About a third of the $787 billion stimulus was made up of tax cuts, but Americans evidently don't realize they got them: a CBS News/New York Times poll shows that only 12% of respondents knew that President Obama had lowered taxes during his time in office; 53% said Obama kept taxes the same; 24% said he raised taxes; and 11% said they didn't know.
Look, I was opposed (and I wrote about it on this blog) to such a high percentage of the stimulus being in the form of tax cuts. It wasn't and isn't stimulative, and it isn't perceived by people as government action. It was theirs in the first place, whatever. And Democrats - particularly radical liberal socialist Nazi Muslim ones (like there's any other kind) - don't get credit for tax cuts. Even from Democrats, forget reactionary right wingers.
That being said, the current attitude is to blame Obama for this public lack of awareness of what the government and the Obama Administration did to help them out (and make no mistake, the stimulus has helped, saved an incredible number of jobs, and prevented a free-fall into a full-fledged depression) - it's his job to sell what they did, or some such. We've entirely replaced the idea of a public servant with the idea of a political animal. The President is now fundamentally required to be a marketing department, and politics these days is no longer about policy but about politicking; it's all about sales and packaging your goods rather than doing the public good.
It's the perception of reality from a press that has become subsumed in the broader media, and a media that views its own world that way. They program based on weekly viewership ratings; you're supposed to change storylines and television shows and lineups and characters to boost those numbers. It's what the broadcast media do.
Speaking of the press, Oscar Wilde once wrote:
In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralizing. Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time no doubt. But at the present moment it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism.
Unfortunately, journalism has also been eaten up by Media.
But why do we need to govern our country this way? And if we must, why can't those we rely upon embrace a meager sense of responsibility to truth and the popular good?
Maybe, just maybe, much of the fault of our political and partisan chaos, the lack of understanding of fundamental social issues and current events, could rest in our so-called journalists, who'd rather present sides, who's up and who's down, the crass commercialism and marketing of politics, rather than the sober elucidation of fact. The witty yet serious Brian Williams and the erudite Diane Sawyer and the peppy Katherine Couric and the bearded Wolf Blitzer backed by the Greatest Political Team in the Known Universe could clear this up. They really could.
But it's not their job, they'd tell us. Their job description, as it were - which they themselves have the privilege to define - is to merely report on the horse race and on what Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin are saying, and what they're saying about Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama; to tell us about the gaffes and the titillation and the hardships and poll numbers and anger, but not about what the stuff actually says and means. If you don't understand what's in the stimulus, or how the stimulus has actually saved jobs and increased consumer spending - the exact purpose of the stimulus - well, that's your problem, not the problem of the Fourth Estate entrusted, we thought, with keeping us informed rather than just entertained, and entrusted, we also thought, with giving us the knowledge to make us better and more aware citizens rather than merely giving us alternative sources designed to validate our preexisting worldview, evidence be damned. If you don't know that the health care proposals actually provide for interstate exchanges or why mandates are necessary to get coverage for people with preexisting conditions, well, that's your problem, too.
Because Sarah Palin is interesting to them, and as for facts?
Well, just look outside; there's lots and lots and lots of snow out there (not that if you are where you care that there's lots and lots of snow you cannot just look outside and figure that out yourself) and I guess that means it's an opportunity to mock the idea of global warming, because simply saying global warming means it can never snow again and the media is doing us a service by debating and ridiculing the concept of climate change; or, when it's not merely mocking the issue, it's taking an issue that really isn't open to reasonable, sane and intelligent debate, and nevertheless engaging in a reasonable- and earnest-sounding, yet ultimately substance-free, debate. The media has, like it or note, determined that the standard-bearer for conversations of issues is a never-ending loop of the Cheney-Lieberman Vice Presidential Debate. Because that turned out so well for everyone. Using the snowfall as an opportunity to discuss what is really meant by global climate change, how it impacts everyone, and what needs to be done about it? Not their job. Leave that to NOVA.
In short, if a snow storm doesn't give us the opportunity to fill the air waves with commentary about how dumb and obnoxious and wrong Al Gore is, then what good is the media, anyway? Big, fat Al Gore is eating his words. Get it? (Yeah, FOX went there.) All class.
Journalism today is simply about giving voice to opinion.
That's what today's media is there for. Substance is in the eye of the programmer. And the Nielsons have spoken.
Wilde was right then as he is right now. "But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralizing."
No comments:
Post a Comment