Last Sunday, for reasons now unfathomable to me, I subjected myself to watching one of the television shows featuring the Sabbath (alleged) savants. It brought home to me why I should avoid observing these audible circle jerks. It's simply not good for my blood pressure.
The only guest on the show who even approached uttering anything of substance was Lindsay Graham who displayed his chicken hawk colours in full glory. And yet even he avoided answering the simple question of whether he wanted to commit ground combat troops back to Iraq.
As for the rest of the show, it was all about the 2016 presidential race. Who was in, who was ahead, who had committed an irreparable gaffe or mistake, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum.
There was no attempt to discuss the deadly crucial issues now facing this country - the horrendous maldistribution of wealth and income, the crumbling infrastructure, the ramshackle health system, increasing scarcity of resources such as water, or the increasingly visible effects of climate change.
Senator Bernie Sanders last week chided the mainstream media for its focus on process instead of substance, and he was right. Yes, it's important to know who's in the race and their background. It's certainly important to know where their money is coming from. But most importantly, I want to know what their position is regarding the issues. I want to know exactly what they propose to do if elected.
What I don't want to know is the details of their private lives, including who they're sleeping with. Or every slightest misstep or gaffe they commit while phoning in their standard stump speech.
It is simply all too obvious that the 24-hour news cycle is forcing the journalists into an unsustainable amount of vamping. It is also forcing them to churn out a great deal of unverified and un-researched copy.
Back in a previous life, I earned a journalism degree, and I worked for a short time as a reporter for a medium-sized daily newspaper. During that time, I spent a considerable time on the obit desk. But even in that lowly assignment, accuracy mattered. I had to verify names, dates, and any other questionable material.
Today's frenzy to put out a story electronically, as soon as it breaks, apparently makes such research and verification impossible. But worse, it makes for sloppy, unthinking reporting. In interviews, all statements are taken at face value--there is no challenging an interviewee as to his source for some crazy assertion, no matter how outrageous.
And even when a reporter does try to do her job, as did Soledad O'Brien a couple of years ago, she may well lose her job for pressing an interviewee too hard. It used to be said a reporter's job was to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. No more. It now seems the reporter's job is simply to be a conduit for whatever bullshit the rich and powerful choose to disseminate.
Which brings me back to the miserable pap which passes for political discourse in this country. Instead of the endless cud-chewing of who's momentarily ahead in the polls, or who's alleged campaign strategy is superior, how about seriously considering who's position on--oh, I don't know--maybe climate change, is more in line with reality. Just last March, an article in Science, sounded an alert that the Gulf Stream appears to be slowing down rapidly. It could even shut down completely by the end of the century. Now why is that a big deal? Well, the last time it shut down, not all that long ago in geologic time, it triggered an ice age. Bad news for Europe and the American northeast.
Or, if that is too remote a concern, NASA has released its global temperature figures for the first five months of 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/.... Guess what? We're going for another record high, folks. And at the same time, we've been getting all these crazy, extreme, weather events. Might there be a connection? And might it be worthwhile to talk to the experts who could connect the dots?
It's high time for the media to call bullshit on the Republicans know-nothing stance vis-a-vis science and a wide range of other issues. Unfortunately, the very people whose ox stands to be gored own the media. And that is a most serious problem in itself.