Letters to the Editor
Lalo23
Published Letters: 2
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Tabloid Media creates the hero worship
[Read the article: Why do conservatives really find the Obama campaign "scary"?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glen Greenwald is absolutely correct that sloth, hero worship, and sucking up to the pro war crowd are why the American media has stopped actually reporting, investigating and vetting the news. There is another factor, however, that underlies all of those; financial rewards for creating "developing situations," aka scandals. Fox and MSNBC have made outrage and demagoguery both sexy and titillating and therefore, more profitable to their corporate parents than traditional investigative reporting. This is to tabloids which make profits by making the news themselves, e.g. documenting celebrities supermarket excursions profitable. It isn't that Tori Spelling's is actually interesting or that her actual trip down the produce aisle is interesting. Instead it means that teh paparazzo approach to creating titillation has now become the marketable and financially rewardable approach to media news. That is, media stars are not rewarded for analyzing what a candidate or office holder says but by creating and milking the scandals themselves. Tim Russert, Chris Matthews and Wolf Blitzer have learned the following lesson from Rush Limbaugh, Nancy Grace and even Gerry Springer; America's new, highly paid media stars are those who have created a scandal - where there really isn't one - by monotonously hammering on a rather mundane or unusual but inconsequential event.
The New York Times generally sticks by the old model of reporting news made by others. But with the story on McCain' relations with a beautiful K Street lobbyist, the Times took an amateurish trip down the tabledia lane by trying to create an adultry scandal out of nothing. The funny part was they actually had a pretty good story about lobbyists and corporate jets but chased the sex because of ... the opportunity to create news and profit. The Times problem in that attempt was that they had no star or TV image making arm, like Wolf or Rush or Nancy to herd and milk the story.
Wolf and Rush and Nancy's lurid and negative focus on pseudo scandal, bad sex or disgrace are not the only approach. The other side is the similar phony creation of a hero where there clearly was none. The guy who happened by the well to pull the kids out is not that much different than a guy who unskillfuly got shot down over Vietnam. But they are both "heros." Ronald Reagan instituted the greatest tax increase in history and never did a damn thing about the death of 300 marines in Iraq. But he has been successfully portrayed as a heroic hawk and tax cutter. Today, Presidents and candidates PR staff don't create images nearly as effectively as the tabledia scandal hosts and biographers.
This is not to say that brilliant and effective bloggers like Glen should not focus on sloth and suck up nature of the new media, but that the profit motive for scandal and lack thereof for investigative reporting be considered.
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Union Efforts in Big State Primaries Mean Nothing in the General Election
[Read the article: Obama can't close the deal ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hillary Clinton's basic argument why she, the person with less votes, should be awarded the Democratic nomination is that that she has defeated Barack Obama in obtaining the supposedly key demographic: the white, uneducated vote in large states. But this reasoning is based on a fallacy. Democratic parties in big states have much more potent (read well funded) union political operations than those in small states. One of the main reasons why Clinton has won in these states is that political leaders, who are indebted to the Clintons over the last 16 years, have pulled in the union chips and the unions are out campaigning for Clinton to pay those debts. But after the primaries, the debt is expunged and local political cronies and unions no longer rule the day. At the two California Democratic conventions I attended as a delegate, the numbers, money and juice of the unions for the weak, forgettable Phil Angelides was awesome. But Angelides got annihilated in the general by Arnold Schwarzenegger - including getting killed in the white, uneducated, male union vote.
Hillary's reason to overturn democracy is based on crony intraparty politics that gives virtually no advantage in the general election. For goodness sake, Pennsylvania organizers demand to be paid! That won't happen in the general election and union organizing will mean jack squat for the Democratic nominee. Non-union get out the vote, progressive internet fund raising and organizing and media spin and dominance are much bigger elements of victory in general elections than union efforts. Plus there is a rather obvious aspect to the union/white uneducated advantage - many union members who obey the local and give out flyers in the primaries vote Republican anyway.