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Maybe it's time to amend the constitution so that Ronald Reagan can run for another term. Whatever his other faults, when he campaigned, he never played this year's most popular sport: Bash the Media.
But many other candidates can't resist. They are in fact
ambitious, wealthy people who lust to spend your money and
act in your name. But they want us to perceive them as
high-minded public servants who have been cruelly
victimized by the media.
On one day, we are supposed to believe that a given
candidate has the strength, stamina and will-power to
stand up to the Russians
or make the tough
decisions.
A few days later, that same tough guy is presented to us as a pitiful, hapless victim. The firm-minded, decisive man who could lead the Free World and negotiate warheads with Mikhail Gorbachev somehow manages to get abused by an overpaid anchorman or brutalized by an impertinent reporter.
While our brains may notice this curious contradiction, we pay no heed. Our hearts have welled up in sympathy for the poor, beleaguered candidate, pursued by a baying pack of fiendish reporters.
There might be some merit to this media-bashing if the American press really did harass, pester and annoy candidates.
Did or did not George Bush know anything about the arms sales to Iran and the diversion of the profits to the contras? If he didn't, how can he say that he's been a major player in Washington the past seven years? What did Bush really know about Watergate? Were there dirty tricks at the CIA when he was in charge?
Does the pollution of Boston Harbor tell us how much
Dukakis cares about the environment? Will any people
besides his immediate campaign staff get good jobs at
good wages
if he wins? As for his Massachusetts
miracle
-- was it indeed his skill as an executive that
revived a state's economy? Or was it really a result of the
Reagan administration's increased defense spending, which
put billions of borrowed dollars into Massachusetts?
But I haven't noticed that these questions really get
asked and asked and asked, until there's a sensible answer.
Nonetheless, there remains a widespread belief that the
powerful media go out and grab victims. And so those
victims
retain substantial popularity. Instead of
running media campaigns,
they could conduct
anti-media campaigns.
Put Spiro Agnew on the stump. Those prosecuting
attorneys who were looking into bribery in Maryland
certainly had nothing to do Agnew's downfall. We all know
he was destroyed by the press in retaliation for his
statements about nattering nabobs of negativism.
Another good speaker would be Gary Hart, the candidate
of new ideas.
If the brutal media had not savaged
Hart, America might even now be benefiting from his ethics,
sound judgment and new ideas
-- whatever they are.
All I could ever find out is that the ideas were
new.
Dan Quayle just made the front pages and the evening
news by smiling and waving during a Colorado visit. As a
casualty of a media feeding frenzy,
poor Dan is
apparently exempt from any need to answer questions.
However, his family owns several big newspapers. One wonders just how much of an education or career Dan Quayle might have enjoyed without the profits from those newspapers. And would any of us have ever heard of Dan Quayle if it hadn't been for the media?
Never mind. His satraps can attack the media while the same media carry his prefabricated phrases and contrived appearances into our homes. He uses the press; at the same time, he evokes sympathy because some people think he has been abused by the press.
Is there a contradiction in that? If there is, I'm not going to be the one to point it out. It might start another media feeding frenzy, and then a widespread anti-media backlash of public sympathy, and I'm already tired of feeling sorry for politicians who don't answer questions.
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