The flaw in the gem
By Patrick Kelley (Contact)
Originally published 01:17 p.m., March 27, 2008
Updated 01:17 p.m., March 27, 2008
Perhaps the time has come to turn off the television for a few days, take a deep breath and ponder, unassisted, the ways of American politics.
Democracy is — despite all evidence to the contrary in an election year — a marvelous form of government. People choose their own leaders and, therefore, have a great say in the direction the nation takes.
What keeps democracy from perfection is that the people are too often ill-informed or misinformed and are too easily swayed by clever campaign strategies.
The misinformation and the strategies are an accepted part of the election process. Their purpose is to make one candidate seem, at the least, acceptable and to make all the other candidates seem like bad choices. Call it mud-slinging or negative campaigning, it is a way of life in a political culture dating back to the first days of the republic.
But several things have happened to make such campaigning more of a problem. Those things have to do with the way television is handling political coverage and the way television is being used by politicians.
Sound-bite journalism has been deplored for more than a decade, but it has become the main form of television reporting. Twenty-four-hour news channels, which would seem to have the time to cover important news in depth, instead use that time to repeat the same sound bites over and over. Television news has few stories any more — just headlines.
Too often, balanced reporting has been reduced to hiring wing nuts of the left and right as commentators and giving them equal air time to shout at each other.
The daily repetition of this process through the 24-hour news cycle has the same effect as shouting through a megaphone. The result is that the public increasingly acquires its political attitudes not by reason and research, but by rote.
Those attitudes tend to be greatly distorted.
This year, overexposure to such coverage will leave people deeply confused or convinced that:
Hillary Clinton is either a saint or a scheming, racist bitch.
Barack Obama is either the messiah or a callow, racist con man.
John McCain is either a selfless war hero intent on saving the republic or the doddering relic of a failed political philosophy.
Any of those views makes for fiery blogging on the Internet, but none of them touches the mundane truth at the core of politics — that all politicians are flawed human beings, most of them no better or worse than the people who vote for them, and that some of them, in spite of their flaws, have a potential for greatness.
To get back to solid ground, ignore the television coverage for a few days and go to the candidates’ Web sites. Ignore what they say about each other and concentrate on what they say about themselves — what they think the nation is, what they plan to change and how they plan to accomplish it.
Ignore the platitudes and look for specifics.
Then look at the candidates’ political records and see if they have backed their assertions with action.
It is a good place to start.
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Posted by eattheapple25 (anonymous) on March 28, 2008 at 6:45 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Ignore television? LOL! How about ignore political television. You hit it on the head, all politicians are flawed, there is no such thing as a Mr. Smith in Washington. (My mom forced me to watch a lot of old movies, but frankly my dear...) I was stationed in D.C. and that place seems unlike any city I have ever been in. During the day there appears to be a lot of moving and shaking, at night depending where you are at, it has many problems that the rest of the world has. Deciding on who to vote for is a crap shoot. You pick which one you feel you are comfortable with and roll the dice and take your chances. Problem is, people think that the President has all the power when it is the people in the capital building that time after time are reelected. What's more important than politics, YOUR FAMILY. Who gives a crap about a politician that doesn't do or cannot do what they said they could. As a father/mother, sister/brother, son/daughter, you need to make sure that you are looking out for your family, and then yourself. Bush's approval rating is low, who cares? What's your approval rating is more important. Gas prices are high and really crappy, Bush is an oil man. Realize this however, when he leaves office, regardless of who takes his place, male/female, black/white/purple, oil prices will still be set in a way that we as common folk have no say in.(stop sending that silly email about not gassing up for a day, its just as fictional as natural male enhancement spam) What matters is how you live your life and what you do for your family. Like always feel free to send your hate mail to eattheapple25@gmail.com
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