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Hey Media Elites–Your Time’s Up |
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What do Bill O’Reilly, Chris Matthews, George Will, Tim Russert, Armstrong Williams, Rush Limbaugh, Cokie Roberts, and George Stephanopoulos have in common? Some are supposedly on the “left”, some on the right, most are white and male (which is also important, though not what I’m focused on here). If you click on each name, you’ll see what my point is: they’re all extremely wealthy multimillionaires, members of a privileged media elite.
It’s not surprising that, during a recent pseudo-debate, George Stephanopoulos focused on trivia rather than the issues that ordinary Americans care about and are troubled by. He has no idea what ordinary people care about, and is light years removed from their day-to-day realities. Ordinary Americans don’t receive multi-million dollar advances to write their memoir, they aren’t paid huge salaries to offer their opinions on cable TV or in op-ed columns. The pundits/personalities (I’ll call them “media elites”) I listed spend a lot of time opining on what it means to be “elite“. I guess they are qualified to talk about that, given their privileged status at the very pinnacle of American society. It is laughable, however, for them to hypocritically sneer at the elitism of the candidates they talk and write about from their own extremely privileged vantage points.
What does this wealthy, privileged, elite corps of journalist-pundit-princes choose to focus on? Trivia, irrelevancies, gossip, distractions–anything other than the issues that ordinary Americans actually identify as priorities. Little or nothing about what should be blockbuster stories about the White House approving torture or the Pentagon orchestrating a propaganda campaign.
The historian Gordon Wood has observed that 18th century European military officers in opposing armies often had more in common with one another than with the rank and file soldiers they led. Similarly, media elites have far more in common with the wealthy candidates they gossip about and constantly mingle with than with working Americans. Our current media framework is something like having Louis XIV’s courtiers assigned to “cover” royalty and predictably spending their time gossiping about court intrigue having nothing to do with the lives of ordinary people.
Ok, so there’s a problem–wealthy, mainly white, mainly male, media elites who are wildly out of touch with the cares of ordinary Americans dominate the public airwaves and focus the national conversation on utter irrelevancies. What’s the solution? Reality TV of course.
I’m (sort of) being facetious. I’m not a big reality TV fan, but I’m assuming that’s the way someone would pitch my idea to television: put ordinary people on the air to talk about the issues they, and millions of Americans, think are most important to the presidential election. I’m not talking about a focus group shepherded and reined in by Frank Luntz. I mean 4 ordinary people having a free exchange on CNN for 30 minutes (I think they can find the time somewhere). Start slowly–maybe once a week. And be sure not to let the ordinary people become elites themselves–no huge salaries for these non-elites. (That ought to appeal to TV networks — they can save big bucks if the idea works). It’d be interesting to see and couldn’t be worse than seeing media elites repeat tired talking points and make basic mistakes of fact.
