Battle of the Network Stars

[dorkulon]

--snip--

Election coverage is not only deplorably shallow; its non-stop, news-cycle-dominating prominence is obscuring larger reality. It’s stealth entertainment news in the guise of legitimate national affairs journalism. There’s nothing significantly different in the tone of coverage of the Obama/Clinton rivalry from that of Paris and Nicole. Romney’s Mormonism is handled no differently than Tom Cruise’s Scientology.

That would be bad enough in itself, but the worse problem is that while we’re torturing ourselves with a harrowing, incessant two-year pageant of inauthenticity, real stuff is still happening all over the world. And we’re hearing even less than usual about it, because it’s just so much easier for commentators to talk about what has essentially become the Olympics of bullshit than to address the actual government or what it actually does. By comparing stats and rumors about presidential hopefuls, columnists and talking heads are able to give the impression of covering the government without actually doing anything of the sort. Watch Joe Scarborough segue easily from a segment about the latest presidential gaffe to a schadenfreude session over Paris Hilton’s jail sentence, and you’ll see. He doesn’t even have to switch gears; it’s the same damn thing. This type of presidential infotainment is not even taking up half of the space allotted for political coverage; it’s taking up nearly all of it, the remainder of which is mainly filled by “White House says this, critics say that.” And we’re a year and a half off from what will surely be too brief a reprieve. For all this time, the presidential one-note symphony will drown out what little serious news our already atrophic press might otherwise present.

--

Let’s take a serious, and seriously neglected, news item for example: The Iraqi hydrocarbon law.

--snip--


http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/7456

[tom_paine]

1. K & R

:kick: and :toast: