Media democracy
Burris, Keith C.
too specific, as though your observation applied to every single member of the group, and too cold, as though you were referring to nothing more than a statistical conglomerate. But refer,...
...I don't expect much of Republicans...
...Though some journalists and political scientists dream of resurrection, I think they are sentimental and mistaken...
...Their reporters, playing the cole of kingmakers, mostly pursue sarcasm and success...
...Yet, one imagines Hart or Mondale on the morning after an electoral defeat waking to ask, "Where's the rest of me...
...What is at stake is not freedom of expression or investigation, but full reign of greed as against the modest amount of power still retained in this country by ordinary citizens...
...This means a new elite must filter out candidates and issues...
...They will not stop commentating...
...The State Department says "killing" is too imprecise for the sort of thing that Central American death squads do to their victims...
...Political parties are dead...
...In any case, the print media has obliged (His Eminence David Cardinal Broder says the Hart-Mondale race is "exciting" and that we will learn "a lot...
...9 Speaking of words, a brief editorial in the February 15 New York Times chided the State Department for banishing the word "killing" from its human fights reports...
...Replying to an editorial on the Indian government's restriction of tea exports, the letter writer solemnly referred to India's "moral commitment to the international tea community...
...Glenn is fading back...
...But, like Goldwater, one senses that both are real persons -- of flesh and blood, conviction, prejudice, pride, and even (imagine...
...That alone is their primary interest: being Number One...
...Ever get the feeling the presidential race is like that famous broadcast Dutch Reagan did back in Iowa years ago...
...The smoke-filled room of a Mayor Daley is gone forever...
...that "generally results in fetal death...
...The networks will not stop selling time to candidates (except third and fourth party ones...
...I personally prefer the current two Democratic frontrunners to President Reagan because as governors either would, i believe, do less harm...
...The one word that never appeared in this story was "kil_9 ling...
...The Republicans may be, by turns, stupid and cold-hearted, but the Democrats are the biggest phonies since Clifford Irving...
...But what really jogged us back to the topic was a letter in the London Economist...
...Quite fight...
...Glenn's movingup...
...Is Hollings coming on...
...in Washington, D.C...
...And mass marketing h la Kennedy...
...Jesse's gaining on Fritz...
...I'm sorry about that...
...Perhaps his message of sacrifice will get a better hearing there now, or in the next session...
...Little old ladies in Malmesbury, an Afghan gun runner in Pakistan, two bookstoreclerks in Toronto, a cabdriver in Nairobi, indeed the entire international tea community was steeping and sipping...
...John Kennedy (in 1960) was the first to sense and exploit it...
...I don't like either major party...
...Perhaps the Democrats will one day elect him floor leader...
...Hart -- after exactly one primary...
...Walter (Fritz) Mondale, the quintessential veep, is now one of them, a "Washington lawyer...
...superlawyers, the Clark Cliffords and Harry McPhersons, and who-have-you's, gathering in elegant dining rooms and discussing nostalgically the Great Society's war on poverty...
...In some sixtyfive inches of text, there were, of course, numerous references to "abortion," the "abortion process," and the decision "to abort a fetus...
...And for purposes of figuring out what kind of a president Hart might be --- which is, after all, the bottom line - - that larger philosphy is a good deal more revealing than a narrow debate about who said what first...
...All the better, we thought...
...Aside from ideals and ideas -- genuine, personal, old, or new -- the real test of a presidential candidate may be wit, which McGovern and Hollings in this campaign seemed to have, and which all the interesting losers of the last thirty years (Goldwater, McCarthy, Stevenson) seemed to possess...
...In democracy, an elite is inevitable...
...Now that is the sort of thing to which one could really make a moral commitment...
...Elsewhere, the same day's Times carded an unusually long and informative report on the problem of late abortions, a problem created by the fact that what was being aborted was the equivalent o f " a highly premature infant...
...The State Department concoction," it e0111orialized, "is particularly repellent . . . . a bloodless abstraction...
...Beyond this, we cannot and should not expect restraint upon the political power of the press...
...i don't know whether Gary Hart has new ideas or not, and I don't know if his ideas are any good...
...I don't know if this is purely because TV covers no sport well with more than two sides, or whether for this particular sport "one-on-one" is simply better video...
...At Academy Award-winning time, we hear a lot about the "motion picture community" (known during the rest of the year as the "film industry...
...No, wait a minute, wait a minute...
...It will end with an article in which some enterprising reporter will list all two hundred-odd proposals that Gary Hart has made over the last four years, and then -- based on God-knows what criteria -- put check marks next to the ones that constitute authentic "new ideas...
...Mondale and Mr...
...But I do know he is not currently running on ideas...
...We have gone from the passions and the interests to the media and the lobbyists...
...There is nothing inherently wrong with elites...
...I do not know an easy way out...
...KEITH C. BURRIS (Keith C. Burris teaches political science at Washington and Jefferson College in Pennsylvania...
...L ~ IIII IIII I IIIII II Election '84 MEDIA DEMOCRACY THE HUCKSTERING OF THE PRESIDENCY I IusT TRY to follow the quadrennial presidential horserace: Last year it was Mondale with Cranston moving out of the pack...
...Hart does talk a lot about new ideas, but he also speaks of "moving forward," "leadership," and "a vision of the future...
...We can, of course, also depend on two -- and only two -candidates in the fall...
...Which brings us back to the media...
...Wait, wait a minute...
...Beyond specific policy proposals, there is, I think, a larger conception of government and politics that informs and explains Hart;s rhetoric and his behavior as a public official...
...We've thought these thoughts many times, particularly during homilies featuring "community" in every sentence...
...T HE ARGUMENT, I predict, will degenerate very quickly...
...Way out...
...Number One" ---- that ought to be the key buzzword for the reigning sportscasters in the news booths...
...Media democracy is too important to allow false spoilers in the final stretch...
...Foggy Bottom prefers the usage "unlawful or arbitrary deprivation of life...
...the debt, when examined structurally, is as much or more their heritage as Reagan's...
...Nixon was the first (in 1968) to clearly enunciate post-party politics as an appendage to advertising...
...M Y OWN FAVORITE Democrats this year were McGovern and Hollings...
...You know, the sound went off, and he had to improvise to keep the attention of the listeners, and to stop them from touching that dial...
...held, is absolutely without justification and an assault upon the franchise...
...political experience...
...The sun never sets on the international tea community...
...that, by dismembering the fetus in the womb, "eliminates any possibility of live birth...
...Number One in ratings...
...Democratic primaries RUNNING ON NEW ISREDEFINING PROBLEMS ENOUGH...
...Hart's about to fold...
...The Times is aot buying that...
...They set the agenda, pinpoint crises, determine the standards for deciding which candidates and what issues may be dubbed "real...
...It's Hart by a length...
...No wonder there's the "gay community" and the "academic community...
...And all those D.C...
...Congress is obliged to show a small morsel of courage here, and prohibit the pre-vote projection...
...McGovern' s a spoiler...
...Hart in the stretch -- he's pulling out...
...The Republicans frighten me most, but the Democrats offend more...
...It's Glenn...
...They are supposed to be corporate apologists and militarists...
...But there is something wrong with unaccountable ones...
...Nah, that's only the columnists and Republicans...
...Number One network...
...Ah, the steam arising from our cup of Earl Grey misted over our eyeglasses, and we had a vision of a worldwide tea time...
...Only heretics like Gene McCarthy or John Anderson fail to understand the grave danger of choice in a game so sophisticated and charged with such electric suspense...
...But we ought to be able to demand less verbal and analytic nonsense and more respect for voters, if not for "truth...
...I doubt I agree with more than 50 percent of what McGovern says, or more than 30 percent of wha~ Hollings advocated...
...i t ' s . . , it's Hart...
...Hollings said he will stay in the Senate which is where independent and competent men of his stature should be, and where not enough are...
...But refer, instead, to the "black community" or the "Jewish community," and there you have something at once warmer, more human, and yet savingly vague...
...The Democratic choice is between two kinds of selling of the presidency: old-fashioned retail huckstering h la Humphrey...
...This latter abortion by dismemberment, admittedly traumatic for those who must witness it, was given its medical label, "dilation and evacuation," or "D and E." Thus one gynecologist says "I do D and E's," although he admits "it is a horrible procedure...
...Rather like old Sam Ervin, Hollings seemed to have character, and though much dedication to what he regards as the good work of politics, some kind of reserve -- an inner life as well...
...But the Democrats do poorly on either score, too...
...Then there's the "intelligence community" (spies) and no doubt the "community-organizing community...
...Though Hart likes to associate himself with John F. KenCommonweal: 198...
...Their second interest -- a distant second -- is in the candidate who "emerges" as Number One...
...Hart, whatever the merits of his platform, has understood the new gameand the new elite, and played them as Carter and Reagan did...
...We got the inevitable two-man race between Mr...
...Certainly declarations of the outcome of elections before they are fact, i.e...
...As a nation, we were never much on political parties...
...For a political press that has often been criticized for ignoring issues, that would be a praiseworthy attempt -- but it approaches the subject in the wrong way...
...Jeez, McGovern's a statesman...
...Cranston fades...
...I'd settle for old tried and true "ideas...
...The new one is unquestionably the press -- with broadcast media dominating...
...At any given moment, it's tea time somewhere...
...Truth is left to Bill Moyers, who is occasionally banished to P.B.S...
...There were references to the merits of an abortion procedure that"eliminates any possiblity that a fetus might live...
...they're coming 'round into the stretch...
...Here comes Jesse...
...Then we recalled that tea time can't arrive simultaneously all around the globe...
...The Number One news organization...
...American political tradition never -- from James Madison to Teddy Roosevelt -- expected the powerful to restrain themselves...
...As corporations the networks pursue money and power as voraciously as other cong~trterates and monopolies do...
...All that hand wringing about the poor and the downtrodden, all that talk about compassion -- when the party establishment is controlled by corporate lawyers, lobbyists, brokers, and real estate developers...
...he is running on the symbolism of ideas...
...Only he can go the distance...
...Watching Hollings withdraw the other day, I had a sense of an unprogrammed and honorable man...
...Mondale is also a faction Bionic: pieces have been gathered from nearly every pressure 6 April 1984:197 group headquarters along K Street or Connecticut Ave...
Vol. 111 • April 1984 • No. 7
