catapult magazine

The democratic party is blaming Rush Limbaugh for its most recent political losses. Tom Daschle expressed concern a few days ago that Rush Limbaugh and “Rush Limbaugh wannabes” are setting dangerous trends in American political discourse. The former democratic majority leader urged democratic liberals to get involved in radio to turn the tide back in favor of the Democrats.

Daschle is concerned that politics and entertainment are getting confused. Limbaugh says that Daschle is trying to undermine his show by calling it merely entertainment. Entertainment, Rush says, has always been mixed up with politics and is a high calling. People need entertainment, that’s why we love Jay Leno and David Letterman’s political jokes. Rush also says that if Daschle had his own radio talk show, Daschle would certainly demonstrate just how unentertaining politics can be. What is the proper relationship between politics and entertainment?

Regarding my statement:

Many people might not find a “Gergenesque” debate entertaining. In such a case, we may criticize a television audience. But there’s also plain old “bad television”, which tries to stick a University of Chicago professor on a 12 o’clock local news show to discuss the centuries-long complexity of the conflict in the Mid-East. In this case, I think an audience can tell that such a segment does not fit in a television context, but belongs in the classroom.

I don’t want to blame television for what it’s not responsible for. If the American people are reducing their idea of “entertainment” to short sound-bites, incessantly clever quips and an obligatory laugh track every 30 seconds, then television is not to blame; PEOPLE are to blame. Sure, these are characteristics of television, but they do not have to be characteristics of entertainment. We must make this distinction between
1. entertainment that makes good television but is contrary to the spirit of God
2. entertainment that makes bad television but is consistent with the spirit of God
3. entertainment that has nothing to do with television and therefore should not be forced to follow television’s rules for what is entertaining
(Daschle might be expressing concern along the lines of the 3rd distinction. He seems to be complaining that politics is pressured to follow television/radio rules for what is proper dialogue in a political context.)

It seems like we in the Christian community do not always make these necessary distinctions when it comes to entertainment in its various contexts. I know I’ve said this before, but we often tell Christian children not to watch tv when we should be teaching them how to watch it better (of course, many children watch tv better than their parents already, which is a problem). If we tell our children to avoid television because it’s evil, they will never learn to put television in its proper place among other entertaining things like thunder storms, bumble-bees, candlelight, books, radio, theatre, long talks into the night….

I understand how politicians would complain that they have to reduce their message to soundbites and “quotables.” However, what’s so bad about that, to an extent (please note the qualifier)? Instead of saying the same thing five different ways, the media forces them to get to the point. I don’t expect in-depth analysis on television or radio, really. Newspapers are a different story, however. I think there’s room to improve there. Longer, more in-depth stories on issues and leaders would be nice, but it’s not going to happen unless the average newspaper reader stops telling publishing focus groups that they never read past the jump or even the first paragraph. My journalism instructors and then editors stressed the importance of grabbing the reader in the first paragraph. I think this often leads to oversimplification of the points, the attempt to sex things up a bit and just plain bad reporting.

Politicians are not one-dimensional objects, as Jonner thinks I think they are. What I do think (and, to a great extent, know) is that successful leaders can boil politics down to a formula, no matter how complex the issues, just as I’m sure we all know how to do our jobs efficiently or inefficiently based on how we go about them. If politics can’t be boiled down to a formula, then what merit does the field of psychology hold? People, their motivations, desires, etc. can basically be boiled down themselves. For example, political reformers cry for no more negative campaigning, people act disgusted. But negative campaigning still works. There’s something psychological going on there and campaign strategists tap into that.

My comments about Tom Daschle merely reflect this belief – that Tom Daschle makes no comment without a political purpose and that Tom Daschle’s inner child is not really that hurt by what Rush Limbaugh said. Believing politics is a strategic game does not indicate I think the players are one-dimensional. Quite the contrary.

just to wrap up a bit

So it looks like the big difference, then, is that you don’t hink we’ve reached that point, while I do think we’ve crossed the line. Is that accurate?

No, I definitely think we’ve crossed the line. I was playing devil’s advocate. I mean, sometimes I’m grateful for the enforced brevity of television news because it forces people to get to the point. Most of the time, however, it’s just banal blather. But I always get shivers of delight whenever someone is interviewed and they make an intelligent observation in the allotted amount of time (30 sec.). It’s like seeing Haley’s Comet.

Is it reasonable to expect news, commentary, and political discourse (whether a talk show or not) to be both interesting and at least attempt to be truthful? The thing that has always bothered me about R.Limbaugh is that he seems to care little for the truth of the matter and all about the spin. Can’t truth be interesting too? Or is the notion that since no one expects him to be truthful, there is no reason for him to be.

Because he does lie a lot, right?

I think the truth sits somewhere between what Rush Limbaugh says and what his opponents say.

Yeah, this is the heart of our problem. What makes soundbites any less truthful than long-winded commentaries? What makes an “entertainer” like Rush Limbaugh less truthful than a “politician” like Daschle?

We can’t just point to cold hard facts or scientific evidence to say that Rush is wrong 98% of the time because such evidence is open to interpretation. If objective truth is a lie, then, all we have is someone else’s story or spin on the facts. And who decides what is or is not a “fact”?

I tend to like Limbaugh’s perspective on this issue more than Daschle’s apparent position because Limbaugh is straight up about his biases and wants politicians to fess up to theirs as well. I think Rush would agree that he spins things his own way but spinning a story does not automatically equal “lying”.

Fine, sound bites aren’t necessarily less truthful, but they are more simplistic. In politics, where everything is spin, stating issues as soundbites is dangerous because it doesn’t begin to cover how complex issues can be. “Iraq has weapons. Weapons bad. War now.” It’s these succinct statements that most people encounter, and if that’s all people hear….
and, yes, liberals have their platitudes too. “Corporations bad.”