NEW YORK—Symbolic protest being just as good as any other kind, I have refrained from blogging these past weeks not out of laziness, but as an act of quiet resistance, a one-man revolt against the shallowness and madness of the Democratic presidential primary. Maybe laziness too. But mostly protest.
How could any thinking person not be upset? In this country teeming with toil and conflict—in other words, with legitimate news—how much of the public bandwidth has been commandeered by stories on the strategies and the foibles, the back-stories and the inner circles, of two people who may be historic firsts but whose every human failing is now fully ingrained, unmajestically, in my consciousness? On any given morning, there is more drama on display at the bus stop outside my window than in the “2008 Campaign” pages of the New York Times.
But today I abandon my post of silence, I lay down my blank placard, not because the race is over—though honestly, the end must be close, no? Please?—but because some interesting campaign issues popped up in today’s paper. They just didn’t pop up in the news section.
Thankfully, not every Times reporter has been sucked into the vortex of the Democratic primary, and one of those who escaped is Steven Greenhouse, the paper’s labour correspondent—a title whose quaintness nicely underscores the need for such a position. And if that’s not evidence enough, read Robert Franks’s review of Greenhouse’s new book, The Big Squeeze, with its journalistically perfect Telling Anecdote of a lede.
If the story of Ms. Shank is not sufficient to convince you that campaigns should be about more than stupid comments about assassinations and the reactions those comments provoke, then turn your jaded eyes to Thomas Friedman’s column from today.
My girlfriend bought me season four of HBO’s The Wire for my birthday last month, in which the failings of America’s urban schools are examined like the innards of an addict at autopsy. But that was nothing compared to Friedman’s depiction of inner-city children and their families gathered in an auditorium in Baltimore, watching with fright as their applications to a better school and better lives were decided, on stage, by the picking of numbered balls from bingo cages.
As a Canadian in this country, my reaction to American problems will never reach the level of felt anger. Instead, it’s a sort of vicarious frustration, a gawker’s fascination with the sharp edges of wreckage. But if I were American, I’d watch as the genuine political stories get overtaken by passing controversies, and I’d be absolutely pissed.
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UPDATE: It occurred to me after I posted this that I may have been too critical of the coverage of the campaign, and the decision to cover strategy and personalities over actual issues. Then I saw this investigative tour de force in today’s Times, a 1,300-word look at Barack Obama’s personal campaign assistant, Reggie Love. Some highlights:
“…Young, eager campaign aides are stock characters in movies and on television, but few have quite the élan of Mr. Love, who, at 6-foot-5, is about three inches taller than the tall candidate, fitter than the fit candidate (he can bench press more than 350 pounds) and cooler than the cool candidate.”
“…If Mr. Obama thinks Mr. Love is dogging it on the court, he can come down hard, shouting at him to hustle, said someone who has played basketball with the two of them.”
At least they sourced that last little tidbit. After all, there are journalistic standards to uphold.
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