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We have just lived through a rather eventful couple of weeks in the evolution of how we deal with reform and with race in the United States, and mass media have played a noticeable role in that history.
First came the note in my 8-year-old son Jason's school backpack. The President was scheduled to address American schoolchildren via television. The note said that Jason's school was allowing teachers to decide whether or not their classes would watch the President's address. To my relief my son's teacher, the wonderful Mrs. Schmidt, did show the address. And Jason proudly came home from school telling the tale of how he met a challenge on the playground that day by using President Obama's advice. Score so far - media-supported paranoia: 0, Mrs. Schmidt: 1.
Next came the President's address to Congress on health care reform where a statement of policy was met by South Carolina representative Joe Wilson shouting, "you lie" at the President from the floor of Congress. I watched the President handle the situation as he always does - with admirable restraint and perseverance.
A few days later came Rush Limbaugh's commentary about a fight on a school bus between two teenaged boys - the puncher was Black and the punchee White. Limbaugh said that in "Obama's America" Black kids beat White kids up as Black kids watch and "chant ‘right on'." Limbaugh's ramblings brought to mind the overwrought townhaller who days before had cried and wondered where "my America," had gone as I wondered if her America was more about keeping her insurance company safe from reform or if it was about a certain portion of the population coming to terms with a Black president beneath a cloud of media fear mongering.
As the New Yorker's Hertzberg put it: "This sort of lunatic paranoia-touched with populism, nativism, racism and anti-intellectualism-has long been a feature of the fringe, especially during times of economic bewilderment. What is different now is the evolution of a new political organism, with paranoia as its animating principle. The town-meeting shouters may be the organism's hands and feet, but its heart-also, Heaven help us, its brain-is a ‘conservative' media alliance built around talk radio and cable television, especially Fox News." Hertzberg argues that in the weakened state of the Republican party, a certain portion of the movement listens not to its elected leaders, but to the likes of Rush Limbaugh.
For me, this period of fits and starts in mediated politics ended suitably with President Obama's appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman. In an era where the "comedians" are infinitely more palatable and sane than some of the "journalists," Letterman asked Obama to comment on the possible role of racism in the opposition to reform, to which the President quipped that one has to recall that he was Black before the election. With those words, the President, in my mind, effectively called the fringe the fringe, reminding us that the images of the overwrought in the media don't represent the strong majority who elected him with a desire for change in mind - change both in the history of how we deal with race in America and change in politics. For me, the President's demeanor and Letterman's made a sharp and welcome contrast to the agitated and agitating media extremists. The drama queens may get our attention in the same way that we stare at a train wreck. And reminiscent of the old news adage, "if it bleeds it leads," sideshow journalism may garner ratings. But in the end, though the sideshow gets noticed in the media, it's the mainstream that won the election and the more balanced in the media who reflect the will of the majority.
Bibliography
Hertzberg, H. (2009, Sept. 21). Talk of the Town. Comment: Lies. The New Yorker. Retrieved September 22, 2009 from http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2009/09/21/090921taco_talk_hertzb…
