On Wednesday, the fact checking web site Politifact deemed a "pants on fire" lie the Republican claim that President Obama planned to indoctrinate America's school children in a broadcast next week. On Friday, press secretary Robert Gibbs rightly noted that presidents Reagan and Bush similarly addressed students in speeches which, as Steve Benen pointed out, actually promoted their agendas on taxes and education. Nevertheless, as ABC, the New York Times and Politico tell us, the "school speech backlash builds."
All of which prompted one blogger to question, "Why do hissy fits succeed?"
The short answer is because politics is now just another form of entertainment.
As we've seen time and again with tea bagger rants over taxes, health care reform, President Obama's birth, grandma's government mandated death and so much more, the mythmaking by conservative pundits and Republican politicians alike is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the successful propagation of right-wing lies. (Minnesota Governor and 2012 GOP White House hopeful Tim Pawlenty is just the latest Republican to question the motivation of an American President speaking to American kids, branding his speech "uninvited.)
That sufficient condition is the devolution of a well-informed citizenry into what Al Gore deemed the "well-amused audience." In a nutshell, political debate is now presented by the media as no different than any other form of amusement.
Sadly, that puts a premium on the entertainment value of political combat. Just about nothing makes for better box office than the conflict between good and evil. And as I suggested last year, these developments are just the latest signs that the transformation of politics into theater is almost complete:
Politics must now compete with an oversupply of entertainment and information sources, from television, radio, books, newspapers and magazines to web sites, blogs, online video, Podcasts and more. The result is a 21st century "infotainment complex" where politics, news, opinion and entertainment merge. Politics itself is now entertainment, part drama and part competition in a passion play where confrontation, conflict and good versus evil rule the day. The journalistic search for objective truth is replaced by the presentation of ideological clashes with two - and only two - sides.
The result, as the distortion of Obama's innocuous speech to kids about the importance of staying in school show, is the legitimization and persistence of demonstrably false claims in American political discourse.
The textbook case, of course, is the Iraq war and the search for WMD. The grim success of the Bush administration's mythmaking and the media echo chamber is staggering. As an October 2003 PIPA survey showed, even after the invasion of Iraq, majorities of Americans continued to believe Bush administration claims about Saddam (Iraq role in 9/11, an alliance between Saddam and Al Qaeda, and Saddam's WMD) all long since proven false. (Unsurprisingly, viewers of Fox News were the most delusional.) And as late as July 2006, fully 50% of Americans still believed the discredited claim that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction.
The same dynamic is at work with the more recent hissy fits of Tea Baggers, Birthers, Deathers and myriad other frothing-at-the-mouth right-wing extremists. Despite the fact that President Obama as promised cut taxes for 98.6% of American working households, furious Tea Baggers fume about no taxation with representation. While 17% of Republicans in an April Pew Research Center survey believed the Christian Barack Obama is a Muslim, a July DailyKos/Resarch 2000 poll found that a stunning 58% of GOP supporters did not believe (28%) or were unsure (30%) that the President was in fact born in the United States.
The numbers are even more alarming - and ironic - when it comes to the health care debate. (Ironic, that is, because of the Iron Law of Birtherism: the birther movement does best in precisely those states where Republicans poll best and health care is worst.) A recent NBC poll showed that majorities of Americans wrongly believe reform proposals on the table would constitute a government "takeover" of the health care system, one which would cover illegal aliens. (A separate Public Policy Polling analysis showed that 59% of self-identified conservatives and 62% of McCain voters responded that the government should "stay out of Medicare," a program which is, of course, run by the government.) The NBC survey also quantified the deather madness: a staggering 45 percent said it's likely the government will decide when to stop care for the elderly.
In addition, as MSNBC noted, viewers of Fox News - a strong predictor of Republican allegiance - were overwhelmingly afflicted by this health care dementia:
In our poll, 72% of self-identified FOX News viewers believe the health-care plan will give coverage to illegal immigrants, 79% of them say it will lead to a government takeover, 69% think that it will use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions, and 75% believe that it will allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing care for the elderly.
In the new infotainment media environment which prizes the entertainment value of political warfare over the search for objective truth, rage, conflict and confrontation make for the best show. The media have simply upended the classic statement from comic Demetri Martin:
"Raising your voice - the next best thing to being right."
** Crossposted at Perrspectives **