Health Scare: When Politics is Entertainment
"When politics is just another form of entertainment," I lamented in a presentation on the 2008 campaign last year, "the first thing that suffers is the truth." And so it is with the incendiary health care debate and so much else of what now passes for political discourse in the United States. Bolstered by flame-throwing right-wing media and complicit Republican leaders, the demonstrably false "death panels" myth refuses to die. New polling shows that the town hall festivals of fury are not only great theater, but swaying viewers clearly enjoying the show against health care reform. Meanwhile, Politico, the Washington DC equivalent of Entertainment Tonight, asks only, "Are Democrats Losing August?"
So what happens when a well-informed citizenry devolves into what Al Gore deemed the "well-amused audience?"
For openers, truth, as the Birther and Deather movements show, is no antidote to the latest outbreak of the herpes-like fear-mongering of the Republican Party. Despite the repeated slaying of the euthanasia beast by Politifact, ABC News and countless others, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and the supposedly moderate Obama negotiating partner Chuck Grassley propagate the myth that the President will "pull the plug on grandma."
And as the New York Times' Jim Rutenberg documented today, the death panel scam hardly had an immaculate conception. In his piece ("False 'Death Panel' Rumor Has Some Familiar Roots"), he concluded:
Rather, it has a far more mainstream provenance, openly emanating months ago from many of the same pundits and conservative media outlets that were central in defeating President Bill Clinton's health care proposals 16 years ago, including the editorial board of The Washington Times, the American Spectator magazine and Betsy McCaughey, whose 1994 health care critique made her a star of the conservative movement (and ultimately, New York's lieutenant governor).
There is nothing in any of the legislative proposals that would call for the creation of death panels or any other governmental body that would cut off care for the critically ill as a cost-cutting measure.
Which hasn't stopped outraged town hall demonstrators from shouting it at tops of their lungs. Along with cries of socialism, communism, fascism and worse, it may be a "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," but it appears to be having the desired effect for health care reform opponents.
As Chris Cillizza summarized in the Washington Post, new surveys from Pew and Gallup reveal that not only are the aggressive town hall tactics and incitements mobilizing the Republican base, they are gaining approval from voters overall:
Nearly 80 percent of Republicans in the USA Today survey said they were watching the proceedings very or somewhat closely and a majority (51 percent) said the town halls have made them feel "more sympathetic" to the views being expressed by the protesters. Just 17 percent of Democrats said the same while 35 percent of independents said the town halls had made them more sympathetic to the protesters' views...
Sixty-one percent of those tested in the Pew poll called the protests "appropriate" while just 34 percent said they were inappropriate. Nearly two-thirds of independents, the critical voting bloc as both parties look to the 2010 midterm elections and the 2012 presidential race, described the protests as appropriate.
In the Gallup polling, 51 percent said that "individuals making angry attacks against a health care bill and what it might do" was an example of "democracy in action" (the Republican argument) while 41 percent called it an "abuse of democracy" (the Democratic argument).
Sadly, among the explanations for these related phenomena (the persistence of the maliciously erroneous euthanasia claim and the seeming approval of town hall thuggery) must be their entertainment value. Just about nothing makes for better box office than the conflict between good and evil. And as I suggested last year, these developments are just the latest signs that the transformation of politics into theater is almost complete:
Politics must now compete with an oversupply of entertainment and information sources, from television, radio, books, newspapers and magazines to web sites, blogs, online video, Podcasts and more. The result is a 21st century "infotainment complex" where politics, news, opinion and entertainment merge. Politics itself is now entertainment, part drama and part competition in a passion play where confrontation, conflict and good versus evil rule the day. The journalistic search for objective truth is replaced by the presentation of ideological clashes with two - and only two - sides.
And that dismal and disturbing trend seems destined to continue. While Media Matters' David Brock was right to point out that now with new media "there is that capacity" to counter "every misrepresentation under the sun" about health care reform, the dynamics of the talk radio and cable news markets may be irresistible. As David Frum, the former Bush speechwriter who coined "the Axis of Evil," concluded in a piece titled, "The Reckless Right Courts Violence":
All this hysterical and provocative talk invites, incites, and prepares a prefabricated justification for violence.
And indeed some conservative broadcasters are lovingly anticipating just such an outcome...
Here's Fox News' Glenn Beck clucking sympathetically that white males are being driven into murderous rage by "political correctness."
Here again is Beck chuckling as he play-acts the poisoning of Nancy Pelosi.
Just yesterday, the radio host Sean Hannity openly contemplated violence--and primly tut-tutted that if it occurs, the president will have only himself to blame.
Hyperbolic accusation and fantasy murder may well serve a talk-radio industry facing a collapse in advertising revenues--down 30-40 percent over the past two years, reports NewMajority.com's Tim Mak.
As revenues dwindle, hosts feel compelled to intensify the talk-radio experience, hoping to win larger audience share with more extreme talk. It's like the early days of the pornography industry: At first a naked woman is thrilling enough, but soon a jaded audience is demanding more and more, wilder and wilder.
For the radio hosts, it's all mostly a cynical marketing exercise. But the audience? Not all of them know better.
Which is exactly right. They're having too good a time just watching the show.
(For the video, slides and notes for the presentation, "That's Entertainment: Politics as Theater in Campaign '08," visit here.)
UPDATE: For his part, President Obama at a Montana town hall meeting Friday declared, "TV loves a ruckus." That came just two days after Fox News cut short coverage of his Portsmouth, New Hampshire event, with Steve Doocy telling viewers, "Any contentious questions, anybody yelling, we'll bring it to you right here on the live desk."
Just yesterday, the radio host Sean Hannity openly contemplated violence--and primly tut-tutted that if it occurs, the president will have only himself to blame.
Sean, of course, won't be actually participating in any violence. A Ken Doll could get his finger nails dirty doing something like that.