We are in great haste to construct a magnetic
telegraph from Maine to Texas;
but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing
important to communicate."
--Henry David Thoreau, "Walden"
It's not necessary
to be a disciple of Thoreau, that great 19th century American crackpot,
to wonder if the mass media aren't dragging
civilization backward. And no, I'm not talking about
Paris Hilton, although the sudden fame
of this vapid heiress whose only talent appears to be
shamelessness is definitely symptomatic.
I'm talking about
the great paradox of contemporary political life: the more sophisticated
the
technology, the more primitive the message. At
the rate American public discourse is decaying,
we're going to end up in holes in the ground
like Saddam Hussein, instant-messaging grunts to
each other over wireless internet connections.
Actually, it's
already happening. Visit almost any politically-oriented website, left
or right,
where it's customary to find total strangers
exchanging everything from sexual taunts to death
threats under the cloak of anonymity. Here's
in its entirety is an e-mail I got yesterday from
somebody I've never met named Theodore: "Now
that Saddam has gotten out from under
his rock why don't you go get in and take his
place you [expletive deleted] homosexual.
[EXPLETIVE DELETED] U FOREVER!"
Exactly why people
like Theodore get a charge out of imagining--incorrectly, as it happens
--the intimate lives of strangers, I can't say.
But I digress. See, it's not anonymous callers and
e-mailers who are driving American political
discourse back toward the stone age.
Apart from pornography,
I pointed out recently, nothing travels through cyberspace faster
than quackery and superstition. So it was probably
inevitable that the internet and satellite TV
would provide an outlet for themes previously
limited to supermarket tabloids: not merely
celebrity sex scandals, but faith-healers, psychics,
spirit mediums who conjure up the dead,
flying saucer enthusiasts, religious cultists
and conspiracy theorists.
But it's the behavior
of those at the very apex of the media pyramid that's largely
responsible for the decay of public discourse.
Seemingly distracted by their own fame,
Washington celebrity pundits increasingly substitute
rumor, speculation, augury,
soothsaying and mind-reading for news and cogent
analysis of public issues.
Consider the performance
turned in by ABC's Ted Koppel as emcee of last week's
New Hampshire Democratic presidential debate.
Once a widely respected journalist,
Koppel devoted, by actual count, his first nineteen
questions to polls, personalities and money:
"General Clark..it
is rumored, however, that you are a favored candidate by the Clinton
family. If Mrs. Clinton, Senator Clinton, or
former President Clinton were to offer you his
endorsement, would you take it?"
"Senator Lieberman,
you've got a bit of a shot to the solar plexus today...
Have your chances received a bad shock today?"
So relentlessly
did he hew to triviality, noted Dan Kennedy in the Boston Phoenix,
that "Koppel actually pulled off the heretofore
unimaginable feat of giving Dennis Kucinich
a moment in the spotlight.
"'I want the American
people to see where the media takes politics in this country,'
Kucinich said...'To start with endorsements--we
start talking about endorsements, now
we're talking about polls, and then we're talking
about money. Well, you know, when you
do that, you don't have to talk about what's
important to the American people.'
"The crowd went wild."
Al Sharpton got a cheer when he too rebuked Koppel's relentless triviality.
And why did Gore
endorse Howard Dean? Time columnist Joe Klein's answer was
typical: "The two have so much in common. They're
the angriest guys in the Democratic
Party... Dean and Gore are angry in different
ways, though. Gore's anger is personal.
He is angry at Bill Clinton (yes, for Monica
Lewinsky but also for being such an
impossible act to follow). He has been angry
at Hillary Clinton since 1993, when
the elected Vice President found himself competing
with the unelected Vice President
for Bill Clinton's attention. He is angry with
Joe Lieberman..."
Enough. Klein,
of course, became rich and famous by lying about his authorship of
"Primary Colors," a novel marketed as insider
gossip. If he had sources for any of this
stuff, he neglected to say so. Irrational Democratic
anger is a favorite GOP theme.
Endorsing Dean, Gore argued that that the U.S.
had never in its 200 year history
"made a worse foreign policy mistake" than invading
Iraq. But you know what a
phony he is.
Last week, the
pundit chorus told us Dean's nomination was inevitable, although
no votes had been cast. Then came Saddam's capture,
by my count the fourth
epoch-making event in Iraq in 2003, after the
fall of Baghdad, Bush's "Mission
Accomplished" carrier landing, and his artificial
turkey Thanksgiving photo op.
Dean's candidacy was pronounced DOA and Bush's
re-election assured.
And so it went,
another week of rumor-mongering, mind-reading, and
soothsaying in the little mud village on the
Potomac.