I’m trying not to use this blog to talk about politics much. My wheelhouse, if I have one, is art and my own idiosyncratic life experiences. But I have been on a non-leisure trip so far this week, and when travelling is one of the few times I listen to a lot of cable news because, at least until now, I listen to it as background in my hotel rooms.
Somewhat self-righteously, literature majors say they prefer the type of news that “stays news.” James Joyce has a famous “episode” in his sprawling fictional work Ulysses where he compares the news business to a bag of winds that repeats cliched phrases and rhetorical tricks. Joyce may have been biased because he gave up the possibilities of both the priesthood and journalistic writing.
Back when I watched much cable news, I thought MSNBC was leftish-biased but interesting, CNN was more neutral but weirdly repetitive in its news judgment (as if it was just creating content loops for airport-lounge and hotel-lounge TVs), and Fox was of course conservative but at least intellectually honest. I think the basic problem with all three of them was Ted Koppel’s kind-of-damning comment in an interview with Bill O’Reilly: “you’ve taken a business [ie., the news industry] that was objective and boring and made it subjective and interesting.”
I’m going to be 50 next week and think I have reached a “grumpy old man” phase where I no longer want to give radical liberals my attention. I think Winston Churchill said something like, “if you’re young and totally conservative, you don’t have a heart; if you’re old and totally liberal, you don’t have a brain.” The programming, opinions, and agendas promoted on CNN yesterday made me think that even as a platform for opinions, the network just isn’t being honest.
I am hardly a political expert, but if the Democrats promote the concerted destruction of fossil energy industries (and associated jobs and tax revenue), argue that non-legal immigrants who commit additional crimes should be given another chance in the US, take the side of sometimes violent protesters over police authorities, and propose–or even really entertain–the idea of multi-trillion-dollar reparations for events of more than 150 years ago (I know it’s more complicated than that but not as complicated as some who are given disproportionate airtime on CNN are saying), I think that they are going to lose again in 2020. And the idea that Trump, for all of his flaws, is responsible for the latest coronavirus or George Floyd’s tragic death won’t make sense to most people who are honest. Biden seems like a decent person (but not terribly smart and not as sensitive as he thinks he is). He isn’t the Democrats’ problem. It’s their ideas. Harris seems okay to me too. Anyone who gets as far as she has, has a few issues in their past. Whatever.
I have been trying for most of the 21st century to get out of politics and the business world in favor of art and education and am still trying. But as one of my very liberal friends says, being apolitical is dangerous.