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Knocking about in the ocean on Christmas day, I suddenly noticed the advanced tan on my arms and torso. The weather hadn’t been all that sunny or overly warm in the three days since my arrival. Yet there I was, browning like the proverbial Yuletide turkey. How very George Hamilton of me.
Upon closer inspection, the comparison bore a more terrifying reality. Far from being a bronzed god, I was actually taking on the pronounced orange hue similar to what older folks acquire after a lifetime of too much sun and too little SPF 30+. I found this prospect unsettling, so I convinced myself that my skin colour scheme tint was changing not because of the sun but from the massive amounts of shrimps I had been downing at the countless All You Can Eats that dot the landscape in these parts. Not so much George Hamilton as a flamingo.
Thus, deluded and sated down in the good ol’ U.S. of A.
It is an easy state to find yourself in. Locked down and blocked out, oblivious to everything but the most immediate personal wants or needs, blissfully ignorant of the evils and calamities going on in the wider world. `Tis the season after all. Who wants to get bogged down in the dire consequences facing our fellow man at this time of year, the birthday of our Saviour? That’s what all the other 364 days in a year are for.
Even if you are the curious sort and want to catch a glimpse of life outside the bubble, it is a surprisingly difficult enterprise. Flicking through countless TV channels, it’s all pretty much entertainment and precious little information.
Not that this should come as a surprise. As far back as 1961, television has been referred to as a ‘vast wasteland’. Debating that view is little more than an aesthetic exercise as long as we keep to the issue of TV as entertainment. But as an information delivery system? This is where things become trickier and, as we’ve seen over the last 7 years or so, of vital importance, not just for America but the world over.
Yet at any time of day on the tube, it is far easier to find out how to renovate your bathroom than to learn about the Middle East policy of the presidential candidates. Arguably, fixing the head is of much more practical use to us. Am I expecting too much from television? For any kind of detailed information, maybe I should open the pages of a newspaper or a periodical. Problem is, recent studies suggest that an overwhelming majority of Americans get their news almost exclusively from TV.
And what news was I getting while watching TV in America? Aside from learning that Santa Claus was coming to town and a secular war was being waged on Christmas, the headlines were dominated by a tiger attack in the San Francisco zoo. Is this a newsworthy item? Sure, especially with the death of a teenager in the incident. Undoubtedly a tragedy to all those directly involved but justifying wall-to-wall, updated every 10 minutes, Jack- Hannah-is-starting-to-creep-me-out, This Just In coverage for the rest of us? If the gaping maw of a 24-hour news cycle needs to be filled, must it feed solely on the trite and the lurid?Fortunately, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated and everyone could go back to pretending they all were diligent and respectable members of the fourth estate. You know, where some semblance of proportion is restored. The tiger story was big news during a slow news period around the holidays. Now there was something truly substantial to report, something with global significance and consequences. Think of that iconic image of Walter Cronkite barely holding it together while telling America about the death of President Kennedy. We were witnessing history unfold.
Thing is, TV news isn’t into the history making business anymore. When you treat the latest Spears family imbroglio with the same breathless urgency and screaming graphics you do the murder of the front running opposition leader of an unstable, nuclear armed country, well, it’s a little hard to get too excited. Everything’s news. Nothing’s news. The death of Benazir Bhutto is simply an extension of the tiger attack. On my way home, some 36 hours after her assassination, a television in the airport informed me that it looked like either Islamic extremists or elements in the Musharraf government had a hand in the deed. Uhh, thanks for that, Wolf. Those were a couple rocks I wouldn’t have thought to look under without your help.
Now firmly in the thick of the 2008 Presidential election, the turmoil in Pakistan probably should have some bearing on the proceedings. How would the next President of the United States deal with the situation? What sort of international policies are the candidates proposing to help bring a more stable environment to the region? Good questions, important even, but not what the news people I watched on TV bothered to ask. All they wanted to know was how this turn of events was going to play out in the upcoming primaries.
You see, covering elections these days isn’t about the issues or anything else overly substantive that would need more than 4 minutes to discuss. It’s all about the race, the politicking of politics. No one cares what the candidates say. They want you to know how what the candidates say will affect their chances of winning. When Mike Huckabee ran a blatantly religious ad over the holidays, TV pundits weren’t yelling about the clear breach of the wall separating church and state. They nattered over whether this was going to help him with the Christian base of the Republican party. That’s not reporting. It’s handicapping a horse race.
This too should not be surprising. What’s that old maxim from the golden age of news gathering? If it bleeds, it leads. Publisher William Randolph Hearst is credited with almost single-handedly drumming up support for the Spanish-American War through his newspaper chain. (As Sidney Blumenthal has said: golden ages glitter only in retrospect as viewed from the junkyard of the present.) Now, as then, we have a country with the capability to easily tip over the international apple cart that elects its leader in a haphazardly ill-informed manner. Or maybe I’m just overreacting; tired and a little sad as the old year fades and the new one kicks into life with its demands and expectations now fully staring me in the face. Maybe I’m just pining for those carefree days, lapping up the sunshine, eating shrimp, watching my skin turn orange and learning how to tile my bathroom.M
