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Edited on Fri Nov-12-10 11:33 AM by Kurt_and_Hunter
Mister Stewart thinks it is unhealthy that our national discourse is divided along a partisan/idealogical axis. He suggests that rather than Democrat versus Republican or right versus left, perhaps our discourse should be corruption versus not-corruption.
Okay... so which competing cable network will call itself the Corruption Network? After all, his critique is largely about the mode of discourse, with special emphasis on TV news.
Yes, it would be awesome if we supported good things and opposed bad things. Why didn't anyone think of that before? :forehead slap: And yeah, why don't we see more good news on TV? And why is a mass medium aimed at people of roughly average intelligence not geared for the upper one or two percent?
These are not really sophisticated questions. They are tedious, silly and obvious questions.
I often ask why almost all movies are trash, but I know the answer has to do with market forces so it kind of answers itself... even though I think most movies are trash the universe of entertainment consumers seems to disagree.
Cable news is reactive and polar because people watch cable news to have their existing prejudices confirmed in lively, adrenaline producing fashion.
Now then, why do we divide everything along these party/ideology lines?
Because we have a two Party system. The two parties are like two strings that crystals grow on. There is an infrastructure of binary opposition and a lot of money riding on binary outcomes.
Our discourse reflects a reality.
So if Stewart wants a crusade he should oppose the existence of political parties. (I might join him in that.) Instead of asking why political TV is as vapid, sensationalist and dumb-making as almost all the rest of TV is he might want to oppose every artifact in law or legislative procedure anywhere in these United States that formally acknowledges the existence of Parties.
Nothing in the Constitution acknowledges or abets parties. The founding fathers tried to diminish the role of parties but it didn't work out. To me, a ballot law dictating the order of Party candidates on a ballot is as invalid as a law dictating the ordering of candidates by religion. If people want to form clubs that is their business but there really should not be anything from the government regarding the establishment of parties.
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