Politics: Out of Step
One of the leading frustrating things about many Americans is this bottomless craving for sentimentality without any actual emotional connection. It's what makes us watch reality shows so we can feel bad when a person is crushingly disappointed, but makes us turn off the news when those disappointments could actually affect our lives. It's what makes us choke up at the quaint and heart-rending but drives us to disdain when something actually causes us to look inward, re-assess, to try and understand something which we may not enjoy.
Many Americans hate doing this, and often I feel this emotion is one of the leading dividing forces in the country.
It was this sensation, I believe, that makes a lot of Americans turn off their heads and not think about so much that makes our country trying at times. It is this drive which makes people respond viscerally when they are challenged in a belief that they have decided is 'settled.'
This sensation, an unctuous distillation of denial and sentimentality, explains why people so breathlessly flock to the right-wing radio demagogues: nothing is up in the air in the worlds of Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh. If a liberal wants you to believe something (and I'm speaking as a liberal), we appeal to someone's intelligence (we're always saying 'don't you see?'). But the right wing gabbers don't ever give you that option. They don't want you to think. They want you to hear what they say as if it came from your own head.
That rolls together with my point about the all-emotion/no-thought school of American thought. It's pervasive. People don't like to be reminded that a batch of racist purges, some good old fashioned ineptitude and the deady deception of the Supreme Court is how we got our current president. (Hush.) People don't care to know that this war is unjust and our leadership is pursuing it as a campaign strategy, not an actual war. (Be quiet.) They don't want to hear about our civil liberties falling away (Shhh) or our education system crumbling (Zip it) or anything else.
All this explains the recommendations of media consulting firms released recently and reported today in the Washington Post.
Read and gag:
One of the leading frustrating things about many Americans is this bottomless craving for sentimentality without any actual emotional connection. It's what makes us watch reality shows so we can feel bad when a person is crushingly disappointed, but makes us turn off the news when those disappointments could actually affect our lives. It's what makes us choke up at the quaint and heart-rending but drives us to disdain when something actually causes us to look inward, re-assess, to try and understand something which we may not enjoy.
Many Americans hate doing this, and often I feel this emotion is one of the leading dividing forces in the country.
It was this sensation, I believe, that makes a lot of Americans turn off their heads and not think about so much that makes our country trying at times. It is this drive which makes people respond viscerally when they are challenged in a belief that they have decided is 'settled.'
This sensation, an unctuous distillation of denial and sentimentality, explains why people so breathlessly flock to the right-wing radio demagogues: nothing is up in the air in the worlds of Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh. If a liberal wants you to believe something (and I'm speaking as a liberal), we appeal to someone's intelligence (we're always saying 'don't you see?'). But the right wing gabbers don't ever give you that option. They don't want you to think. They want you to hear what they say as if it came from your own head.
That rolls together with my point about the all-emotion/no-thought school of American thought. It's pervasive. People don't like to be reminded that a batch of racist purges, some good old fashioned ineptitude and the deady deception of the Supreme Court is how we got our current president. (Hush.) People don't care to know that this war is unjust and our leadership is pursuing it as a campaign strategy, not an actual war. (Be quiet.) They don't want to hear about our civil liberties falling away (Shhh) or our education system crumbling (Zip it) or anything else.
All this explains the recommendations of media consulting firms released recently and reported today in the Washington Post.
Read and gag:
That is the message pushed by broadcast news consultants, who've been advising news and talk stations across the nation to wave the flag and downplay protest against the war.
"Get the following production pieces in the studio NOW: . . . Patriotic music that makes you cry, salute, get cold chills! Go for the emotion," advised McVay Media, a Cleveland-based consultant, in a "War Manual" memo to its station clients. ". . . Air the National Anthem at a specified time each day as long as the USA is at war."
The company, which describes itself as the largest radio consultant in the world, also has been counseling talk show stations to "Make sure your hosts aren't 'over the top.' Polarizing discussions are shaky ground. This is not the time to take cheap shots to get reaction . . . not when our young men and women are 'in harm's way.' "
The influential television-news consulting firm Frank N. Magid Associates recently put it in even starker terms: Covering war protests may be harmful to a station's bottom line.
In a survey released last week on the eve of war, the firm found that war protests were the topic that tested lowest among 6,400 viewers across the nation. Magid said only 14 percent of respondents said TV news wasn't paying enough attention to "anti-war demonstrations and peace activities"; just 13 percent thought that in the event of war, the news should pay more attention to dissent.
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