Given the reaction of some in the media, namely Ben Smith and Tom Brokaw, last week during the brewhaha that was the Republican presidential frontrunner calling for the banning of a religion and its adherents, it seems that it is finally starting to sink into some in the self-beloved media that, perhaps, just perhaps, Donald Trump was saying things that were really not so entertaining. That perhaps, just perhaps, caring solely about ratings was not the Fourth Estate’s job. As Matt Taibbi so wonderously phrases….
Essentially, TV news producers are wondering: “How do we keep getting the great ratings without helping elect the Fourth Reich?”
The reason for the wall to wall coverage: access.
Joe Scarborough said the problem was that Trump gives such great access to the media, just like John McCain did in 2000. “When John McCain was letting members of the press on his Straight Talk Express bus,” Scarborough explained, “other Republicans always said he got the benefit of the doubt.”
In other words, Trump is so open and accommodating with the press that it makes it hard for reporters to hammer his insane ideas. Scarborough doesn’t seem to realize it, but that’s a pretty damning admission.
Indeed.
But the thrust of Taibbi piece is that it is too late, way too late, for the media to to start worrying about its own editorial decisions:
The time to start worrying about the consequences of our editorial decisions was before we raised a generation of people who get all of their information from television, and who believe that the solution to every problem is simple enough that you can find it before the 21 minutes of the sitcom are over.
Or before we created a world in which the only inner-city black people you ever see are being chased by cops, and the only Muslims onscreen are either chopping off heads or throwing rocks at a barricades.
This is an amazing thing to say, because in Donald Trump’s world everything is about him, but Trump’s campaign isn’t about Trump anymore. With his increasingly preposterous run to the White House, the Donald is merely articulating something that runs through the entire culture.
It’s hard to believe because Trump the person is so limited in his ability to articulate anything. Even in his books, where he’s allegedly trying to string multiple thoughts together, Trump wanders randomly from impulse to impulse, seemingly without rhyme or reason. He doesn’t think anything through. (He’s brilliantly cast this driving-blind trait as “not being politically correct.”)
Have you ever trying to listen to Trump beyond hearing a soundbite? He never answers a question. He never offers any details. He offers no substance in his sentences. Just adjectives. Everything is an adjective. He has garnered this following by shouting simple soundbites from day one.
If you got all of your information from TV and movies, you’d have some pretty dumb ideas. You’d be convinced blowing stuff up works, because it always does in our movies. You’d have no empathy for the poor, because there are no poor people in American movies or TV shows – they’re rarely even shown on the news, because advertisers consider them a bummer.
Politically, you’d have no ability to grasp nuance or complexity, since there is none in our mainstream political discussion. All problems, even the most complicated, are boiled down to a few minutes of TV content at most. That’s how issues like the last financial collapse completely flew by Middle America. The truth, with all the intricacies of all those arcane new mortgage-based financial instruments, was much harder to grasp than a story about lazy minorities buying houses they couldn’t afford, which is what Middle America still believes.
Taibbi darkly warns us that Americans’ penchant for wanting shallow, simple solutions to complicated issues isn’t going anywhere, even when Trump eventually goes away. Oh, joy.