What is it about today’s politics that spawn only the worst possible behavior in people?
Along with the rest of you, I too have been watching events unfold during the current elections in the U.S. and Canada. So far, it seems to me, the dark side is winning.
Two evolutionary factors have now come to be standard fare in North American elections.
The first is that those seeking office will stoop to any tactic to not only win, but also to utterly crush and destroy their opponents. No accusation is too outlandish, no lie too small and no rumor too debased not to be trotted out and celebrated. One would think the 21st Century would produce more enlightened behavior.
Every irrelevant subject is targetted for attack, from a person’s looks and weight, to their childhood misadventures, their parents’ weaknesses, their hometowns, religion and shoe size. Of course, these all have to be negative to qualify for coverage.
In the U.S. I take the case of Sarah Palin, whose misogynistic detractors will stop at nothing to see she does not get a real chance at the White House. The only thing that matters to them, Democrat and Republican alike, is that the only woman they wanted to see running was Hillary Clinton.
The Democrats made a huge mistake in not having Clinton on the ticket with Obama and they knew it as soon as the Republicans chose a woman to run for the office of Vice-President.
It is humorous to watch the back-biting feminists suggest Palin should be at home cooking brownies for the kids instead of working outside the home. Sounds like the 1950s are back.
But isn’t only Palin. Any woman chosen by the Republicans would be attacked, abused and slandered in the same manner.
Before going into the media’s role in supporting the hate-campaign against Palin, the situation is not any better in staid, old Canada.
A couple of incidents come to mind. The most recent is the attack on Stephen Harper for having been duped into using a plagiarized speech produced by a campaign staff member who has resigned.
Normally this would be a mere footnote to the campaign, nothing but something to chuckle over. But to hear the likes of hapless Stéphane Dion and that leftist little man from Toronto, Jack Layton tell it, you would think Harper committed some kind literary genocide.
These people, who are obviously in the loser’s circle this time around, are so desperate to find something, anything to pin on Harper that they have stoop to ludicrous levels. They are obviously playing the old Barrel of Monkeys game if you are old enough to remember it.
And then there’s the worn out “hidden agenda” fear mongering that helped keep Harper from a majority the last time around. I think the only hidden agenda can be found in the Liberal camp whose members are probably anxious to get back to the pork barrel and funnel more money into advertising or similar scams in Quebec.
Fomenting all of this, and loving every minute of it, is the so-called national or major, media in both countries. The process in shifting away by media from information to manipulation has been a slow but relentless one.
I do not like to generalize on this issue since there are many, many media outlets that do not subscribe to the antics described below. I deal with many editors and reporters who will not allow themselves to be used for partisan purposes or who genuinely attempt to be accurate and fair.
Generally I find the television newsrooms to be among the worst offenders in Canada. Some of their coverage is blatant while others are more subtle. In my opinion I find the Global National broadcast to be among the worst offenders.
Global has been shrilly hanging on to every word on the speech-gate nonsense. Early in their story they blamed Harper for generating the plagiarized speech and only at the end of the item did they trot out the real perpetrator, a speech writer who admitted Harper knew nothing about it. Sadly, facts do not enter into much of Global’s coverage.
The second item that comes to mind with Global is its coverage of the economic woes unfolding in the United States. To hear them tell it, Canada is in the same boat. The sky is falling! Stuff your money in your mattresses! In reality Canada has not reached the same point. I don’t know about you, but I had to put up 30 per cent of the cost of my home from my own resources to get a mortgage.
Then there’s the good old Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, more commonly known as the CBC. This is the publicly-owned network that brought you the hateful ranting of Heather Mallick who called Sarah Palin white trash.
It was only through exposure given that story by Judi McLeod in Canada Free Press that enough of a backlash developed against that bit of journalistic trash to elicit a rare apology from the CBC.
As to print outlets, you won’t find much in the way of unbiased political coverage in The Toronto Star. It is easily outclassed by The Globe and Mail, the Sun group and The National Post. Across the border I think the New York Times is among the leading offenders along with any number of television outlets.
I now whisk you away to the United States where a large chunk of the media now links criticism of Barack Obama to racism. I knew at the beginning this card would have to be played. This, of course, is nothing but an attempt to silence the vast majority of white voters in the country.
Obama generally gets more coverage from the television outlets and more favorable coverage both by commission and omission. He also gets less, if any, critical scrutiny I wonder what kind of coverage he would get if he was a woman, especially a black woman, with children?
I also haven’t heard anyone criticizing his choice of suits, ties, shoes or underwear. Does he wear boxers or something else?
The coverage of Sarah Palin is disgusting, intrusive, ugly and conspiratorial. Once the votes are all counted it will be interesting to sit back and hear what the media critics have to say about their performance during the election. At the moment they are generally silent.
Interestingly, it seems to me, the focus of the media and the Obama camp in the United States, is to silence the majority of Americans when it comes to examining the merits or failings of Barack Obama.
And they may well remain silent, at least until they step into the secrecy of the polling booth, take a deep breath, and choose for themselves who will lead them. That is the essence of democracy.
