Wednesday, ABC News’ hairspray-and-make-up “journalists” held a two-hour celebration of inanity. Every “culture war” trope was given a live airing—for the most insidious, about whether or not Barack Obama “believed in the flag,” the pressmen hid behind American Everywoman Nash McCabe in a pathetic effort to distance themselves from the ridiculous accusation. Neither of the “journalists” moderating the debate had the courage to say what was on their minds: “You’re different than us and the Republicans say you’re weird. Do you love America?”
While the pair of broadcasters held court with the candidates on behalf of the Republican disinformation apparatus, events in this country and around the world were causing chaos in the lives of millions of people.
A years-long increase in the price of food was causing bread riots in foreign countries and insecurity among the American middle- and working-classes.
A couple hundred miles off our coast the prime minister of Haiti was voted out by opposition lawmakers after a bread riot in front of the presidential palace. Chaos in Haiti could send hundred of thousands of refugees to American shores, but you won’t hear much about it here. There’s only so much time to broadcast, and, clearly, as much of it as possible needs to be dedicated to Obama’s bowling scores.
In this country, increased prices and uncertain employment have caused the most precarious economy since the 1970s. Companies dependent on consumer spending are cutting their payrolls as the consumer economy goes through its first painful contractions.
The gradual erosion of the paycheck has become a stealth force driving the American economic downturn. Most of the attention has focused on the loss of jobs and the risk of layoffs. But the less-noticeable shrinking of hours and pay for millions of workers around the country appears to be a bigger contributor to the decline, which has already spread from housing and finance to other important areas of the economy.While official unemployment has risen only modestly, to 5.1 percent, the reduction of wages and working hours for those still employed has become a primary cause of distress, pushing many more Americans into a downward spiral, economists say.
The news is not well-hidden. The articles on the food supply and the payroll recession were both on the front page of today’s New York Times. But for most broadcasters, who despite all evidence to the contrary call themselves journalists, among the most pressing issues facing the nation’s political leaders is Obama’s supposed ties to a former 1960s radical and (still) Clinton’s silly statements about a trip to Bosnia she took 12 years ago.
Is there an effective way to make it clear to the most pathetic and adolescent members of the media that real people—people who have to work to feed their families, and are having a hard go of it lately—don’t care about their petty personality politics? How can Americans who don’t earn millions of dollars “reporting” on politics for network television make it clear that when journalists talk about “electability,” they should be talking about the value and reasonableness of the candidates’ policy proposals, not some imaginary rubric by which the candidates are compared to the Average American?
I’m not asking these questions facetiously. This is a real problem. We are in a presidential campaign that is the most important in decades, where real, life-and-death matters like a worldwide economic crisis and a failed colonial expedition are what the winner will have to deal with in January, and all evidence shows that the media, not even coming close to recognizing the gravity of the problems, is actually becoming more inane and less responsible in its reporting on politics.
It was 60 minutes into Wednesday’s “debate” before the moderators made their first, tentative efforts to question the candidates on what they would actually do as president. I assure you, who does and does not wear flag lapel-pins will not be the most important problem facing the country in January 2009.
—Douglas Carlucci
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