Ah, what a tizzy
We’re at one of those moments where one horse race is over and another is beginning before the media have had a chance to frame it. When there is no settled on theme, it makes for strange reporting. The scramble is on to find the hook.
The big story for the moment is when/how the Clintons stand down. It is certainly foolish to think that anything — money, math, etc. — will drive that decision. There may be a lot of factors, but it won’t stop until they say it stops.
While that story has a lot of people in a tizzy, it’s a sideshow compared to what’s forming on the main stage. The presidency, the sea change, that’s the story. Unfortunately, media coverage has not reflected the seriousness of times and the decision coming in November. It is still depicted as a contest of personalities rather than ideas. The old rules continue to restrain reporting while in the drive to compete with those working under new rules the compunction now is to cajole, prod, wheedle and tweak — to work the embarrassing clip up to a level of political importance, because it is far and away more entertaining that their own clever insights.
What is painful to watch is how anything will be seized on — random acts, events, phrases — and turned and twisted and worked over again and again. And everything around the snippet is ignored as though the incident or the words were uttered in a vacuum. That’s the level of desperation that has infected those in whom we trust to carry the news.
Give me boredom. Give me a long, boring discussion of the economy, of how a troop drawdown would work and of how when it comes to gas prices we’re at the mercy of the supply and demand curve. Surely, someone at some network has the number for a few people who could inform us.
