I haven’t been following along closely this weekend—who can keep doing that and have a life?—but the bits and piece of media that I’ve taken in (from all over: TV and blogosphere) reveal something fascinating: the MSM (from Chris Matthews to George Stephanopoulos to Howard Kurtz and their panels this morning) now says that there’s no way that Hillary can win.
Indeed, Kurtz quoted a Politico story that says the press has been misleading the public (and “partnering with the Clinton campaign”) by even pushing the notion that Hillary and Obama are in a close race.
Meanwhile, there are ever more detailed dissections, analyses, and speculations being presented by Obama dissenters who do not appear on TV but who offer much more nuanced ways of assessing him than what he offers freely to his adoring audience in the media elite and beyond.
[Nnow that we're down to two contenders, it's turned into an unending last episode of Survivor. They’re eating rats and they’re frying bugs, and they’re frying rats and they’re eating bugs; no one is ever going to get off the island and I can’t take it any more.
Got that? Nora wants Hillary to get out because Nora ends up spending too much time thinking about Hillary, who Nora no longer likes.
And that’s funny, because I was thinking just the opposite.
Barack is unquestionably the hero of this story—placed there by a media that bought in to this ready-made narrative (and who wouldn’t? it’s perfect!).
Photo by Getty Images
Hillary is unquestionably his nemesis.
We’re rooting for him (who wouldn’t, when the media frames him as the Kid Who Came Out of Nowhere?).
Until she begins to fade.
And then the electorate in New Hampshire and Ohio comes through for her, and the opposition tries to wear her down.
And yet, the more appetizing they try to make him,
the more we find ourselves clapping for her as if she were Tinker Bell.
Because we’re having so much fun!
Because the outcome is totally unpredictable. It’s the very essence of (melo)drama! No one knows what will happen.
Her continued presence holds out the promise of a surprise ending!
The script hasn’t been written!
He may be the hero of the story, but she provides the best drama.
(And for those of you who are politically inclined rather than romantically taken with this delightful entertainment: the hero of this story has nowhere to go but down, but the nemesis can only improve with time …)
In her acceptance speech, Hillary said she’d found her own voice. Interesting. I wonder what that will sound like. (Terry McAuliffe is already spreading the meme.)
I have several reasons for being pleased with the results of tonight’s Democratic primary:
Hillary Clinton’s victory felt to me an awful lot like a repudiation of the mainstream pundits who spent the entire weekend first dumping all over her and then playing the “Hillary in tears” tape on practically a continuous loop yesterday.
Yep, that’s a good one. Here’s an even better one:
Hillary’s victory should amp up Andrew Sullivan into even greater feats of CDS hysterics than we’ve seen so far. If that’s possible. In any case, he seems to thrive on a state of constant agitation and stomach-churning nausea, so I figure Hillary’s victory is probably good for him.
Best of all, this is a win for America (I mean that all of it—including the highly contested and jam-packed campaign, the many debates, the incessant infotainment-heavy media coverage), because people are showing an increased interest in the political process.
And that, dear readers, is why I think that Infotainment Rules! (It grabs your attention—sometimes even in the public interest and to the benefit of our vibrant democracy.)
I’ve been re-reading Daniel Boorstin’s classic 1961 work of social criticism The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America(which is extraordinarily fresh and insightful for a 45-year-old book, by the way, but that’s a topic for another day).
Underlying Boorstin’s thesis of a mid-twentieth-century American populace transfixed by images is his notion that advertising—or any kind of marketing—succeeds by holding up a mirror to potential customers and offering them an enticing, image of themselves (more on this another day, but let’s just say for now that advertising is about fantasy-fulfillment).
Now, along comes the NYT’s Elisabetta Povoledo to tell us that Italians are transfixedby a six-part TV biopic, “The Boss of Bosses,” because the mirror it holds up to its audience shows a somewhat less than flattering image of itself [e.a.]:
“Italy has always been fascinated by the Mafia, by its personification of evil,” [a reporter] said in a phone interview.
Another possible explanation for the popularity of “Il Capo dei Capi” may be that it goes beyond mere storytelling and puts Italy in front of an unflattering — if engrossing — mirror of itself. It suggests that if Mr. Riina became the most formidable and feared mobster in Italian history, it was thanks to the collusion of political and economic forces at various levels of Italian society.
“It’s not fiction — it’s a real story that tells 50 years of Italian history, and it names names,” said Pietro Valsecchi, who produced the series. “It tells us just what sort of country we have been living in, it shows us the complicity of the state, it puts the Mafia in our face.”
There’s some evidence for the notion that its roots in reality drive the popularity of the series:
“The Sopranos,” the HBO drama about Italian-American bad guys, never caught on here.
The producer gets the last word [e.a.]:
Fictionalizing reality may be the best way to educate Italy’s distracted audience, Mr. Valsecchi said. “Italians don’t read newspapers — they barely glance at headlines. But here they’re getting the full story, with all its implications.”
Well, he gets the next-to-last word. I get the last word, which is a minor amendment to Mr. Valsecchi’s proposition: Fictionalizing reality is a way to infotain an audience—that is, to capture its attention. But let’s not get carried away. That is different from educating the audience.
In the Carter years, the United States was an international laughingstock. This was not just because of the prevalence of his ghastly kin: the beer-sodden brother Billy, doing deals with Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi, and the grisly matriarch, Miz Lillian. It was not just because of the president’s dire lectures on morality and salvation and his weird encounters with lethal rabbits and UFOs. It was not just because of the risible White House “Bible study” sessions run by Bert Lance and his other open-palmed Elmer Gantry pals from Georgia. It was because, whether in Afghanistan, Iran, or Iraq—still the source of so many of our woes—the Carter administration could not tell a friend from an enemy. His combination of naivete and cynicism—from open-mouthed shock at Leonid Brezhnev’s occupation of Afghanistan to underhanded support for Saddam in his unsleeping campaign of megalomania—had terrible consequences that are with us still. It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that every administration since has had to deal with the chaotic legacy of Carter’s mind-boggling cowardice and incompetence.
How very gratifying.
Last week he was even better. Hitchens let loose about Jerry Falwell, calling him, among other things, a toad: Via: VideoSift
"Even in the most civilized societies the demagogues are
always in wait, ready and testing. They are indefatigable and we will never entirely prevail over them. And that is OK.
But if we stop resisting them, they will prevail over us. And that is not OK."
