Passionless Defense

In The Year of “The Passion” Frank Rich makes an important observation:

Even more important than inflated notions of the fundamentalists’ power may be their entertainment value. As Ms. Kissling points out, the 50 million Americans who belong to progressive religious organizations are rarely represented on television because ‘progressive religious leaders are so tolerant that they don’t make good TV.’ The Rev. Bob Chase of the United Church of Christ agrees: ‘We’re not exciting guests.’ His church’s recent ad trumpeting its inclusion of gay couples was rejected by the same networks that routinely give a forum to the far more dramatic anti-gay views of Mr. Falwell. Ms. Kissling laments that contemporary progressive Christians lack an intellectual star to rival Reinhold Niebuhr or William Sloane Coffin, but adds that today ‘Jesus Christ would have a tough time getting covered by TV if he didn’t get arrested.’

This paradigm is everywhere in our news culture. When Jon Stewart went on CNN’s ‘Crossfire’ to demand that its hosts stop ‘hurting America’ by turning news and political debate into a form of pro wrestling, it may have sounded a bit hyperbolic. ‘Crossfire’ is an aging show that few watch. But his broader point holds up: it’s all crossfire now. In the electronic news sphere where most Americans live much of the time, anyone who refuses to engage in combat is quickly sent packing as a bore.

Rich understands the media dynamic better than anyone else out there. This piece is about the media and religion (and I urge you to read the whole thing) but he hits here on something that is even more fundamental. What drives the news media, particularly TV, is action and spectacle and the right is just better at providing it. The southern style preachers, in particular, put on a helluva show. I have always believed that this was the key to Clinton’s survival as well. He was a media star as much as a politician. And after 9/11, George W. Bush became one too.

It is entirely possible that the economy is going to seriously go to hell in a handbasket, which always tends to make people get serious — it’s not very glamorous to go broke — but in the meantime we are going to have to face the reality that liberals are severely charisma challenged and haven’t figured out how to disarm the other side. One of the reasons, I believe, that we are so often underrepresented on these screamer shows is that we don’t have very many people who can play the role of angry advocate. I keep thinking that this barking heads and playing against type format (dozens of African American Republican mouthpieces, for instance) would grow stale. But, I don’t see any signs of it losing favor at the moment. In fact, our new lukewarm war makes verbal combat more fashionable than ever.

It’s possible that Hollywood will become gunshy after all this criticism of their political activity, but I would hope that the Democrats would at least prevail upon them for some help in the presentation department. Our people do great on the Lehrer News Hour and I and 140 other people in the country tune in religiously. But that’s not where the action is. They can say what they will about Michael Moore but he gets people’s attention, doesn’t he? In this noise fest we call a media, that’s half the battle.