Games without fronteirs
O.K., enough debate analysis for now. I'll leave it to the pros.
Comparative advantage and all.
Which, of course, dictates that I should serve up the blog equivalent of low-cost raw materials or textiles, perhaps to later be repackeged and distributed with a great deal of value added.
But my real comparative advantage here is that I haven't watched American TV for like three or four years. Seriously. I followed the entire primary season via the web (never saw the Dean scream) and I haven't seen a single TV appearance by any of the major Bush team players (not Cheney, not Rumsfeld, not Powell or Rice, not McLellan or Fleisher, nobody). I've never heard Edwards speak. In fact, before the debate, I'd only heard Bush and Kerry speak once each: Kerry at the convention, and Bush a few hours after the 9/11 attacks (dubbed into Spanish, watched over the heads of a barful of Argentines, in Buenos Aires). My entire sense of the candidates, of the campaign, of the Bush presidency, comes entirely from print. Believe it or not.
So tuning into the debate was a real shocker. To my untrained ears and eyes, the whole spectacle was just bizarre. On the one side, a clearly intelligent and thoughtful man trying very hard not to sound nerdy or know-it-all (like Gore did) and surpress or severely muffle deeply held convictions (that internationalism makes the U.S. safer, say, and even still he probably said too much). On the other, a man willfully misrepresenting a muddled chaos of his own design as a simple, uplifting, and essentially biblical narrative, also of his own design, and utterly unhinged from reality. Both sides ran through a series of what appear to be de rigueur set pieces designed to prove that they possess certain character traits (personable, human, sympathetic, family man, regular guy, understands sacrifice, etc.) that are themselves de rigueur for eligibility to public office. Both men went through more or less subtle but complete transformations when given the chance to speak into the camera (with teleprompter) for the last two minutes. But throughout an undergirding fear seemed to inform every instant of bothe men's performances: everything you say, everything you profess to stand for, every gesture, every intonation, in sum your entire person will be cut up into little bits, quoted out of context, misrepresented, used against you, and it will be the result of that process that will decide who won.
Kerry said later that it felt great to break out of the 30-second sound-bite box and be able to lay his ideas out, and it showed. But he still seemed like a man boxed in. I mean, were the debates really anybody's idea of rhetorical freedom? Just ask yourself this: did either of these two men sound anything at all like two normal human beings discussing ideas, policies, history, etc.? Is this the way that any American who is not running for president talks? Maybe I am out of touch, but what struck me was the complete artificiality of the dialogue. And of course it is artificial: the Republicans mastered a way of framing issues and encapsulating them in five to fifteen word chunks, repeating them ad nauseum, and then sending out armies of shills to talk about these chunks as though they were obvious and indubitable aspects of reality (e.g. Gore has a lying problem, Kerry has a "medals" problem).
Now the Democrats are beginning to catch up, which is great to see (though Kerry has a congenital disadvantage in that he sincerely is interested in policy issues, and so must find a way to pack actual, complex ideas into a nice easy to swallow capsule, where for Bush, the packaging either is the policy (Stay the Course), or else bears no substantive relation whatsoever to the actual agenda (Clean Skies, No Child Left Behind), allowing for total creative freedom.) Again, it's an enormous relief to see the dems finally learning how to play the game, but what kind of game is it? Is being the better player of this ugly contest of marketing, of constructing and defending a simplistic and ultimately dishonest image, of manipulating the press, of appealing to the worst in the electorate, and above all, of shouting loudest, is this even remotely acceptable as the test for who will run the country? Worse, now that the dems are learning to play, will anybody ever take action to change the rules? Is this really the final destiny of modern democracy?
Comparative advantage and all.
Which, of course, dictates that I should serve up the blog equivalent of low-cost raw materials or textiles, perhaps to later be repackeged and distributed with a great deal of value added.
But my real comparative advantage here is that I haven't watched American TV for like three or four years. Seriously. I followed the entire primary season via the web (never saw the Dean scream) and I haven't seen a single TV appearance by any of the major Bush team players (not Cheney, not Rumsfeld, not Powell or Rice, not McLellan or Fleisher, nobody). I've never heard Edwards speak. In fact, before the debate, I'd only heard Bush and Kerry speak once each: Kerry at the convention, and Bush a few hours after the 9/11 attacks (dubbed into Spanish, watched over the heads of a barful of Argentines, in Buenos Aires). My entire sense of the candidates, of the campaign, of the Bush presidency, comes entirely from print. Believe it or not.
So tuning into the debate was a real shocker. To my untrained ears and eyes, the whole spectacle was just bizarre. On the one side, a clearly intelligent and thoughtful man trying very hard not to sound nerdy or know-it-all (like Gore did) and surpress or severely muffle deeply held convictions (that internationalism makes the U.S. safer, say, and even still he probably said too much). On the other, a man willfully misrepresenting a muddled chaos of his own design as a simple, uplifting, and essentially biblical narrative, also of his own design, and utterly unhinged from reality. Both sides ran through a series of what appear to be de rigueur set pieces designed to prove that they possess certain character traits (personable, human, sympathetic, family man, regular guy, understands sacrifice, etc.) that are themselves de rigueur for eligibility to public office. Both men went through more or less subtle but complete transformations when given the chance to speak into the camera (with teleprompter) for the last two minutes. But throughout an undergirding fear seemed to inform every instant of bothe men's performances: everything you say, everything you profess to stand for, every gesture, every intonation, in sum your entire person will be cut up into little bits, quoted out of context, misrepresented, used against you, and it will be the result of that process that will decide who won.
Kerry said later that it felt great to break out of the 30-second sound-bite box and be able to lay his ideas out, and it showed. But he still seemed like a man boxed in. I mean, were the debates really anybody's idea of rhetorical freedom? Just ask yourself this: did either of these two men sound anything at all like two normal human beings discussing ideas, policies, history, etc.? Is this the way that any American who is not running for president talks? Maybe I am out of touch, but what struck me was the complete artificiality of the dialogue. And of course it is artificial: the Republicans mastered a way of framing issues and encapsulating them in five to fifteen word chunks, repeating them ad nauseum, and then sending out armies of shills to talk about these chunks as though they were obvious and indubitable aspects of reality (e.g. Gore has a lying problem, Kerry has a "medals" problem).
Now the Democrats are beginning to catch up, which is great to see (though Kerry has a congenital disadvantage in that he sincerely is interested in policy issues, and so must find a way to pack actual, complex ideas into a nice easy to swallow capsule, where for Bush, the packaging either is the policy (Stay the Course), or else bears no substantive relation whatsoever to the actual agenda (Clean Skies, No Child Left Behind), allowing for total creative freedom.) Again, it's an enormous relief to see the dems finally learning how to play the game, but what kind of game is it? Is being the better player of this ugly contest of marketing, of constructing and defending a simplistic and ultimately dishonest image, of manipulating the press, of appealing to the worst in the electorate, and above all, of shouting loudest, is this even remotely acceptable as the test for who will run the country? Worse, now that the dems are learning to play, will anybody ever take action to change the rules? Is this really the final destiny of modern democracy?
posted by Benjamin Lessing at 5:30 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home