -- and just shut up.