Discourse Off Course

When someone has to write a blog post clarifying who a campaign rally participant was yelling "Kill Him" about, something has gone seriously askew.

The media seems more interested in covering the morons doing this kind of nonsense that are supporting McCain, but it's going on on both sides (I present exhibit A for instance). I raise this point not to try to get into a shouting match about which side may or may not be worse, but because it's awful on both sides - and that's a problem.

And, yes, Rachel Maddow, when you invite David Frum on your show so you can use him as a tool to beat on the McCain campaign and instead he decides to show you are part of the discourse problem, he's hitting the nail on the head.

Is it any wonder we have people who want to vote for Obama "because of his policies" but obviously have no idea what his policies are?

Or, from the latest CBS poll, that 1 in 25 Americans are bothered that "Obama is a Muslim"? (Apparently, about 4 times that - about 13% - still think Obama is a Muslim. How nice of that ignorant 9% to not hold their ignorant perceptions against him.) And more than half of voters think McCain is more likely than Obama to raise taxes!? (McCain doesn't want to raise taxes on anyone, Obama's at least admitting that he wants to dramatically raise taxes on the top 1 in 20 Americans.)

Of course, CBS (like all major outlets) is part of the problem too. Without even touching the topic of media bias, I present this graphic that I ripped off their website while reading their poll:



Politics should be about ideas, not a "horse race". Media outlets cover the "horse race" because it's easy. You run some polls, you bring on some pundits to guess at why things changed. Actually taking time to look into issues might require some work, so they shy away. Night after night: new poll, same punditry, same ignorant public. If you're lucky, you get a new soundbite with the poll (and clearly, sound bites are sufficient to understand proposals for 700 billion dollar government actions).

One of the most frustrating things I've heard in this entire campaign season is friends of mine telling me how Tina Fey has "nailed" her impression of Sarah Palin. Yeah, Tina Fey looks similar, and her impressive talents at vocal impersonation do a great job, but the Palin she "plays" is a moron. Sarah Palin is no moron, but my friends are taking their cues about Palin from a late night comedy show. Of course this says nothing about the greater concern that a great swath of "young people" are choosing the Daily Show and Colbert Report as their primary news sources. Splendid.

Now I don't want to pretend like lack of civil discourse is anything new. We can trace the tradition back to at least 1800 and James Callender. But, this is America - shouldn't we be making progress?

Can we all come together and denounce:

Attack ads that are deliberately misleading, believing moronic spam e-mails about a candidate's religion (or, really, anything in a moronic spam e-mail?!), listening to "the haters" - like Coulter and Olbermann, voting for someone because of stupid "soft issues" like they're my same race/gender/whatever, they'd be fun to have a drink with, etc., and reading blogs that start rumors like this one.

Please?!

Update: Foolishly I headed over to Eric Massa's "diary" (blog) which is hosted at the Daily Kos. Here is an ad from their side bar:



If you think that's funny, I'm going to say that you're what's wrong with today's politics.

And a challenge to the Daily Kos and Eric Massa: Do you think that ad is appropriate to be shown on your blog? Do you think that helps promote civility?

The News Media Fails the Electorate

As I've bemoaned about previously, the Writer's Strike has left me making some odd TV/entertainment choices.

Tonight, for the first time in a long time, I watched an entire local news broadcast, which I followed with an entire national news broadcast. And, following that I just listened to two podcast episodes from MSNBC shows.

A fair chunk of the local news was about the '08 campaign, a large chunk of the national news was about the campaign, and the show segments that MSNBC turned into podcast episodes were entirely about the campaign.

But none of it provided any real substance about any issues. There was a lot of horse racing: Who's winning in the polls? and How can Huckabee possibly win if his "war chest" is so small? and Can Hillary come across as personable? and Can Obama come across as experienced? and Does Huckabee really think Romney is a Christian?.

The closest any of all the above coverage came to talking about policies the candidates hold was the local news did a piece that superficially talked about universal healthcare.

I don't want to claim that experience, beliefs, and likability should play no part in how someone votes. They are all characteristics that will play a part in how well a candidate will one day govern. But they are second-class characteristics. What should take center stage in a free democratic republic is issues. Explain where the candidates stand. Let them explain why they stand the way they do. Let the American people hear their explanations and decide if they agree or not.

Maybe the American public - or those that watch the news anyway - simply don't care about the issues, and the news is putting out what sells ads. But I can't help thinking that the national news media is simply lazy, and showing the latest polls and debating the trivial lets them believe they're "covering the election" without actually having to do any work.

Charlie Rose - Promoting Discourse

I've recently become a fanatic of the fantastic Charlie Rose TV program.

On my PBS station, Charlie Rose is on from 11:30PM - 12:30AM, and often I'll wrap up my "planned" TV watching around then and then quickly flip through some channels before calling it a night. As a result, by accident, I wound up discovering the Charlie Rose program.

The format of the program is exceptionally basic. Charlie Rose sits on a stage with a totally black background and invites one or several people to sit with him at a table (which he calls "the table") and he interviews them.

The interviewed guests are always people of influence, but their areas of expertese range broadly. Thinking of guests off the top of my head, he's had on President Bush, Jimbo Wales, Lee Iacocca, Henry Kissinger, Quentin Tarantino, Warren Buffett, and Al Gore -- all in maybe the last 6 weeks.

The charm of the Charlie Rose program doesn't fully lie with the guest list though. It comes from the interview style of Charlie Rose. He asks good questions. The political guests he has you can usually find on the Sunday morning political shows, but there, even my favorite Sunday-show host, Chris Wallace, fails to ask questions like Charlie Rose does.

What makes the questions good is that they are questions that give the guest a chance to talk. The questions require a response that can't just be given using stale talking points. The guest has to go deeper -- explain what they mean -- fully lay out their opinion.

And Charlie Rose lets them talk. Bill O'Reilly tries to run what he deems a "no spin zone" by constantly cutting people off. Charlie Rose (refreshingly!) takes the opposite approach. If a guest were to answer using a bunch of spin, he'd let them, but then just follow up with a question that would force them to take their answer to a level of intelligent dialog.

The Charlie Rose program would also trust that you, the viewer, are smart enough to see through when people answer with spin. And, while I think Charlie Rose leans left (he seems to get more excited and ask questions that are a bit more friendly to left-leaning political guests), he does not seem to have any agenda other than asking intelligent questions of intelligent people and letting them respond.

Ahhh, at last, refreshing public discourse in today's public square (which, of course, is the television :-p)!

As an added bonus, the Charlie Rose program puts it's recent programs out on Google video. As a double extra bonus, I discovered CastCluster which lets you capture videos from YouTube and Google Video and put them into your own personal video podcast. And, if you've been paying attention, you can probably pretty easily figure out why having my own personal video podcast of Charlie Rose programs is compelling for me.

The Future of Political Discourse?

Here's hoping this doesn't represent the future of political discourse:

The current soundbite-oriented state of things is certainly devoid of depth, but at least it still lets the discourse hover around the issues. One minute market-y spoof ads don't even have that much...

(Of course, "Read my lips: no new taxes" certainly doesn't have the entertainment appeal of YouTube spoofs...)

(Also, did anyone else notice the irony of the very un-1984 message the spoof has Hillary delivering? "We all need to be part of the discussion"; "I don't want people who already agree with me"; "I hope to keep this conversation going"; etc?)