The Japanese Daily Yomiuri I got in my mailbox this morning included last weekend's Outlook section from the Washington Post as a package deal, and I could only marvel at how different the two papers were in their attitude towards their relative countries. The cover story of the Outlook section was the professional troll Charles Murray's "The New Elite", a list of trivia questions (do you know who replaced Bob Barker?) to demonstrate how the liberals reading the Post are, "increasingly, not of" America.
That a hard-right commentator has this opinion is not very surprising to me. What I do wonder is how the Washington Post decided his views were fit for publication. I'm not saying the Washington Post should be filtering its opinion articles by political view; rather, it's accepting the point of his article, which is entirely to slander his audience based on an irrelevant cultural standard, which surprises me as a regular reader of the Daily Yomiuri. Aren't there shared values to discuss, or actual political issues to talk about? Why does the opinion section avoid them? In fact, isn't that the entire problem with the American media at large?
Just a little bit about Japan before I move on to America. When newspapers discuss politics in Japan, there is scarcely ever an interest in manufacturing scandal, because there are so many pressing issues to deal with. It is assumed that the reader is not trying to "pick a side" in society or gain material to destroy opponents, but is rather united with other Japanese people in driving the country towards a common prosperity, even if they disagree about methods. This is why that fellow Ozawa was able to compare Americans to "single-cell organisms" without the media having a screaming fit; it was indeed proof of his diplomatic senselessness, and it was widely and soberly reported, but at the end of the day, he is still an influential politician, so there was no need to pit his supporters against his detractors on fast paced talk shows. People were allowed to make up their minds without anyone telling them what to think, and the results were satisfying; Ozawa lost his election and will be indicted for corruption very soon.
When newspapers discuss culture in Japan, it is even more interesting to read. Most opinion columnists who write about culture resemble Garrison Keillor. They will usually quote an old haiku or a famous saying, reminisce about its meaning, and link it to modern practices. Even though I have often never heard the reference before, it is fascinating to learn about and even better to reflect on. The author never infers that his culture is better than some other culture, or that people who don't share her cultural background are un-Japanese elites/morons. I'm sure older people reading this can remember past American columnists like Garrison Keillor who shared this basic agreement of decency and earnest, polite tone; I've read such things from time to time but no longer remember the names.
The American media seems to have a bizarre consensus that your audience needs to get angry about what they're seeing or hearing if you want to keep them. Not only Fox News but also the Times and Post run all sorts of ridiculous stories like "The New Elites" with the intention of either making you angry at the elites or the writer. But when you look at these articles expecting the authors to propose some message the whole country can live by, they fall miserably short. How would Glenn Beck run the country? Daily Kos readers probably know him better than anyone, and the answer is hilarious in its childishness: he would kick out the "communists" and "restore America to God". What does any of that have to do with developing stable industries, creating long-term economic plans, or fixing our decaying infrastructure? Topics like this are never discussed, because the answers cannot be reduced to a cartoonish battle of good and evil. It's ridiculous to even use phrases like "we have to come together as a country" to oppose this flood of anger. We are already together as a country, because we are all part of its economic, social, and environmental ecosystems. We have to start with that assumption before we can get anywhere.
People often criticize the American media for sensationalism, but I don't see many discussions of what should replace that tone. When I look at the myriad news sources I've watched, listened to, and read throughout my life, the few that live up to the standard I discuss above are also the ones where the audience is most reliably liberal: NPR, the Daily Show, Democracy Now. In these media, far from the madding crowd of the 24-hour news cycle, people explain and comment on complex issues with the ground rule that all Americans are real Americans, and nobody can be left out of our narrative. It's just a shame that other media are unwilling to share this model; and in recent years I've noticed the culture war free-for-all is even leaking into these last holdouts. Maybe it's simply helpless-- America will never have a truly informed electorate, because people just don't want to hear about the challenges being faced.