It used to be that news reporters and news programs reported the news of what was happening in their government, their state, their city, and even the world. News was meant to INFORM citizens so that they could be better citizens, so they could make educated decisions, so they could participate in their democracy in some thoughtful, meaningful way and so they could understand the broader world in which they lived.
Now we get tabloid junk.
News outlets (which are really only tabloid gossip rags and programs) present videos of car chases and stories about missing blond women and polygamists in Texas. And during political campaigns they report almost nothing about what the candidates believe and what policies they advocate. Instead they wait for, or predict "gaffes," repeat scurriolous internet rumors, and replay for free the commercials the candidates' ad men have created to trash opponents.
And so we saw a near perfect example this past week as Barack Obama traveled in Europe and John McCain wandered through German American restaurants and supermarket aisles looking for attention.
For weeks prior to Obama's trip, McCain had been insisting he go abroad, as McCain himself had. McCain had met with foreign leaders and given press conferences, in which he made many "gaffes" which had to be corrected by Joe Lieberman. Once Obama made the decision to go, the press bought into McCain's narrative that Obama was inexperienced and untested on the world stage. Reporters tagged along to see the spectacle, many of them repeating the warning that the trip posed a great danger to Obama who was bound to make a big mistake somehwere along the way. Only he didn't. By any fair account the trip was a brilliant success.
Not that the McCain camp didn't try and is still trying to push the idea that Obama blew it. While first they thought he would look inexperienced and green, by Wednesday they were saying he was being way too presumptious, acting like he was already president. How dare he be so cool, so poised, so elegant, so popular? The idiots on "Morning Jo(k)e" agonized over how this would play back home. "Backfire" was the word of the day. Maybe the American people would resent Obama being abroad during a campaign when gas prices were so high back home. Maybe the sight of 200,000 Europeans cheering for him would backfire. Obama should be eating sauerkraut in Germantown PA and reassuring Americans that he would find them cheap gas rather than reaching out to foreigners who already pay $8 a gallon.
Then, of course, McCain whined that he wasn't getting any coverage during Obama's trip. Never mind that McCain and every other good Republican despise the "fairness doctrine" which Saint Ronny ended, McCain cried "foul." He wasn't getting fair treatment. So all the networks scrambled to include an interview of McCain with the already planned interview of Obama.
And now, McCain and the media have finally hit what they think is paydirt. McCain is running an ad claiming Obama would rather go to the gym than visit the wounded troops in Germany. They are taking advantage of the fact that the Pentagon, at the last minute, discouraged Obama from visiting the troops because his trip was no longer a congressional trip (his Senate staff had left for home after Iraq and Afghanistan). They would not allow his plane to land at the air bases and would not let any campaign aides come to the hospitals. They waited until the day before the planned visit to inform the Obama campaign, when it would have been very difficult to make alternate transportation plans. Instead, Obama phoned several wounded soldiers.
So now McCain is using the troops for political purposes, in an ad that accuses Obama of abandoning the troops. And the press will be carrying this story for days.
No, this is not news. This is political propaganda. And the media is falling for it, just as they fell for the Swift Boat ads that gave us four more disastrous years of George W. Bush.
Thank you main stream media and cable shows for being total jerks, for neglecting your duty to inform rather than stir up nonsense.
Thank you John McCain for also being a jerk, for promising to be a different kind of candidate, for claiming to be a dignified former military man, even though you have abused the troops, by sending them to a war based on lies, and by refusing to vote for expanded benefits for them, and now used the troops, to unfairly attack an opponent.
You are both beneath contempt.
