After Super-Tuesday–Media Reforms Needed
Well, it looks like McCain will be carrying the banner for the Republicans this fall, after so many previous tries, and after being essentially written off by the pundits just a few short months ago. That was when Giuliani was considered the front-runner.
This is one among many reasons why we shouldn’t rely on pundits. Once the voters started speaking, it was clear that Giuliani was a non-starter. I heard one commentator say this week that he had the worst dollars-to-delegates ratio in the history of politics: $50 million to get one lone delegate. Ouch!
McCain is much, much better than his competitors on some issues, notably torture and campaign finance reform. But on war (for me, the dealbreaker issue), he’s the worst of the lot–even more hawkish than GWB. Yikes! And his own shady past on ethics issues–he was one of the infamous Keating 5, after all–makes me wonder how sincere the reform really is.
Still, he’s certainly less of a flip-flopper than Romney, who would have made a great used car salesman. And far less scary than our American Ayatollah Huckabee, whose election would make me seriously consider leaving the country; as a non-Christian with progressive politics, I’m not sure there would be room for me in a country governed by someone who equates homosexuality with necrophilia.
Much less clarity on the Democrat side. For me, the real question now becomes who could beat McCain. For reasons I stated here, I believe that in a McCain-Clinton contest, McCain would win, although I think she might beat Romney. But some of my friends believe that Obama hasn’t yet shown he can attract enough white voters to prevail against any opponent in November.
I know that I personally would not vote for Hilary Clinton–but I have the luxury of living in a state where my vote doesn’t count anyway: no matter what I do no matter who the candidate, Massachusetts will go for the Democrat.
The real shame for me, yesterday, was standing with my ballot and looking at Dennis Kucinich’s name right next to Barack Obama’s, thinking about what might have been. Kucinich has withdrawn, of course, and I’m not going to waste my vote on a candidate who’s no longer interested. But I think it’s a crime that the media–the same media that annointed Giuliani–decided for itself that it would not let us hear the voices of any of the candidates whose positions actually represented progressive change, and gave us a media blackout on the candidates who should matter most. They refused to cover Kucinich, Gravel, Dodd, and Ron Paul, among others–all of those bringing forward substantive reforms on a host of issues. This, to me, is a serious ethical breach and somehow we need a mechanism to address this that doesn’t interfere with the First Amendment.
For broadcast media, at least, the solution may lie with their licenses to use the public’s own airwaves for profit. For print media, the solution is probably intense public pressure in the form of letter-to-the-editor campaigns, pickets in front of their stockholder meetings, and so forth.
A lifelong activist, profitability and marketing specialist Shel Horowitz’s mission is to fix crises like hunger, poverty, racism, war, and catastrophic climate change—by showing the business world how fixing them can make a profit. An author, international speaker, and TEDx Talker, his award-winning 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, lays out a blueprint for creating and MARKETING those profitable change-making products and services. He is happy to help you craft your messaging and develop profit strategies. Learn more (and download excerpts from the book) at http://goingbeyondsustainability.com
SHortly after posting the above, I followed a link from the Poynter Institute’s romensko journalsim blog and found this, from https://www.concernedjournalists.org/love-and-hate-campaign-trail:
“That year and this year, reporters like John McCain about as much as they disliked Gore. It’s easy to see why. McCain is accessible to the press. He likes to schmooze with reporters, and in the process he pokes fun at himself. He comes across as less pre-fabricated than most candidates, a regular person not molded by his campaign consultants. Ergo: a straight shooter.
“But the record does not show that McCain shoots any straighter than the rest of them. His recent charge that Romney had proposed an Iraq withdrawal date was obviously bogus. His conversion from skepticism about the fiscal prudence of big tax cuts to his current conviction that cutting taxes will actually enhance government revenue (most dubious) and that “every time in history we have raised taxes it has cut revenues” (totally false) seems artful if not insincere. His explanations about his recent change of heart on immigration policy have been murky.
“But reporters like him, so he gets minimal criticism. He got almost none for laughing and not protesting when a woman at one of his events referred to Hillary Clinton as “the bitch.” At a Republican gathering in 1998, McCain told a truly tasteless, mean-spirited joke: “Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno.” (Tasteless and, for what it’s worth, inaccurate; Chelsea Clinton has become a rather attractive young woman.)”
I hope that if he is the nominee, as seems likely, that the media provide a thorough going over of his record, which as the above indicates, is not always pretty.
SHortly after posting the above, I followed a link from the Poynter Institute’s romensko journalsim blog and found this, from https://www.concernedjournalists.org/love-and-hate-campaign-trail:
“That year and this year, reporters like John McCain about as much as they disliked Gore. It’s easy to see why. McCain is accessible to the press. He likes to schmooze with reporters, and in the process he pokes fun at himself. He comes across as less pre-fabricated than most candidates, a regular person not molded by his campaign consultants. Ergo: a straight shooter.
“But the record does not show that McCain shoots any straighter than the rest of them. His recent charge that Romney had proposed an Iraq withdrawal date was obviously bogus. His conversion from skepticism about the fiscal prudence of big tax cuts to his current conviction that cutting taxes will actually enhance government revenue (most dubious) and that “every time in history we have raised taxes it has cut revenues” (totally false) seems artful if not insincere. His explanations about his recent change of heart on immigration policy have been murky.
“But reporters like him, so he gets minimal criticism. He got almost none for laughing and not protesting when a woman at one of his events referred to Hillary Clinton as “the bitch.” At a Republican gathering in 1998, McCain told a truly tasteless, mean-spirited joke: “Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno.” (Tasteless and, for what it’s worth, inaccurate; Chelsea Clinton has become a rather attractive young woman.)”
I hope that if he is the nominee, as seems likely, that the media provide a thorough going over of his record, which as the above indicates, is not always pretty.
[…] Principled Profit wrote an interesting post today on After Super-Tuesdayâ??Media Reforms NeededHere’s a quick excerpt Well, it looks like McCain will be carrying the banner for the Republicans this fall, after so many previous tries, and after being essentially written off by the pundits just a few short months ago. That was when Giuliani was considered the front-runner. This is one among many reasons why we shouldn’t rely on pundits. Once the voters started speaking, it was clear that Giuliani was a non-starter. I heard one commentator say this week that he had the worst dollars-to-delegates ratio in the his […]