Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Optics
If I hear one more political pundit define the current political payroll tax conundrum in terms of the "optics"... I'll keep watching and likely see five more use the same in-vogue word. In the world of horse-race politics, is there a more dismissive, cynical way of approaching the legislation at hand? (I'm sure there is, I'm just asking!) And would it be too much if once in awhile these yakkers actually talked about the stuff IN the competing bills, as opposed to reducing it to the level of two kids shoving one other on a playground?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I know exactly what you mean. I think the problem is most journalists care more about money and status than doing what's right. So, CNN hires sell-outs and attractive people (mostly hot women) and ditzes like Anderson Cooper, who I read gets paid $5 million/year to further dumb down the news. Why should Cooper or Wolf Blitzer or any of those people on TV care if the poor get health care? They'll always be able to afford the best of everything. Take away morality, too, and you've got a recipe for journalists carrying water for corporate interests, who have no incentive to ask the hard questions. We've got the same issue in Canada. It's depressing and angering how they're so able to ignore basic moral issues in the name of false balance.
I forgot to add that all these pundits (including folks like James Carville) talk about politics like it's a game, when these are life and death issues. Even pundits who did decent work on PBS sell out when they move to the major networks or cable news; Anne Crawford Greenberg, doing very superficial reports on "The CBS Evening News," comes to mind.
The most obvious example of this deliberate superficiality -- and you were basically saying this -- is the massive amount of time dedicated to guessing what happens next (which is pointless!) instead of analyzing what's already happened.
Post a Comment