My Kingdom For A Functioning Media

One thing that drives me mental is trying to understand why political pundits become political reporters, when they clearly just want to be sports reporters. In politics there are vital issues and ideologies and competing interests to sort through, but all establishment media reporters want to write about is how issues help or hurt a various candidate or party. And when that horse-race stuff becomes boring, due in some part to their incessant babbling about it, they feel inclined to move on, but not to policy considerations or drawing differences between candidates, but to relentlessly personal and meaningless pieces of information.

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz has weighed in with a long piece today on the fact that the press is lavishing a huge amount of attention on Hillary's laugh.

Kurtz explains this phenomenon thusly:

"The subtext here is that the media have collectively decided that the wife of the 42nd president is the inevitable nominee and a good bet to become the 44th Oval Office occupant. Lacking much of a horse race, since Clinton has maintained a 20-point national lead over Barack Obama all year, journalists are resorting to a classic general-election question: Are Americans ready to have this woman in their living rooms every night for four years? Are they comfortable with her personality? Do they like her voice?

Plus, examining her personality quirks is more fun than deconstructing her stance on Iraq."

It may be "more fun," but determining the leader of the free world isn't a fucking sandbox. "More fun" is less critical than "more important." Furthermore, the absolute smugness of a media collectively deciding that Hillary Clinton will be President (and therefore it's time to tear her down personally) is a bit too much to bear. There's a chicken-or-the-egg argument here: did the media decide this because of Hillary's ascendence in national polls, which are of dubious value anyway, or did the insistence of the media that Hillary's nomination is inevitable lead to that ascendence?

There's no question that Hillary Clinton is the frontrunner for the nomination. There's no question that the national polls have been static. But these facts don't give the media carte blanche to spin off into deconstructing her LAUGH because they're bored. What are they, 6? In this time of global turmoil, you're telling me there's nothing more compelling to write about?

Apparently, Jon Stewart slammed Chris Matthews last night about his book, which applies this stupid gamesmanship to actual life. I haven't seen it yet. But I do know that we can't afford another election cycle with a media that acts like a bored adolescent at the mall. Something tells me that Pravda would be better than this.