Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Why is this Jon Stewart thing such a big deal? I gather that it's feeding into the whole alternate media (blogs, Comedy Central, et al.) calling out maintstream news theme that is all the rage now...
But what have the blogs & web sites really contributed to political discourse? Of course some of it has been quite valuable (#1 - accountability/fact-checking of claims made in the campaigns, which is strikingly absent from news coverage), but the other stuff has been as trivial as anything in the mainstream press (say, bush's bulge, the typography shit) and the major contribution seems to be more detailed race-horse stuff (e.g., day-to-day electoral college counts).
Back to Jon. Of course Crossfire is theater. Nobody would watch it otherwise. Okay, so it's bad because it poses as political discourse. Serious policy debates would be boring or, in most instances, would probably lead back to irresolvable differences in values, viz. differences in people's views on the proper role of government. That last sort of debate, as a philosopher, is a debate I'd love to see --- but it's a debate that, frankly, most people (liberals and conservatives alike) are not in a position to appreciate, owing to entrenchment in their ideologies.
I am also tempted to say that the differences between the two parties is not terribly significant, from the point of view of political philosophy or from a historical standpoint. This is not to say that re-electing W won't have terribly significant consequences (thus, disagreement with Ralph), but among those consequences will NOT be changing the political culture. ¶ 11:53 PM
But what have the blogs & web sites really contributed to political discourse? Of course some of it has been quite valuable (#1 - accountability/fact-checking of claims made in the campaigns, which is strikingly absent from news coverage), but the other stuff has been as trivial as anything in the mainstream press (say, bush's bulge, the typography shit) and the major contribution seems to be more detailed race-horse stuff (e.g., day-to-day electoral college counts).
Back to Jon. Of course Crossfire is theater. Nobody would watch it otherwise. Okay, so it's bad because it poses as political discourse. Serious policy debates would be boring or, in most instances, would probably lead back to irresolvable differences in values, viz. differences in people's views on the proper role of government. That last sort of debate, as a philosopher, is a debate I'd love to see --- but it's a debate that, frankly, most people (liberals and conservatives alike) are not in a position to appreciate, owing to entrenchment in their ideologies.
I am also tempted to say that the differences between the two parties is not terribly significant, from the point of view of political philosophy or from a historical standpoint. This is not to say that re-electing W won't have terribly significant consequences (thus, disagreement with Ralph), but among those consequences will NOT be changing the political culture. ¶ 11:53 PM
