Primarily Speaking…
Both the Democratic and the Republican
primary seasons have been an utter roller coaster ride until this point,
with more twists and turns than a Slinky, more drama than a Danielle
Steele novel. On the Republican side, John McCain is assured the party’s
Presidential nomination. McCain started the primary season largely as an
“oh, he’s running again” candidate, not unlike Delaware’s own
perennial Presidential contender Joe Biden. Mitt Romney touted his strong
conservative views and was heavily favored by far-right Republicans, and
in the end, even never-say-die candidate Mike Huckabee has bowed to
McCain. On the Democratic side, it’s anyone’s guess whether the
nominee will be Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. With all the surprises
and comebacks we’ve witnessed during this primary season, who knows who
our next Commander-in-Chief will be? For all we know, Tinky-Winky will
jump into the Presidential race at the last minute, running on the new
Teletubbie ticket, and wobble his gay way into the Oval Office with Dipsy,
Laa-Laa, and Po as his key advisors.
My big pet peeve during this primary season
has nothing to do with the candidates themselves. The bone I want to pick
is with our media. At the beginning of the road to the 2009 White House,
the media couldn’t wait to shove the subject down our throats, ad
nauseum. Most annoyingly, the media has done a fair job of covering the
stories, but an excellent job of deciding the stories. On the Democratic
side, the media first baptized Hillary Clinton as the nominee, with John
Edwards offering a decent challenge. Then, as Barack Obama captured
voters’ attention, the media quickly ditched John Edwards as an also-ran
before he was much out of the starting gate. The media virtually declared
it a two-person race between “the first black Presidential candidate”
and “the first female Presidential candidate,” with John Edwards
sulking on the sidelines like the other white meat. Candidates other than
Hillary and Obama couldn’t seem to get a word in during the debates.
Next, the media declared that although Barack Obama would certainly sway
some voters, he could never beat the Clinton political machine. “We may
as well call it a day,” they almost said.
On the whole, our media has little
patience, little maturity, and little thoughtfulness of which to speak.
Everyone loves a winner, they say, and this sentiment could not apply more
to our juvenile-minded media. As soon as a candidate jumps ahead in the
race by a handful of delegates, the media labels that candidate the
probable winner and labels the other candidate the underdog, setting
itself up for next week’s big “breaking news” headlines when the
underdog comes from behind…yet again. It makes people want to change the
channel to Desperate Housewives and forget the whole mess. Our media has
stopped reporting on the newsmakers and has become the newsmaker. Our
media does not cover stories, our media creates the stories. Our media
does not report on what is happening, it makes things happen. Our media
does not encourage us to think, our media tells us what to think.
In the last few months, the media has
rolled up its sleeves to beat up on Hillary while rolling out the red
carpet to welcome Obama. Some of this is attributable to plain old
laziness. Hillary’s long public life provides much more fodder than
Obama’s relatively short one. It’s easier to rehash Hillary’s old
dirt than to dig for new dirt on Obama. How many times, in the first
months of campaigning, did the talking heads wonder aloud whether Bill
would be an asset or a liability to Hillary, given the great Monica
Lewinsky incident? The media was more than happy to turn the spotlight
away from Hillary’s proposed policies and onto her husband’s affair
that occurred well over a decade ago and reflected poorly in no way on
Hillary. Once he won eleven primaries in a row, the media has placed Obama
on a pedestal and hung Hillary on a cross. To hear our media tell it, when
Obama was about 100 delegates behind Hillary, he was the shining underdog,
but now that Hillary is about 100 delegates behind Obama, she’s panting
and nipping at his heels desperately. Just the other day, on a top TV news
program, the lead story was, of course, the Demo-cratic primary race. For
about two minutes, the reporter rambled on and on about Hillary’s
campaign woes. What was the day’s big (and only) news in the Obama camp?
He danced for Ellen DeGeneres again.
All
this being said, and a thousand thoughts on this topic being unsaid, what
do I ask our media to do? Let the race run. That’s why it’s called a
race. Stop giving me poll after poll until I could build a skyscraper.
Stop smearing one candidate while canonizing another, then reversing their
positions the next week. Stop drowning me with “breaking news” that
it’s raining in a state where they’re holding a primary. Stop making
me dizzy by interviewing a “senior political analyst” in the middle of
the TV screen, running a ticker across the bottom of the screen, and
posting a real-time picture of the Dow Jones index in the bottom
right-hand corner. Stop creating headlines by crowning someone the winner
because one super-delegate switched sides. And don’t even get me started
on the super-delegates. Let them vote however they want. It is not their
job to vote along with “the people.” They are appointed as
super-delegates due to their party leadership, their longstanding devotion
to Democratic Party ideals, their immense behind-the-scenes knowledge, and
their commitment to nominating the candidate who has the best chance of
winning Novem-ber’s general election. We probably have the most powerful
media in today’s world and in world history. It’s time that our media
shouldered the responsibility that comes along with that power. As gay
people, we know all too well the demonizing and darling-making powers of
the media.
Eric
can be reached at anitamann@comcast.net.
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