Globe’s Yvonne Abraham (who otherwise is decent) really put the capper on a season of media whining: This Senate race is so BORING! I can really do without this. Joan Vennochi, on the other hand, notes that something that matters has been discussed:
It’s not cowardly to insert the massacre in Newtown, Conn., into the country’s gun control debate. It’s cowardly to leave Newtown and its victims out of the discussion.
Well alrighty then. Sounds like this race matters. Can a race turn on a hot-button issue like assault weapons — and still be boring?
Seems to me that the paper of record should be asserting itself in the race — advocating for the public on behalf of a set of issues that the public — and perhaps even just the paper itself — deems important. That’s journalism that inserts itself into the political discussion, that makes certain issues unavoidable. It pains me to say it, but the Herald has done exactly that with regard to the EBT/welfare issue: Uncovering abuses, and confronting the political culture with them. There’s no reason why the Globe et al couldn’t have done this with any number of issues — driving the agenda, and really making the candidates respond. Instead, most of the campaign coverage revolves on what the campaigns are saying about each other. The tail wags the dog.
Let’s add a few more things:
- Ed Markey will vote and work to strengthen the Affordable Care Act. Gomez will vote to destroy it. Is this a big deal?
- Ed Markey wrote the global warming bill that actually passed the House in 2009. Gomez will do nothing; and if he’s anything like Scott Brown, he’ll actively work against legislation to deal with this immense problem. Does this matter?
So why are our jaded observers bored? Perhaps a couple of things:
- The guy with a 37-year record of legislating isn’t slick; and the good-looking fellow with the nice bomber jacket isn’t substantial. Therefore YAWN. I suppose this race have been less BORING if we had one candidate accusing the other of being, say, insufficiently Cherokee. Would it have been thereby more MEGA-STUPID? Yes.
- The substantial, non-slick guy supports majority positions in Massachusetts on a lot of the issues, and the nice-looking bomber jacket fella isn’t. This poses a problem for media types who are trying hard — properly — to reserve judgment and cover the race neutrally. But after a while there really isn’t that much to say: MA voters don’t like assault weapons; they like choice. If those are the issues that the race will turn on, then the arguments play themselves out pretty quickly.
Now, credit where credit is due. Here are WCVB’s Janet Wu (one of the best) and Ed Harding, acting like their work matters:
If you think politics should resemble the Jerry Springer Show, then yeah, this special election has been boring. On the other hand, we may be about to elect someone who is the most substantial, most experienced, most effective — and sometimes visionary — Senate candidate from our state in a few generations.
No, I don’t find that boring. In fact, I’m pretty damn stoked. Tuesday night can’t get here soon enough.
forget that news doesn’t happen for their entertainment.
…and went beyond slogans, messages, soundbites and gave up mourning the loss of the Super Signifiers like “Truck!” and “You Betcha!” that make other races so much more interesting!
Honestly, I CAN”T actually imagine it.
Here is my favorite “miscoverage”- the housing bubble.
If you were reading the right blogs by 2005 the signs were everywhere- not only anecdotal but also charts and graphs. The anecdotes themselves were pretty powerful- fraud, crazy flippers (people who bought 20 homes for $1000 down each) and even some people talking about the coming fiasco in collateralized mortgage obligations. The stories were building for the next three years as everyone wondered when things would pop.
What did the mainstream press report? “Local housing price up X%, we talked to local RE agents and they said it’s a great time to buy or sell a home” Boston Magazine jumped in with the “Eastie, Chelsea and other marginal areas are now hot. Buy there!”
This was the time for solid reporting. There was evidence and a public service needed to be performed. Nothing (or nothing in enough quantity to resonate) was put out there in any form.
When the crash came “everyone” was surprised. But the information was out there and easy to find.
Of course they find it boring. It would take too much work to find it interesting.
Boston Magazine piece in about 2006 on “what $1 million gets you” (not much in the areas they profiled). They closed with a warning that, in the blink of an eye, all this would be $2 million.
I had friends — not financial whizzes, just people who worked on the administrative side of mortgages — who were predicting it years in advance. Massive failure of everything, including press.
who was not involved in mortgages at all, except that he bought a small house he could afford with 20% down instead of the mega-mansions the mortgage people kept trying to steer him toward. And when the **** hit the fan he was able to keep that house. Lucky for him he stuck to his guns instead of trusting the “professionals.”
The race exposes the fact that when one candidate descends into a content-free campaign, except for silly attacks, we will have a campaign that can appear to be the least compelling.
I can assure Mr. Keller that Markey supporters are compelled to be knocking on doors in the worst mid-day heat long into the evening.
If Mr. Keller, as a journalist. doesn’t see anything compelling at stake in this race that’s troubling.
“Compelling” and “entertaining” are not the same thing. I find putting a decent, hardworking, experienced, and progressive legislator into the U.S. Senate compelling. And I’m still trying to figure out how Ed Markey winning the seat is more “ominous” than if John Kerry had finished the term and been reelected in 2014 with 65%. And if the situation in Idaho and Wyoming is equally “ominous.”
Mr. Keller’s real problem, I suspect, is that he doesn’t think the candidate from his preferred party is up to snuff.
I want to vote already, dammit Janet.