Paul
The term "the media" bothers me a good deal less when people remember that the word is plural. I don't just mean that as an anal grammarian; it really does reshape the conversation when we think of the media as being many.
In what seems to be a shout-out to the recently-deceased Jacques Derrida, Jon Stewart recently appeared on CNN’s Crossfire and attempted to examine oversimplified binary oppositions in American political discourse in order to expose their underlying structures, as well as the inherent instability of those structures — or something like that. Mr. Right and Mr. Left, needless to say, were not prepared for this. (Search around a bit for video of the interview; it’s all over the Internet at the moment, but the vagaries of linkrot and bandwidth caps make any direct linking a dicey proposition.) Also, Brian pointed me to an interview with Bill Moyers that covers much of the same ground in a less awkwardly contentious format.
His problem with “The Media” (a term that mightily irritates me, but I’ll bitch about that some other time) in general and debate shows like Crossfire and Hardball in particular seems to be that they ignore their opportunities to provide the public with meaningful insight into public events, choosing instead to engage in a simplified theater of “left vs. right, black vs. white, paper vs. plastic,” etc. Debate shows like this encourage people to buy into the notion that the entire political universe consists of exactly two points — no more, no less — and that anything that attempts to step outside this strictly polarized sphere of discourse is to be derided, excluded, and simply written off as an aberration.
Of course, the anchor of a satiric news show lambasting the hosts of a “serious” political debate show as “hurting America” is in itself a deliciously bizarre sight. Stewart somewhat disingenuously defends The Daily Show as being theater without pretense, whereas Crossfire misrepresents its content as substantive. It’s a weak argument, though: a frightening number of people cite The Daily Show as their primary source of news, and it’s not like satire is somehow completely separate from political debate. Stewart himself points out (and he’s hardly the first to do so) that comedy is a form where people are free to play on the system’s inherent absurdity, pointing out its contradictions and foibles. I hope Derrida’s laughing about it all.
The term "the media" bothers me a good deal less when people remember that the word is plural. I don't just mean that as an anal grammarian; it really does reshape the conversation when we think of the media as being many.
That show was fascinating & saddening, really. I felt bad for Jon Stewart, since it was obvious the hosts weren't in any way prepared for serious talk with him & just expected him to talk about naked Supreme Court Justices the whole time. I kept thinking about Ted Koppel's interview with Stewart where Stewart lamented the fact that no matter how hard he yells "THIS IS SO WRONG!! DON'T YOU SEE IT??", people can always choose not to take him seriously because he's a comedian. He looked so defeated by the end of Crossfire, it was kinda depressing.