I don't know how well this neologism has caught on, but
googling it shows that I didn't make it up first. It was the diary posted tonight by
Pachacutec that led me to my own dilatory coinage. What politainment means to me is this:
The objectification of the other by the select media punditocracy, and the resulting schism of our culture along liberal and conservative lines, is but a survival strategy of the collective advertising commercial interest.
If the reporting of the news was not entertaining, it would not be valuable to advertisers. What is the bias of the media?
The only answer that really matters is "to get attention".
What gets attention is a back and forth playing with the emotions of those who tune in. What is most effective is to instill one of two attitudes in the viewer. Either you feel a rallying sense of relation to the editorial aspect of the reporting, or you feel diametrically opposed to those out there that you assume are feeling this rallying sense.
What is successful is the model of gloat vs. hate.
Forget about the media's conservative bent. This line of argument opens us up to the numerous examples that can be cited by the right when they mirror our claims. It's an endless cycle of subjective partiality.
What is needed here is a framework of scientific reasoning. What common cause gives birth to the reactions that unite these claims of bias on both sides? The answer is ratings of course.
What we are witnessing is the process of evolution at work within the forum of global communication. Over the past 75 years we have witnessed the birth and adolescence of electronic media as a tool of human communication.
As if it were a form of life, this tool requires energy input to survive. And that energy comes in the form of money. Money to provide for salaries, and for the capital investments in equipment and research required to stay competitive.
The only way that this organism has devised to supply itself with sustenance of this energy is by eliciting a critical mass of human attention. Whether the result is the surrogate investment of advertisers who have access to the statistics of this attention mass (network media), or the direct investment by the attentive mass itself (independent media), the result is that the content of the message is tooled to garner the greatest attention.
In the context of the debate over gay rights, it is precisely this media survival strategy that has invented the issue.
It is an issue that garners attention because it is one that elicits natural human curiosity. It easily plays upon the "gloat vs. hate" paradigm, just like the drumbeats for a war against a culture that we don't care to understand play upon it.
The built-in flaw of the system is that it is a natural roadblock to the propagation of common sense, since common sense is dull and boring.
What issues can we expect to be invented down the pike as the media becomes more desperate for attention? Far into the future, as our culture inevitably secures more and more rights to individuals throught the triumph of liberalism; as we eradicate antisocial behavior through education and rehabilitation; as we establish a peace-oriented foreign policy; will the media stand for it? Maybe then it can attract attention by means a collective celebration of liberty and freedom, rather than a collective affirmation of fear.