Getting honest

Andrew Sullivan points me in the direction of an excellent discussion of media and politics by James Fallows, of the Atlantic Monthly, from 1996.

Why Americans Hate the Media.

So many good highlights from this article:

"The discussion shows that are supposed to enhance public understanding may actually reduce it, by hammering home the message that issues don't matter except as items for politicians to fight over. Some politicians in Washington may indeed view all issues as mere tools to use against their opponents. But far from offsetting this view of public life, the national press often encourages it. As Washington-based talk shows have become more popular in the past decade, they have had a trickle-down effect in cities across the country. In Seattle, in Los Angeles, in Boston, in Atlanta, journalists gain notice and influence by appearing regularly on talk shows--and during those appearances they mainly talk about the game of politics.

...When ordinary citizens have a chance to pose questions to political leaders, they rarely ask about the game of politics. They want to know how the reality of politics will affect them--through taxes, programs, scholarship funds, wars. Journalists justify their intrusiveness and excesses by claiming that they are the public's representatives, asking the questions their fellow citizens would ask if they had the privilege of meeting with Presidents and senators. In fact they ask questions that only their fellow political professionals care about. And they often do so--as at the typical White House news conference--with a discourtesy and rancor that represent the public's views much less than they reflect the modern journalist's belief that being independent boils down to acting hostile.

The limited curiosity that elite reporters display in their questions is also evident in the stories they write once they have received answers. They are interested mainly in pure politics and can be coerced into examining the substance of an issue only as a last resort. The subtle but sure result is a stream of daily messages that the real meaning of public life is the struggle of Bob Dole against Newt Gingrich against Bill Clinton, rather than our collective efforts to solve collective problems.

The natural instinct of newspapers and TV is to present every public issue as if its 'real' meaning were political in the meanest and narrowest sense of that term--the attempt by parties and candidates to gain an advantage over their rivals. Reporters do, of course, write stories about political life in the broader sense and about the substance of issues--the pluses and minuses of diplomatic recognition for Vietnam, the difficulties of holding down the Medicare budget, whether immigrants help or hurt the nation's economic base. But when there is a chance to use these issues as props or raw material for a story about political tactics, most reporters leap at it. It is more fun--and easier--to write about Bill Clinton's 'positioning' on the Vietnam issue, or how Newt Gingrich is 'handling' the need to cut Medicare, than it is to look into the issues themselves."

Fallows' takes reporters to task for their pettiness and their focus on power at the expense of resolving critical public problems, which they deserve in a serious way, if that ABC News Democratic Debate illustrates anything at all.

But the truth is that Fallows lets citizens off the hook. The truth is that citizens not only consume politics like it is entertainment, they encourage this kind of behavior among journalist and among politicians, because it is easier for everyone, not just journalists, to play politics like a game than it is to engage the serious questions of what directions on serious issues will actually get us somewhere other than on-going power battles that go nowhere.

The same could be said of teachers. And students. And parents. Almost all of the citizens I have contact with, at some level. People are constantly trying to avoid the substance of life in favor of its cheaper alternatives. Schools have a million different ways that they undermine the substance of education. Terry Moe and John Chubb fault, rightly, I think, district bureaucracies for this tendency. But the truth is that it isn't just the district bureaucracy. It's everyone. Teachers and students, both, often avoid sustantive learning in favor of less substantive alternatives, at the university level as much as at the K-12 level. It's the single biggest fact of school life and political life that drives me up a fuckin' wall. And exactly why I'm seriously considering doing something else for a living.

Obviously we can do better than all of this.

What has really floored me and what I was not, in the least, prepared for before I left grad school, was how little people are willing or interested in engaging serious discussions about issues, engagement that takes differences seriously and considers them honestly as well as their alternatives, and thoughtfully reflecting on pathes that transcend our endless political and culture wars.

Most people are not terribly interested in such discussions, I am concerned and in my experience, often, because the discussions seem too difficult, the honesty is too much for them to handle, the thought too complex, and the obsession with power is too tempting an alternative to such engagement, no matter how much and how long throughout humanity's history it has always failed to resolve much of anything at all.

Humanity obviously has it in us. The truth is that most people don't really want to be better and engage more honestly much of the time, sadly, because they feel like its too hard, it's too much for them to handle, it's just not the expectation they want to have for themselves or for one another.

It could be. It needs to be. Because the alternatives are so fuckin' shitty and clearly counterproductive, if we'd just get honest about that fact.

But getting honest is what everyone is avoiding.

And yet that is the only way that any genuine progress lies.

We can do it. The question is will we do it, not can we do it.

And the verdict on that question is still out.

I sure as hell hope we make the right choice.