Back during the Clinton Crucifixion years, I used to despair at the embarrassingly RIDICULOUS media orgy over every little myth and mayhem and immorality fed to them by the sex-addicted Republican noise machine.  I believed then that President Clinton would one day be appreciated as one of the best presidents this country ever had, and the sex-crazed firestorm of scandal surrounding his administration would be a mere footnote to serious historians. 

(I could not have imagined that this would happen before his successor had even finished out two terms.  The noise was so deafening at the time that I figured it would take several generations.)

But no matter how stressed and upset about it all I would get, Clinton himself would always smile and say that he trusted the American people because they were smarter than the media realized.  He repeated it in his autobiography.  And indeed, no matter how scurrilous and utterly absurd the wild accusations hurled against him by the Right, his approval ratings remained strong for a president under seige--even after he admitted his own wrongdoing. 

It was as if the vast majority of the American people could somehow see through all the smoke and mirrors to the truth, and could realize what really mattered.

After 9/11, I think most Americans literally suffered from post traumatic stress syndrome, and a cunning and opportunistic Republican machine took advantage of that by hyping fear and dread rather than inspiration day after day after day, which explains why their skillfull seduction of the mainstream media acted as a sort of siren song to people who would normally have had more sense, thus leading us into a disastrous horror of a war and four more miserable years of Mad King George.

They're getting it now, though.  They're beginning to realize that they were not only lied to, but manipulated in the most crass of ways, and they are pissed.

And yet, the media keeps getting blindsided and blinkered by a Republican talking machine that is still very good at framing debate and dominating discussion--even so far as Democratic presidential debate questions, which seem to come straight out of a Right Wing instruction booklet, and a media that continues to project either-or absolutism. 

For instance, you either "support the troops" or you "voted for a phased redeployment."  That kind of thing.

And at first, I felt my anxiety growing again, thinking, Here they go again.  We're screwed.

But then I started to do a little research, and what I found out surprised me and actually encouraged me.  And that's what I want to talk about today.  My next post, I'm going to discuss how the Democrats can capitalize on that in this campaign season--not just the candidates, but activists and bloggers as well.

"Something seems a little out of whack between the mainstream media and the American people...The pattern is familiar.  Polls show that most Americans want our government to stop its unilateral swaggering, and to try to solve our differences with other nations through diplomacy.  But when...Nancy Pelosi visited Syria...a poll had 64 percent of American in favor of negotiations...Yet this didn't stop the outpouring of media alarm.

"I wonder whether this media distortion also persists because it doesn't meet with enough criticism, and if that's partially because many Americans think that what they see in major political media reflects what most other Americans really think--when actually, often it doesn't."--A New Silent Majority, Mark Buchanan, May 23, 2007

Buchanan writes about a psychological term called "pluralistic ignorance"--a type of social misperception.  He uses one example of college kids thinking everybody else drinks much more heavily than they do.

The problem with pluralistic ignorance is, of course, that the noisiest minority dominates media attention, and do it in such a way that lazy journalists will report the myth with absolutely no research or basis in fact, such as when Andrea Mitchell reported numerous times on the NBC evening news that the majority of American people wanted to pardon Scooter Libby--even though polls consistently showed that ONLY 18 PERCENT REALLY DID.

In the New York Times, Paul Krugman writes in "Lies, Sighs, and Politics":

"...So far as I can tell, no major news organization did any fact-checking of either debate.  And post-debate analyses tended to be horse-race stuff mingled with theater criticism: assessments not of what the candidates said, but how how they "came across."...

"News organizations should fight the shallowness of the format by providing the facts--not embrace it by reporting on a presidential race as if it were a high-school popularity contest. 

"For if there's one thing I hope we've learned from the calamity of the past six and a half years, it's that it matters who becomes president--and that listening to what candidates say about substantive issues offers a much better way to judge potential presidents than superficial character judgments...

"I don't know if this country can survive another four years of Bush-quality leadership." (June 8, 2007)

And yet, listen to Chris Matthews wax rhapsodic about how Mitt Romney has "shoulders you could land a 747 on" and the supposed sex appeal of Fred Thompson.  (Good lord.) 

In another NY Times op-ed, "Authentic?  Never Mind,"  Krugman exposes how a swooning right-wing machine emphasizes how "authentic" Fred Thompson is, even though the red pickup they claim he drove in his senatorial campaign was only rented for a photo-op.  He actually drives a black Lincoln Continental.

And don't even get me started on how Rudy Guliani has become a tragedy profiteer par excellance--making millions giving speeches about how heroic he was during his 9/11 photo op--a myth the media, so far, continues to propagate.

There are many myths built up to legendary status by the media, but if you look at the stats, you see that most Americans are not as obsessed with, say, Anna Nicole, as FOX news appears to have been.

I mean, literally. 

To give just one example of a cable news report--CNN devoted one-fourth of its broadcast news time on the Iraq war; MSNBC, fully a third.  But FOX news spent barely 15 percent of its time on the war, preferring instead to emphasize stories on Anna Nicole Smith and various sensational crimes.

In a Media Matters report, "Special Report: A Conservative America is a Myth," some TWENTY YEARS of independent, nonpartisan polling revealed the truth:

69% of Americans believe that the government "should care for those who can't care for themselves"

77% think Congress should increase the minimum wage

61% support embryonic stem cell research

62% want to protect Roe v Wade

60% are in favor of some kind of gun control

75% of Americans would pay more for electricity if it were generated by renewable sources

79% want higher emissions standards on American automobiles

69% think it is the responsibility of the government to make sure all Americans have access to health coverage and

76% find access to health care more important than maintaining the Bush tax cuts.

In other words, the country is NOT moving steadily to the right, as most media claim.  Most of us fall toward the center, to be sure, but the majority are far more in line with Democratic ideals and principles than Republican.

Meanwhile, in a brilliant essay by Naomi Wolf in the Washington Post, "The Image of Helplessness," Ms. Wolf points out that even as women are achieving an all-time level of success and achievement across the board in male-dominated fields, and even though there are scores of actresses who are active in all kinds of worthy causes while they work and start families and run production companies--

This kind of empowered, right-on female role modeling scarcely registers in the pop culture landscape.  There, a young woman sobbing helplessly in the back seat of a police car as she's hauled off to jail is the new Miss America--the new mass icon of popular fascination.

But I maintain that it is not our culture that is obsessed with these images, but the male-dominated media culture that is.  After all, if a full three minutes of serious newscasts out of eighteen available minutes is devoted to the faux-story along with round-the-clock entertainment news...what else is there to watch?  Does it mean we all WANT to see it just because we turn on the news?  Or does it mean the corporate structure buying advertising time THINKS that's what we all want to see and so crams it down our throats? 

When Dan Rather simply pointed this fact out, referring to the dismal failure of Katie Couric's tenure as news anchor at CBS, he was only stating what we all knew.  After all, what do ratings actually measure?

That's right.  ACTUAL VIEWERS.  And right now, Couric's ratings are lower than at any other time in CBS news HISTORY, even as her news director was fired and the new guy threw out all her warm-and-fuzzy infotainment segments in order to bring back in the hard news she ran off.

Oh, and sat her behind the desk, rather than perched on the corner, showing leg.

Low ratings aren't the only barometer to the American frame of mind these days.

In a fascinating piece by William Rivers Pitt,  "A Time to Reap", he writes:

There is something hapapening today in America.  With the right kind of ears, you can hear it in the sound of millions of brows slowly furrowing in anger and disgust.  It feels like those tense moments just before the eruption of a summer thunderstorm, those moments when the air is electric, the ozone reek of spent lightning fills the world, and you know something very loud is about to happen.

What is happening, what can be heard and smelled and sensed all across the land, is the cresting wave of rage, betrayal and fury that is, finally, roaring across the shores of our collective American heart.  After more than six years of lies, theft, graft, corruption, manipulation, and misconduct, just about every living person wtihin these borders finds themselves today gripped by the slow seethe, directed inward as much as outward, of one who has come around to see just how much of a fool they've been played for.

He points out to a poll showing a whopping 81 PERCENT of Americans who think the country is headed in the wrong direction.

Pitt calls it An Awakening.

He feels that this outrage crosses all political spectrums, starting with disillusionment over the war and moving on to you name it, and says that no matter how many differences divide us, it is this sense of betrayal and outrage than unites us.

He hold Democrats accountable for taking charge:

Potential must become actual, actions must have consequences, and our faith in each other and what binds us together must be restored.  Enough of talk.  The subpoenas must be sent, the oaths must be required, the truths must be told, and the consequences of betrayals must be felt.

And Republicans, he says, must take their medicine:

Matters have progressed beyond the pettiness of parties, because teh problems before us can no longer be deflected with spin and blather.  Enough of talk. The subpoenas must be welcomed, the oaths required, the truth embraced, and the consequences suffered.

Pitt's essay effectively nails the disconnect between media talking-point regurgitation and trivia-flooding and the real anxiety and anger and frustration at that same media by the American people, who are, after all, so much smarter than they are given credit for.

Only a handful of times in our nation's history has one election held such a crucible of importance to our country and her people.

As Democrats, we can't blow this opportunity because so much more is at stake than individual careers or ambition-trajectories or party loyalties.

In my next post, I'll discuss some ways we CAN take charge--of the debate, of the political framing, of the media spin, and of our collective future.