Dichotomies

While there's some disagreement as to exact numbers, current surveys show that Americans still receive more of their news from television than any other source. The Internet is certainly making inroads, but so is cable, so TV's overall leadership remains firm.

What also hasn't changed is the lament about how shallow 'news' coverage really is on TV...particularly when it comes to substantive discussion of politics and issues. Part of this is TV's fault. The amount of pure crap masquerading as news seems to rise every year. But part of it is endemic to the medium. A typical feature story on the front page of the New York Times couldn't be entirely read out loud by a TV anchor inside an entire half hour broadcast...even if they removed all of the commercials and the sports and weather blather.

So when TV news executives are persuaded to devote precious content to things that really matter, they reactively turn to dichotomies...the simple either/ors that comprise the dumbed-down shorthand of issues coverage. They're familiar to everyone:

Liberal / Conservative
Winner / Loser
Rich / Poor

Sometimes there are developments that require the creation of new dichotomies, to help 'explain' (and therefore trivialize) important issues. For example, the emergence of news as diverse as the 9/11 attacks, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement quickly attain their own dichotomies:

Security / Terrorism
Common Sense / Intellectual
Big Government / Lower Taxes

The fact that each of these examples contains loaded words that set up false comparisons is testament to the power of the right wing to manipulate the broadcast airwaves...but that's a topic for another time.

What's baffling is how, given the knee-jerk reaction to establish the either/ors, broadcast ignores the one that explains the most about America--not just now, but always:

Government / Business

With all of the empty words dedicated every year to the idea that America succeeds because of the natural inclination to moderate between polar opposites, virtually nothing is said about the need to have these two preeminent social forces--free market and regulation, in other words--balance each other. This is the dichotomy that matters most...and is considered least.

However, once in a long while a smart person (in this case, Robert Reich) will clearly make the case:

Anyone with an ounce of sanity understands government is the only effective countervailing force against the forces that got us into this mess: Against Goldman Sachs and the rest of the big banks that plunged the economy into crisis, got our bailout money, and are now back at their old games, dispensing huge bonuses to themselves. Against WellPoint and the rest of the giant health insurers who are at this moment robbing us of the care we need by raising their rates by double digits. Against giant corporations that are showing big profits by continuing to lay off millions of Americans and cutting the wages of millions of more, by shifting jobs abroad and substituting software. Against big oil and big utilities that are raising prices and rates, and continue to ravage the atmosphere.

If there was ever a time to connect the dots and make the case for government as the singular means of protecting the public from these forces it is now. Yet the White House and the congressional Dem’s ongoing refusal to blame big business and Wall Street has created the biggest irony in modern political history. A growing portion of the public, fed by the right, blames our problems on “big government.”

Ronald Reagan, the most overrated of all U.S. Presidents, achieved sainthood with the far right when he assumed our highest office with the assertion that, "...government is not the solution...government is the problem". That was the equivalent of announcing, "gentlemen...start your engines" at the Indy 500. Reagan firmly seated big business behind the wheel, and we all witnessed the inevitable multi-car pileup that extended through all eight years of the younger Bush's illegitimate reign.

Broadcast news is not comfortable dealing with this ultimate dichotomy...the thought that there actually is a role for government to counterbalance the natural predatory nature of corporatism. On one hand, the people avoiding this conversation are themselves employees of huge corporations, so their self-interest is not surprising.

But moreover, dealing with this essential counterbalance would inevitably lead them to the ultimate dichotomy...the one they can never allow themselves to tackle:

Right / Wrong