So, how is an order of Tater Tots in Aspen akin to the mainstream media coverage of our government’s legislative workings?
Well, say you went to Aspen and were out to dinner at one those trendy new restaurants everyone was talking about. It has that “small plates” concept, which makes you (if you were over 85 pounds) a bit nervous, but one of the items looks both comfortingly filling and only mildly exotic as well: sweet potato Tater Tots. Hey, even though they’re $11, you can still fill up on them and avoid the $19 arugula-and-yak-cheese mini pizza.
So, you order and dive in. They’re scrumptious. Absolutely delicious.
All five of them.
Let’s see. That’s $2.20 a Tot.
And to be accurate, they’re not really Tots. More like pre-Tots. Babies, actually. Tiny Tots.
An hour later, you’re both angry and hungry, and you wish there had been some warning, some information given below the menu entry for the Tots such as:
“Sweet Potato Tots with Infused Tomato Reduction Sauce. Note: You will need eight orders of our Tots to equal the $1.99 frozen bag of Ore-Ida Tots you can get at King Soopers. Thank you for supporting our commitment to pairing the new concept of increasingly smaller plates with our always incomprehensible Aspen prices.”
Just like the health-care “debate,” where facts are scarce, glossed over, or ignored by the major media — until, WHAM, like Aspen, there’s the bill, and you’re still starving to know what the heck you got for your money.
Is it just me, or is the “coverage” mostly screaming, scheming and, uh, more screaming? I sometimes think it’s an act of purposeful ignorance. Should we put in facts, quotes, textual exegesis, rational interpretation, nitty-gritty line analysis? Nah, they’re boring, like that stupid English class where we pretended to read “The Scarlet Letter.” Factual enlightenment tends to curb all the screaming. We like screaming. Sudden, inappropriate, partisan screaming, especially.
What’s that? Put up some columns or shows devoted to a deep, careful analysis of legislative drafts or bills coming up for vote? Please. Bulleted lists with summaries of major provisions with integrated phrases direct from the bill? Nah. That’s way too pointy-headed elitist.
So on we go, on and on with the talking heads, the pontificating, the rallies of the terminally angry, all part of the substance-less abuse of the vapid mainstream media. Would it kill the major newspapers to devote a page to an organized, factual critical analysis of health-care proposals using the language of the bill or draft itself as the text? Couldn’t Olbermann and O’Reilly shut up and do some actual analysis? Couldn’t the cuties on cable get more cogent?
The fact is that to the degree that major media outlets fail to do some form of this kind of education on an ongoing basis, then to that same degree are they complicit in the intolerable partisan and public rancor that feeds on the absence of factual emphasis.
Alas, it seems the media has made its choice, and once again, it’s bile over substance. All I can say is: Let ’em eat Tots.
Mark Moe (brktrt_80231@yahoo.com) is a retired English teacher. He was a member of the 2005 Colorado Voices panel.
