I've been trying to follow the results of the "Super Tuesday" voting with some degree of interest beyond a lingering yawn, but find my fervor for the process, and with it my attention span for endless coverage of the minutiae around them are flagging. As a consequence of this general feeling of listlessness, I find myself without a desire to go into the pontifical rage on any particular subject required for a mid-week effort. This does not mean that I haven't got a few things on my mind however, or that I'm willing to share them. I am therefore going to attempt another 'Silly Bits' effort instead.
Rush Limbaugh, the self-appointed savior of talk radio, has stepped in it once again; though I at least give him credit for an apology that was not entirely self-serving. Unfortunately in spite of a valiant attempt at 20-20 hindsight, the damage has already been done. Ms Fluke has managed to do exactly what she set out to do, draw attention to herself and change the discussion on the Obamacare mandate which tells the Catholic Church that its health insurance must provide treatments that violate its own doctrine on birth control.
We're not asking any longer why such treatments must now be provided by any employer for free (and with no co-pay) when they're not that expensive to start with. We're not asking any longer how the government is able to tread over the fine line on the First Amendment or why disaffection with such care should be restricted to only the Church and not to any employer who feels that such mandates violate their personal beliefs. (Though perhaps it would be easier to get waivers if such organizations were simply to unionize.) We're not even asking where the president's executive order (the Stupak promise) that abortions would not be provided under the Obamacare compromise went to.
Instead we're talking about Limbaugh impugning the character of a woman who's obviously a political activist, and who made her college choice by her own admission, in order to make a policy change at that university. We're talking about access to women's health care that already exists as if it didn't, because Rush couldn't stop banging an out-of-tune drum that he thought would resonate with his audience. Maybe his hearing is worse that he thinks, and he suffers from occasional bouts of being politically tone deaf.
(I won't even begin to talk about the disingenuous behavior of the progressive voices in the media, who want Rush's dismissal and an advertiser boycott for using some of the same language that they have in equally public venues when talking about their ideological opponents.)
Gas prices continue to go up, and the president goes out on the campaign trail to tell us that the problem can't be solved by drilling. Really! I can't and won't assign any particular blame to this chief executive; like most politicians running for office, he manages to pick and choose the stats he likes to back up his rhetoric, but the 'facts' are often contradictory.
Our president tells us that more oil is being produced in the US now than ever before ... and that this is to his credit. Really! What happened to the days not so long ago when he and other politicians told us that it takes 5-7 years for drilling to result in production; and if this is the case, how should he expect credit for drilling that began before he took office? Meanwhile drilling permits remain at an all-time low, the pipeline from Canada can only be begun by going around presidential approval in an election year, and no new refinery has been built in over 30 years.
Hybrids must certainly be contributing to our ability to stretch the existing production, but the Middle East is becoming a scarier place week-by-week; so counting on them for our future oil seems like a worse plan than usual. Increasing debt and Fed policies continue to make the dollar diminish in value against a barrel of oil (oil is currently only traded in dollars, though how long that will last is anybody's guess), which likewise contributes to its increased costs in the long term.
As for electric cars, I am once again forced to point out what seems to escape those inside the Beltway in DC. Even if we start buying fully electric cars, the electricity has to come from somewhere. Coal burning power plants are closing, since they can't meet new EPA regulations. Only one nuclear plant has been approved for construction since the Carter Administration, and it hasn't begun construction. Solar and wind power generation can help but little (especially when solar panel manufacturers in this country are going down faster than the Titanic), and will never be able to fill the gap created by the impending loss of these coal plants, let alone provide us with the cheap energy which most economists agree is required to stimulate economic growth. I guess that leaves us with further demands on oil and natural gas, which brings us back to where we started.
(Then again, maybe the plan is to get us all into Chevy Volts that we can't afford, and with batteries catching fire for no apparent reason, keep us too scared to get into our cars in the first place and thereby reduce consumption.)
Super Tuesday winds to a close, and the winners (kind of) and losers (sort of) are both congratulating themselves on the job that they did (even if they didn't really do it). And while they're patting themselves on the back, and thanking their staffs, their fundraisers, and their supporters; not one of them thinks to thank the American taxpayer; not for their vote, but for picking up the tab. It is they after all, who are footing the bill for this state-by-state beauty contest; with many educated estimates holding the cost of these candidate benedictions at $3,000,000 per state.
Like the broken promises of most of candidates leave behind after an election, this bit of taxpayer largess goes largely unrecognized; something I find especially troubling when so many state budgets are being slashed left and right (pun intended) to at least attempt to meet the mandated responsibilities of a balanced budget. When are we going to make these political parties pay for their own political parties?
It's a sad commentary on the political process indeed when 'hard working Americans' have to foot the bill so that the self-appointed political elite in this country can decide who's turn it is move up the political food chain. Regardless of who gets the delegates, once again the American taxpayer has lost.
There has been a lot of talk in recent years about the tone of discourse and punditry in the media today. Many rightly feel that there is a distinct media bias in the coverage of news these days, and that this is in some way a dramatic change from the past.
I would argue however that the plethora of news sources out there has simply made the playing field so diverse that the ability of one organization to point out the failings others only highlights the slant and selective coverage of both. I would further point out that the number of bloggers out there serving as an alternative 'amateur' news source also serves to point out the glaringly apparent shortcomings where both print and broadcast media are concerned.
Information shows have seen a change however, and not necessarily for the better where the interview and news-talk shows are concerned. This began perhaps with the descent of weekly news shows like '60 Minutes'. This show at some point went down the dark path not only in the choice of the stories that it covered, but in the editing of the interviews in order to drive home the particular point of view of the segment producer. Good guys and bad guys were decided by camera angles, lighting, and the careful cutting of even more carefully worded questions and responses. A predisposed bias was subtly and effectively promulgated in what was sold to us as hard-hitting investigative journalism; but in fact was a careful blending of ambush and editorializing.
Next came the the plethora of news shows with live interviews, where both hosts and guests quickly discovered that in order to play the game effectively, one had to be 'prepped' by increasingly more professional handlers. Being visible on such shows was important, but more important was having the required clever lines and talking points memorized. It didn't matter if the questions were hard-hitting, or the answers had anything to do with them, as long as those answers were part of a biased message that the guest was trying to deliver.
Hosts of these shows became frustrated, since they attempted to play by the rules while not antagonizing guests; and the guests refused to follow their lead. The visiting team had a distinct advantage by playing the game it wanted the way it wanted to, while the home team looked mostly irrelevant. There was no longer information being sought and explored, but instead a disjointed and fractious competition where the winner had already been decided.
The level of discourse and interviewing used today has become little more than a meandering diatribe followed by non sequitur.
Nowhere is this more personified than on one of the more popular of the purported news commentary shows, 'The O'Reilly Factor'. Now for those who don't or haven't watched this show, Bill O'Reilly is someone who has been part of journalism for some time. As well as spending time as a legitimate reporter, he also spent some time on the tabloid side while hosting shows like 'Hard Copy'.
Since 1996, he has hosted a show on the Fox News Channel (perhaps its most popular) in which he combines the worst of both of those worlds.
This has nothing to do with Mr O'Reilly's opinions, which I may or may not agree with, but with the level that such discourse has sunk to in the process. Mr O'Reilly seems to personify the current concept of political punditry, which has become little more than hosts saying 'look at me'.
Interviews normally begin with him expressing an opinion and then asking the guest to tell him where he's wrong. If the guest agrees, he get 20 seconds to do so before being interrupted to confirm the host is right and move on to the next host opinion/question. If he disagrees, he gets half of that time before being called out as foolish or misinformed.
In fact while I haven't timed it, I think a comparative analysis of microphone 'time of possession' would find Mr O'Reilly holding the field of play better than 75% of the time. This begs the question that if you are not going to let a guest answer the questions posed, why bring them on at all.
Bill O'Reilly is not alone however. Rush Limbaugh forgoes interviews on his 3 hour syndicated show 5 days a week, but finds a different path to the same goal. While saying that he doesn't want to talk about himself, he instead spends much of each hour sharing with us what others have said about him, as if that's all that's going on.
Sean Hannity spends probably more of his time on his radio and TV show telling us about the personal appearances, book signings, and things that he will be talking about later than he does telling us anything else. Glenn Beck is equally busy promoting books, personal appearances, movie theater broadcasts of personal appearances; and less so in informing us of information that he claims is vital that we hear and understand.
Media stores and subscription websites can do little but prove to us that such labors are exercises in capitalism rather than information.
(And for those of you who believe that I am attacking those on the right without due consideration to the panderers on the left, let me state that my failure to comment on Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, or Rachel Maddow is only because their efforts so nauseate me that I cannot stand to subject myself to such punishment long enough to properly critique them.)
Unfortunately, lost in all this self-promotion is any legitimate news or insight that any of these pundits might offer. Picking the nuggets of truth and information from the overwhelming barrage of self-serving nonsense is difficult at best. Even when one concedes that these are potentially intelligent and well-read individuals, the constant self-promotion leaves one too tired to retain the carefully winnowed rewards.
The few legitimate news and opinion offerings out there are drowned out by egotistic tabloid punditry. And while everyone has a right to try and make a buck, it's unfortunate that we've turned news and opinion into little more than a traveling medicine show. It's likewise unfortunate that at a time when so many are looking for unbiased facts and answers to vital questions in society, all we are offered is the equivalent of entertainment at the intellectual level of the WWE. It's sad to me especially that at a time when this country would be well-served by reasoned Conservative voices, all we are offered is little more than hucksters and little better than the O'Reilly factor.
