When a dog bites a man, that isn’t news. When a man bites a dog, that’s news.
That’s an old journalistic wisecrack, attributed to many, that’s been going around for well over a century. By that standard I really can’t see what’s newsworthy in a lot of what’s in the news. Mark McGwire used steroids? The real story would have been if they could have found a man, woman, or child in America who didn’t believe that he had.
Similarly, I don’t think that the idea that senators are big-mouthed blowhards who say outrageous things and that all of us have at least a little racism in our hearts is news. Similarly, that people tolerate racism among their political allies while castigating it in their foes is certainly hypocrisy but it isn’t news.
Consequently, although I think that there’s a kernel of truth in Eugene Robinson’s observations about the Harry Reid remarks about Candidate Obama that are in the news:
American society’s focus on race instead of color explains why what Harry Reid said was so rude. But I don’t think it can be a coincidence that so many pioneers — Edward Brooke, the first black senator since Reconstruction; Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice; Colin Powell, the first black secretary of state — have been lighter-skinned. Reid’s analysis was probably good sociology, even if it was bad politics.
I don’t think it’s completely true or the final word. Is it racism that we expect a certain affect in our presidents? I can’t tell you that with any confidence although, apparently, Mr. Robinson can.
It isn’t news that race is still important in the United States, is it? But is it racism when white voters vote for Barack Obama and not racism when black voters vote for Barack Obama? Forsooth!
What I can tell you with confidence is that none of it is news but it is controversy and in era of infotainment even the intellectual equivalent of a dogfight is dutifully reported and perseverated on in the pages of the newspapers and on the television and radio news programs. I wish there were a space where you could read, watch, or hear news without wading waist-deep in muck—controversy, opportunism, political coup-counting, and charges of hypocrisy. But there doesn’t seem to be such a space and probably never has been.
30 years ago NPR did a decent job; then they became politicized.
And I probably will go to my grave thinking Firing Line was the best show for watching a thoughtful exchange of politcal ideas.
Today’s programs are a variant of a line from an old George Carlin skit……”I’m not full…Hey! YOU”RE full of s……….