Pundits, they are not an official part of the political process, however their influence and impact cannot not be denied. I am here to make the argument that people such as Anne Coulter, Bill O'Reilly & Rush Limbaugh do not exactly exist. My theory is that each of them represents a character which was carefully thought out and is backed by a team of educated or at least opinionated writers. It is a way of making a living, earning a little (a lot) of money through their ability to portray certain characters, or better known as the profession of acting.
This conjecture is largely figurative, and even though at the back of my mind I actually believe it, whether or not my theory is true does not principally affect the strangeness that is the occurrence of these highly polarized characters in American media and politics. There are a couple possible factors that have lead to these outrageous characters; first a literal arms race among media outlets for attention and sensationalism, and second which is related to the first the need to generate attention and exposure for successful book publishing and sales.
These characters have come into existence because American media has discovered for sometime now that opinion sells, and to some extent it always has. We are living in a hyper connected world, and its side effect is a million voices drowning each other out. In order to eek out some distinction one has to say the most ridiculous things at a volume that is positively crude. Additionally we seek these voices, the American public adores and consumes voraciously the sensationalist opinions and stories these characters spew, and as a result create a terrible machine of biased political opinion and destructive communication.
It is a beast that has gone totally out of control, but we will only be able to stop it when we stop feeding it.
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2 comments:
I really enjoyed your entry, and I completely agree. It is beginning to get more and more difficult to believe anything these days when so much of our "information" is filtered and scripted. It also appears, at least in my circle of friends, that when they want the news, they DO turn to Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart for their entertaining takes on politics. My grandfather, on the other hand, will turn to Rush Limbaugh on a daily basis and listen for hours. I don't know if others see it this way, but something does need to be done. I don't want to be living in a country who can't even be honest with its citizens for simple, clean-cut news reports. We should not fear our media or our government!
I agree with both of you that these pundits do use their shows/books/radio and power to sell their opinion and I also agree that something needs to be done about it, but is it really that big of a deal?
We know about Rush Limbaugh and the help he provided to the Republican Party's domination of the Senate and the House. We know that the electronic precinct captain, took potshots at the Democratic campaign and specifically the Clinton presidency. It is surmised that his radio show helped a great deal to idolize the Republican party in the eyes (or perhaps ears) of the show's listeners, and so he played a direct role in the Republican domination of 1994. In fact the only reason that the Republicans got the majority in both houses was due to the failure of the Clinton health plan, which contradicting the then current sayings of Limbaugh and his fellows is a big deal now.
This isn't to say that Coulter and O'Reilly haven't been playing the faux-guru game on their own. Whereas Limbaugh was the radio-lord of his time, O'Reilly is the asshole-reporter during ours. Every episode ends the same with O'Reilly and his lapdog (sometimes dogs) yelling down the opposer trying to get their point across. Maybe the show appeals to those without a back-bone unable to stand up for themselves, but all O'Reilly does is employ the same smear tactics that Limbaugh used during his time. Sadly for O'Reilly the majority of the country is against his party's ideals so he won't be getting the "television precinct captain" title yet, but given the country's shift in ideals on every election year he'll probably get it after the 2012 presidential election.
So far I've just bashed the Republican-side of the smear shows, let's get to the Democratic side. Let's see ABC evening nope, Good Morning America wtf. kind of list is this ahh here we go Jon Stewart's Daily Show. While not on the same level of douchebagg-ery as O'Reilly Stewart does employ satire and comedy in his Daily humiliation of the Republican party's antics. I guess you reap what you sow, although if you've sown the Daily Show ... we'll that's just funny.
Perhaps my leftist, liberal Jekkyl is slowly bleeding into my typing but I've got a precious forty minutes left before my 12:00 o'clock deadline and given I am literally using a modern typer-writer to submit this assignment I'll finish here.
My main points were that yes slammer shows really blur the line between good news and an hour of slamming the other party, but still given this hindrance it is the duty of well-informed and capable citizens to find alternate sources to gather their "news" from.
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