The legendary football coach Vince Lombardi once famously wondered, “What the hell is going on out here?” Lyndon B. Johnson was our president back then. The national minimum wage held steady at around $1.50. Forty years have passed, and our country has moved in an entirely new direction. Yet by the looks of our electoral process, one has to wonder if that new direction is leading us off a cliff.
Have you been keeping pace with the presidential primaries? If so, chances are you’re literally palpitating with excitement right about now. And you’re not alone. Election season got off to a wild start with the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses. Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee secured the most votes, and on both sides of the aisle celebrations were held in honor of the two new favorite sons.
Then all eyes turned to New Hampshire. And the landscape changed once more. But you know this already. Who am I kidding? Upwards of 8 million people tuned in to CNN, Fox and MSNBC to watch the New Hampshire primary. Eight million! That’s a lot of people with nothing better to do.
I should apologize. This is a serious issue with widespread ramifications for the future our country. And yet I’ve managed thus far to pepper this column with trite aphorisms and a weak sports analogy. I should apologize. But I won’t. CNN started it. After all, just how compelling can a process be that amounts to a state-by-state show of hands popularity contest? Apparently as compelling as cable news companies think will keep people watching.
There’s no better way to get people to watch three hours of nothing than by likening it to everyone’s favorite three-hour pastime: football. That’s what CNN was thinking when on Jan. 1, anchor Suzanne Malveaux welcomed viewers to “Ballot Bowl ’08.” Fox News was thinking the same thing when it unveiled Super Sunday: a day of politics and football.
Ballot Bowl? Super Sunday? What the hell is going on out here? Television needs to stop turning politics into a ratings game. When the media treat our elections like a horse race, that’s exactly what it becomes. And when politics is a horse race, the people are usually first to be thrown off the wagon.
Maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way. That so many viewers have tuned in this far can only mean democracy is well and thriving. Where’s the wisdom, though, in getting your blood pressure all jacked up over something you could easily find out about on the nightly news, or read in the newspaper the next morning?
I can’t go on any longer without confessing to my hypocrisy. I was among the 8 million poor souls who tuned in to watch each development unfold in slow, agonizing real time. So why did I devote multiple hours to watch – hours in which I could have been out making my community a better place? I can’t say for sure. It’s probably the same emotionally inexplicable reasoning that compels people struggling with their monthly bills to buy a ticket to Burning Man each and every year.
Looking ahead to the rest of this young election season, one can only imagine what tricks the cable news networks have up their sleeves. It’s fitting 2008 is the year of the rat; I smell one in the room right now. I hope it isn’t the intention of anyone, at FOX or CNN or anywhere else, to turn our elections into a game. But looking at that decked-out CNN election newsroom just made me want to play Battleship.
When people stop demanding better, our electoral process devolves into a high-strung dog and pony show. Which is dangerous, especially when you think about that whole ‘future of our country’ business. Someone with a knack for the spoken word once said, “Politics is not a spectator sport.” Nowhere is this more evident than in the way the ’08 election has thus far been covered. Responsibility lies with us not to settle for less. We have to stand up and fight for our right to have our leaders address the issues that affect us daily. The state of democracy may very well depend on it.
Too bad the cameras will be long turned off by then. Oh well, there’s always 2012.
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