Comments
by Donavan Hall, Ph. D.
| Perception
and Complacency
Contrary to what you might
believe about the Presidential election and its aftermath, the election
was decided on Nov. 7. The sideshow that we witnessed was little better
than a media stunt. The entire situation was arranged to maximize viewer
attention to corporate advertising. A crazy idea? Let me explain. |
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Why do you think the Republicans
were so mad when the media prematurely called Florida for Gore? If Florida
had gone for Gore, then Gore would have been declared the winner, the President-elect.
Had that happened the entire scenario that played out in the days after
Nov. 7 would have been reversed. The Democrats would have been playing
the stalling game while the Republicans worked to spin the story to change
the public perception that Gore had won.
The election was decided
on Nov. 7, because the Republicans knew that if they could plant the idea
in everyone's mind that Bush was a handful of votes ahead, then he was
the lawfully elected President. Trying to overcome that perception would
prove impossible for Gore. What role did the media play in all of this?
At 9 pm Eastern, the perception was that Gore had the Presidency sown up.
He had taken Florida; he won all of the close, battleground states by significant
margins; he had won everywhere he needed to win.
At 9 pm, in a bar in downtown
Tallahassee (where I was watching the returns flow in on four different
TV sets) people were toasting, celebrating Gore's victory. Then a hush
fell over the crowd. The media announced that the race in Florida was now
too close to call. But was it? By the end of the night it certainly looked
like Florida was too close to call. What happened? The events that took
place on the night of Nov. 7 will probably never be fully known.
What we do know is that people
in Bush's campaign got on the phone and instructed the media to put Florida
back in the "too close to call" category. The media complied. Why? The
story that the public heard was that an exit polling outfit that collects
data for all the networks sent out inaccurate information. Did it?
On the morning of Nov. 8
what the public heard was the corporate media collectively beating its
breast and crying "Mea culpa! We will never let this happen again!" The
official story was that the media jumped the gun. The result of the media's
apparent self-criticism deflected any public inquiry into the one question
that needed asking: How did George Bush Jr manage to come from behind and
show an almost 2000 vote lead the morning after?
The answer to this question
should be obvious to anyone who followed the ensuing legal battles over
recounts, butterfly ballots, illegally altered ballots in Martin and Seminole
counties, and the systematic disenfranchisement of blacks and other minorities
by antiquated, error-prone voting machines. By some estimates, anywhere
between 20,000 and 500,000 potential Gore votes were thrown out due to
various voting technicalities.
Was there a conspiracy or
was this just a case of honest to goodness incompetency and human error?
We might never know. The point is this: the media wasn't talking about
the voting irregularities or the possible illegalities, the media focused
on a set of irrelevant questions. How would Gore react to the news of Bush's
apparent victory? Which legal battles would Gore support? Which would he
distance himself from? Would Gore be caught in any electoral inconsistencies?
How would Gore counter accusations from the Bush camp that any recount
of votes would not be fair?
Why did the media systematically
focus on these wrong questions? Why did they content themselves with reporting
Gore's reactions to Republican spin, rather than investigating the real
issues? Laziness. Complacency. Reporting about Gore's tactics, reactions,
and his standing in the polls is much easier than doing some hard hitting
investigative reporting. Getting at the truth is not simple. It takes work
and persistence.
The corporate media has no
interest in investigative reporting because its cost is too high. Not just
in terms of human effort, but in terms of access. By going after the truth,
the media would be certain to anger someone important. When Gore conceded,
we didn't hear anyone in the corporate media saying that this was a sad
day in American history. We didn't hear any of the talking heads say that
the Supreme Court's decision was a miscarriage of justice and that the
people of the US had been robbed.
The media eagerly accepted
Gore's concession and Bush's triumphal emergence as the new head of state.
They were eager to accept this because ratings were falling. People were
getting tired of hearing about "endless recounts" (even though there never
was a proper recount). The corporate advertisers were getting restless
for a change of subject matter to keep the infotainment consumers happy.
So what's the fuss? Why should
we make a big deal about this? Besides, there is not substantive difference
between Gore and Bush, Bore and Gush, Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dummer? Right?
The big deal is the argument made by the Supreme Court. According to their
opinion, there is not right of suffrage, the people don't have a right
to vote anyway. This strict interpretation of the Constitution is technically
correct if we want to confine ourselves to the original wording of that
document.
However, we have a democratic
tradition in the US (even if we don't actually have a democracy). For the
last two hundred years we were on a trajectory towards democracy. But in
one decision, Scalia and crew have dealt a blow to the people's right to
vote that our increasingly oligarchic republic might not recover from for
a long time.
Our generation might never
know democracy in America. We have instead a government run by an elite
monied class who manipulate public opinion through systematic propaganda
and thought control. In short we live in a spinocracy.
-- Donavan Hall, Ph.
D. publisher and editor of DonavanHall.net
and "Donavan's
News" |
