Maybe it’s always been this way or perhaps the trends are well known to just about everybody, but on some level, the tabloidization of serious news seems to me to be getting worse. – Steve Clemons
I started to write something about the danger of what Clemons astutely calls tabloidization. I guess we ought to define such a term. It means chasing a whiff of a story just to have a story, not because it matters. I walked by the T.V. earlier tonight while Entertainment Tonight was running after the News. There was a clip of Britney Spears getting out of wherever she was put last time speaking with a British accent. A couple of anorectic twins were fattening up in Australia. John McCain’s wife had a strokelet [?] or something like that. Delta Burke turned herself in to a Mental Health Clinic for screaming. Anna Nichole’s baby revisited her mother’s house at an age where such a visit would have no significance. That all flashed by in mere minutes. That’s all tabloid stuff – big time melodrama.
I was going to join Clemons in decrying "the tabloidization of serious news" but then I ran across this:
On Fox News today, Time’s Mark Halperin said, “The President behind the scenes has told people for months that he thought McCain would be the nominee. Even during some of those dark periods he still thought he could win. And also that McCain would be the best to carry forth his agenda.”…
and then there was Bolton at CPAC:
“I think Senator McCain’s statement here yesterday on how he would handle the Iranian program is stronger than the current Bush administration policy,” Bolton said speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). He slammed the Bush administration’s foreign policy in regards to Iran as moderate. “The Bush administration policy now lies on the ocean floor. … I didn’t think the policy the administration was pursuing was robust enough,” he said. Bolton also revealed that McCain was "actively behind the scenes" for his nomination to the UN because he thought Bolton was "the type of ambassador that ought to represent the US at the organization"…
It struck me as not too different from Entertainment Tonight. This isn’t tabloidization. These are tabloid characters. Bush doesn’t have any "agenda," not in the sense that we think of Abraham Lincoln wanting to right the wrong of slavery, or F.D.R. wanting to bring us out of an economic depression. His agenda is "being right" and saying things that sound Presidential. His speeches would play better on Entertainment Tonight than on the nightly news. His War on Terror is a made up thing, a reality show that’s costing lives on a daily basis, but has nothing to do with the needs of the country or the world. And for Bush to say "my agenda" is the absolute height of arrogance. Similarly, Bolton remains monomaniacal about Iran. I still think some Iranian girl snubbed him in Jr. High and he never got over it.
Maybe all this tabloidization is because our leaders are as vapid and as into their own mishigosh as Britney is – tabloid figures in their own right…
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