Maybe Something Else Sucks Around Here
It’s George Carlin Week for hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people, and I’m one of them. As I strolled the halls of YouTube gathering bits and pieces of old performances to savor and be grateful for, I ran across this one. Let’s enjoy a little bit of the master, and then talk about it after, shall we?
That is some nutrient-dense food for thought there, isn’t it? So why’s this commanding any more of my attention than any other particular 4 minutes of Professor Carlin’s insights?
It’s partly because I’m having a difficult time reconciling my optimism and excitement over the potential tectonic shift that an Obama presidency could affect in American politics with my bitter disappointment that only Senators Feingold and Dodd seem to give enough of a shit about the Constitution to stand on the floor of the Senate and fight like hell to stop this ass barnacle of a FISA bill. It’s depressing and disconcerting to watch so many Democrats cave on this issue. I mean, shit, there’s not even a significant political upside to giving the telecoms and the Bush administration a pass. The American people had their Constitutional rights systematically violated by Bush and the telcos, by some accounts as many as 7 months before 9/11, which sure seems like something that sits pretty squarely on the bad side of a bright line.
I also know that this would be a non-starter if our Senators knew for a fact that the American people wouldn’t stand for it. But the only real resistance is coming from a small (yet very vocal and surprisingly effective) minority of citizens who pay close enough attention to know what this fight’s about. If we thought of ourselves as citizens responsible for our government instead of consumers entitled to crazy low prices, or an audience craving entertainment, this wouldn’t be happening. But it is.
To put it another way, James Inhofe didn’t get to the Senate by accident. He is Oklahoma. To put it yet another way, we got an administration run by 4 year olds because we wanted it, and we got it good and hard.
The other chord this bit strikes in me relates to a conversation I had with someone about the late Tim Russert. I was chatting with a woman at a toddler birthday party last weekend, a D.C. local whose family has been involved in liberal Democratic politics for years and years. In the course of our discussion, she brought up that she was pretty broken up about Tim Russert, and what a great journalist she thought he was. I replied that, with respect, I wasn’t a fan of his “gotcha” style interview, and that I didn’t think much of him as a journalist after his testimony at the Libby trial, in which he admitted that discussions with government officials were off the record unless they said they wanted to be on the record. I also brought up the Mary Matalin note from Scooter Libby’s trial where she claimed that the best way for Cheney to get his message out and control it was to go on Meet The Press.
She gave a standard sort of apology for this kind of journalism, saying that they all do that, otherwise they lose their access to those officials. I countered that real journalists, like Sy Hersh for example, don’t need or want that kind of access, that real journalism is the result of doing real investigation. Tim Russert, I concluded, was a member of the court, and was primarily a performer.
This woman then gave me a knowing kind of smile, and remarked to me how great she thought it was that I’m so idealistic about journalism. I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if she’d pinched my fucking cheeks. And this was coming from a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat.
So there it is, garbage in, garbage out. If 95% of the American public doesn’t know anything about the fight over the FISA bill, then their Reps and Senators will pay no penalty for not caring about it either. Garbage in, garbage out. If the ones who do know something about it just don’t think that telcos sharing private information about our communications with an illegal government spying program is that big of a deal, then why would our elected officials oppose it? Garbage in, garbage out.
And though I miss the full hour, commercial free McNeil/Lehrer Report on PBS, I can’t blame any organization for its demise. They simply got out-competed by a trend toward celebrity journalism that’s seeped into every aspect of our media. There was no cabal that killed real broadcast journalism, we did that. One of the aspects of the whole open-society, free-market of ideas thing is that it’s up to us whether we want real analysis and policy discussions, or a dazzling theatrical performance with romance, fireworks, and buffoonery. We’ve chosen to be entertained, and both the performers and the audience are us.
So the next time you see one of those factoids about how we’re falling behind the the rest of the developed world in education, civil rights, and quality of life, remember this. Our government is made of us. Our media is made of us. And we suck.
Note: I’ve made several little edits for grammar and clarity. I suck too.
Tags: 2008 election, Constitution, creeping authoritarianism, journamalism, media, politics, reap the whirlwind, stupidity
