I admit it. For as long as I can remember, I have had crushes on the Big 3 Nightly News men. Ok, not so much Dan Rather, but definately Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings. I grew up watching the ABC World News and was drawn to Jennings' sexy Canadian accent and never-graying hair (thank you, Just For Men). Anyway...last night on C-SPAN (the best channel in the universe, by the way), they ran a panel discussion from this weekend's New Yorker Festival (eat your heart out OzzFest!) featuring Rather, Brokaw and Jennings (*sigh*) commenting on the media today. It was midnight and I found myself interrupting my falling asleepness to jot down notes. That's how interesting it was. Hell, I even clapped along with the audience after several comments. I wish I could relay all of the good points they made, but I just can't remember them all. So, I'll cut to the chase and discuss some of the points I wrote down.
First off, I was rather impressed with Dan Rather admitting that he wished he had asked tougher questions around the time of the beginnings of the Iraq war. He also admitted that he wasn't tough enough to handle being labeled unpatriotic had he decided to go against the majority national opinion of the time and pressed the more controversial issues. Of course, he has been doing a lot of "admitting to being wrong" lately, so maybe this was just something he needed to get off his chest while he was at it. But, either way...it kinda goes to show how strong the pressure of the word "patriotic" is and how it can alter the actions of even our most distinguished journalists. There was an interesting opinion piece on CNN.com last week about the word "patriotism"
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/28/patriotism/index.html Basically, "patriotism" is now an ideology rather than a physical showing of one's love for his/her country. There's no denying it, unless you happend to have been deaf for the past few years, that the word "patriot" has been thrown around and misused like a cheap whore (yeah! over-used analogy!!). To be called "unpatriotic" today seems to have a similar stigma attached to it as being called a "Communist" must have had during the years of the Red Scare (hmmm, Vietnam/"Communist": Iraq/"unpatriotic"...again, hmmm). The words "patriot" and all it's family members, are now buzzwords, like Weapons of Mass Destruction or Terrorism. Words that have lost their true meanings due to overuse by politicians who cater to the dumbing down of America by restricting their vocabulary to 3-4 keywords. Two years ago, when our current Iraq situation was becoming more than just an idea being thrown around Congress, to disagree with the war was "unpatriotic." In fact, ever since 9/11, to disagree with the government and the power of America was a bad thing. I can remember, on Sept 12, how much I was hated when I disagreed with students in my classes who said we should bomb the hell out of Afghanistan. Was I being unpatriotic by trying to view the situation from a more global point of view than some other people? Was I being unpatriotic in March 2002, when I sat with skeptism (sp?) watching a black and neon green nightvisioned Baghdad explode on ABC, wondering why it was happening? Am I being unpatriotic now by still not totally agreeing with the way we went about this war and wanting the President to be more clear on what's going on? If you choose to look at things in black and white, as it seems many Americans do, than yes, I am very unpatriotic.
On another note, going back to the Big 3 panel, Tom Browkaw also made a point about how there should be more debates during presidential elections. I agree. I think there should have been debates for at least the past 2 months. 3 presidential debates are not enough (especially if they are going to all be non-debates as last week's was). There should also be more attention paid to them by network TV stations. The presidential election is the most important thing going on in our country right now. More important than who is going to be "fired" or refuse to eat cow testicles on "Fear Factor." There should be more news specials that air in prime time everywhere in America focused solely on the issues and educating people about where each candidate stands, factually, on each issue. Sure, it's not as exciting as watching the Bachelor make out with all the contestants in one show, but, Jesus, it's pretty damn important. It's not fair that the only people who are able to get extended political coverage are those who have enough money to afford cable.
I could go on about this for another 9505096 paragraphs, but I'll refrain seeing as probably only one of you reading this has actually gotten this far without falling asleep or getting lost in my ramble.
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