Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Democrats as Television Characters

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In the arena of personality, Paul Krugman gets closer to the truth in his June 8 column, “Lies, Sighs And Politics” where he points out that the policy positions of candidates are a better view into their characters than the theater criticism that passes for campaign coverage. Bush was deceptive early and often with his tax cut proposals — a prelude to his later and larger deceptions on Iraq. Had the media focused on that policy issue, the public would have had a better view of Bush’s personality than the contrived masculinity with which he regaled us.

It is not enough anymore for Democrats to be right on the issues. If the media are stuck on the narrative of effete gender-bending Democrats versus nice-smelling, fight-winning manly Republicans, we Democrats are accepting a handicap difficult to overcome.

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    • The stats you point to seem to suggest that it is indeed “few” when compared to the numbers thirty years ago.

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      I would suggest also that included in that 54% are exclusive readers of tabloid rags like Star, the Enquirer and the Weekly World News.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I would wager that the amount of people that are getting current events rather than celebrity gossip from newsppers is less than that 54%.

      • It’s amazing how progressive documentaion is spot on accurate, and everyone else’s is contrived, supposition,
        innuendo, doctored or plain ole BS.

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        Fascinating.

    • I have plenty of friends who start with the Sports section and work their way towards Sudoku, but couldn’t tell the difference between Scooter Libby and Libby Dole if you spotted them the S-c-o-o-t.  Are they among the 54.1%?

    • …have you actually read newspapers from other parts of the country?  I have, and in even large markets such as San Francisco, they are almost invariably brain-dead.  God help the people who are reading newspapers in Cincinnati or Ft. Myers FL. 

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      Even the Washington Post and NYTimes are questionable–lots of words, little content having anything to do with reality.

    • Concurring with sco, Wookie, and raj, the problem is that for a smaller and smaller portion of Americans is the newspaper a source of, well, news. Americans watch an enormous amount of television.

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      One might be dubious about statistics on newspaper readership coming from the newspaper industry. “Do you read the newspaper?” is a bit like asking, “Are you informed or an ignoramus?” “I’m informed, sir, I’m informed.” So you want a methodology that somehow circumvents the human desire to claim more virtue than practiced. Were these “Facts About Newspapers” as collected by the newspaper industry so careful back in 2004? Did they have an incentive to be so careful?

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      Even if 63% of Americans still read the Sunday papers and 54% still read the weeklies, that means a very large block of our population is learning about what’s going on in our world from that part of the news that is not Paris Hilton, sports, and extremely witty repartee about weather. This is compounded by the odd fact that Americans don’t seem to believe newspapers as much as television and that newspapers are losing money, closing, and downsizing. There are no more afternoon newspapers or afternoon edidtions.

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      There are signs too of our nation being too under-informed for that debate about the issues our Founding Fathers envisioned in the eighteenth century. Why do so many still believe that Iraq had a connection to 9/11? Or that the Estate Tax might affect them?

      • But many people know that the estate tax probably won’t affect them, but hope that it will, or will affect their children.

        • Did I misread your “dunno”?

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          Are you unconvinced by the argument that Saddam and Al Qaeda regarded one another as mortal enemies and by the lack of evidence linking the two? In neo-con us-them world, both Al Qaeda and Saddam were “thems” and so were allied — either practically or effectively. In the real world, Saddam was an obstacle to re-establishing the caliphate so dear to Bin Laden’s heart. Neither was about to aid the other as neither was that suicidal.

          Alas, many people do imagine that their children will become tycoons or celebrities or both. Sometimes hope is poison.

          • Dunno about [why people believe there is a connection between] Iraq and 9/11.

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            Answering the question posed at the end of the immediately preceding post.

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            Alas, many people hope to be wealthy? Hope is poison?  That sentiment is political death.  I’m surprised to see you write it so blithely, since it presupposes the perpetual gloom that has made liberalsim a spent force for the better part of four decades now.

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            I remember my grandmother– an immigrant who came to NY about 90 years ago– relaying an anecdote that seemed to capture the difference between Americans and Irishmen.  I’m sure the story is not original, and do not know the source, but find that it captures the gulf that has opened between the portion of our family that is American and that which remained in Ireland.

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            An poor Irishman walks by the palatial manor of a wealthy landlowner and enviously thinks: “I’d like to burn that house to the ground.”  A poor American walks by the same house and enviously thinks: “I’d like to be able to buy that house.”  The optimism of the latter makes a pretty big difference, and in no small measure is why this country has had an immigration debate for the past 150 years.

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            And I find it curious to note that you equate the having of wealth with being a “celebrity” or “tycoon.”  Both terms totally loaded with moral disapproval. I don’t necessarily hope that my kids are celebrities or whatever it is you mean by “tycoon”; I sure do hope they do better than I do, and well enough to qualify for the estate tax.  Sheesh, I hope I will, though I have a long ways to go.

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            The estate tax applies to estates worth more than a certain amount:  it used to be $1M, and might be up to $2M if it is not repealed.  This is not a lot.

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            Accumulating a million dollars, or even two, does not a tycoon make.  Upper middle class, and may not even that.  A great many people on the coasts who worked “working class” jobs and bought a house forty or fifty years ago are now nearly all the way there just because of the appreciation of their house alone.  A little savings account and boom, they’re there. 

            • Well, yes, hope is a particularly good thing. Having recently read Seligman’s Learned Optimism and other assorted stuff from the world of Positive Psychology, I cannot disagree with that. On the other hand, there are people, lots of alcholics, for example, who suffer from a kind of grandiosity. A relative of a friend of mine is falsely convinced he is rich, a belief at once amusing, false, and oddly comforting to the relative. Hope fulfills multiple functions, most of them good.

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              I think how liberalism expresses its goals for individuals and societies gets muddled. When we talk about societies where exactly half the children are above average, we can sound very dour indeed. We want to do right by the below average children and we accept that they exist.

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              On the other hand, to every individual child — below average or not, it is essential to hold out the hope of that little person excelling.

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              I truly think liberals try to do both and try hard to do both. Conservatives tend to hear everything as it relates to individuals. (Do conservatives even “believe in” sociology?) The result is something that sounds very dour, full of extra excuses and fatalism, but I think that’s just mixing up social prescription with individual prescription.

              Of course, I load my words. I want them to go pop! I wanted to emphasize that some hope really is false and illusory. As Seligman points out false and illusory can be really good. Good marriages, per him, are characterized by partners who overestimate one another’s good qualities. Sometimes, though, as studies have shown, pessimists evaluate stuff more accurately.

              Sorry about the Iraq commentary.

      • Is a moron!

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        I realize that Leno’s “man on the street” segments may be the worst of the worst; however, conversely I am of the suspicion they are the best of the best.

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        Ask allegedly intelligent people just out of the ordinary questions re whatever and they have no idea what you are talking about.

        • The avergae American Is a moron!

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          I suspect that at least some avergae Americans know how to spell “average.”

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          I realize that Leno’s “man on the street” segments may be the worst of the worst; however, conversely I am of the suspicion they are the best of the best.

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          Actually, I suspect that there are two dynamics going on with Leno’s segments.  One, they select them for comedic value.  Two, they encourage the interviewees to spoof.  The better the spoofers, the more the comedic value, and the more likely that they’ll be on national television.

        • Ask allegedly intelligent people just out of the ordinary questions re whatever and they have no idea what you are talking about.

          You have empirical data here?

    • An entire continent of the Left Blogosphere consists of nothing but fields of snark well fertilized by the pretensions to toughness and “masculinity” of right-wing posseurs like PowerLine, Victor Davis Hanson, and Instapundit.

  3. Rudy is wimp who got in the way on 9-11, Romney is incompetent and dishonest, and the McCain picture hugging Bush speaks for itself. 

    • Ya.

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      Dick Cheney doesn’t give a crap who gets in his way. You get in his line of fire and you’re going to catch a bullet. Ergo, No one above the level of VP is allowed to hunt with Cheney.

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      Going back to the original premise. Is it real or imagined?
      Have democrat candidates actually become feminized? Interesting hypothesis.

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