Millionaires like Tim Russert and Brian Williams just don't get it.
So last night there was another grand debate. To their credit, the candidates spent the first half hour discussing health care in detail. This greatly disappointed the moronic moderators—Tim Russert and Brian Williams—and disappointed the sensationalist media. The media has declared health care, and the debate in general, boring.
I observe this fact: the national media is full of very wealthy reporters. Television—and the advertising revenues that come with it—have resulted in multi-million dollar a year salaries for blow-hards like Russert and Williams. They have health care, they’re independently wealthy, and they will never have to face the situation of being sick and not being sure how you’re going to pay for your medicine. Of course health care is boring to them; not so much for people like me who depend on it to survive.
The media declared that the most interesting portion of the debate was when Minister Louis Farrakhan’s kind statements about Barack Obama were clumsily brought into the debate by Russert. It was interesting and new to the sensationalist press. Russert interrogated Obama on his choice of the word denounce (synonym from my thesaurus: Damn) instead of the word reject (synonym: Deny). The argument centered over whether reject (which implies denying a service) or denounce (which implies you’re telling a person to go to hell) was the stronger word.
Hillary Clinton, sensing a petty opening, went head long into the muck and said, "There's a difference between denouncing and rejecting." To which Barack Obama wisely pointed out the absurdity of the argument by saying, "I don’t see a difference between the words, whichever one you’re more comfortable with." As a person of Jewish heritage, I agree with this Jerusalem Post column, which points out that Obama is no friend of Farrakhan and a strong friend of Israel.
And so we have it, the wealthy press has declared this idiotic moment the most interesting and substantive moment of the night. The press doesn’t have to worry about health care. People like Russert and Williams—who have houses, note the plural—don’t have to worry about their mortgage payment. And they certainly don’t have to worry about the high cost of a college education when they send their kids to Ivy League Schools with $40,000 per year tuition.
Meanwhile, in the rest of America we could give a rats ass about this discussion. It doesn’t help me find a job; I could make $40,000 a year, but nobody wants to employ me because I also come with a $2,000 per month insurance premium and a potential for serious long-term health problems. (For the moment I am insured through the state of Maryland’s high risk pool where I pay $157 a month for a good health insurance plan; I am one of the lucky ones). It doesn’t help the neighbor down the street who is a paycheck away from losing their house. It doesn’t help the person who worked at the steel plant in Pittsburgh for twenty years only to see his job be relocated to Juarez, Mexico after NAFTA was signed. It doesn’t help the father who coached Little League, saw one of his players graduate from high school, enlist in the military, go to Iraq, and come back with both legs blown off and PTSD.
Real Americans have really serious problems. The press doesn’t understand the phenomenon of Barack Obama. They don’t understand how he can appeal to so many people. I observe that he’s appealing to people precisely because he doesn’t play the same old petty political games the press loves. He’s appealing to people because he’s actually speaking about the real issues—Iraq, the economy, trade, health care, and education—which effect Americans every day. I observe that Obama is viewed to be genuine because he’s only a few years removed from maxed out credit cards. He’s been there, and he understands the problems Americans face. That—not the out of touch media or politicians who play the media’s favorite games—is what we, the owners of the Republic, want this year.