QOTD: Jay Rosen
by digby
Watching the news shows this morning I was struck by the bland reaction among the moderators, hosts and interviewers to the truly outrageous stuff the likes of Donald Trump and the GOP lessers were saying. I don’t know how you can just sit there and let a politician threaten the American families of accused terrorists and not confront him about it but that’s exactly what they did.
Jay Rosen notes that they all seem very confused by the intense political polarization and wonder what in the world can be done about it.
Rosen tells them they have to bear some responsibility for what’s happened:
Every time you had to “leave it there” after ideologies clashed mindlessly, fruitlessly. Every dubious truth claim you had to let pass because challenging it might interrupt the flow or make you sound too partisan. Every time you defaulted to “will it work?” when the bigger question was “is it so?” Every dutiful effort you made to “get the other side” without asking if the number of sides was really two. Every time you asked each other “what’s the politics of this?” so you could escape the tedium and complexity of public problem-solving. Every time you smiled weakly to say, “depends on who you ask” before launching into a description of public actors who dwell in separate worlds of fact. Every time you described political polarization as symmetrical when it isn’t. Every time you denied that being in the middle was a position so you didn’t have to ask if it was a defensible one. Every time you excluded yourselves from a faltering political class. Every pox you put on both houses because it felt good to float above it all. Every eye you rolled at the humorless scolds who rage at the White House Correspondents dinner. Every time you jeered at the popularity of “partisan media” without reminding yourself “…there goes our audience.” Every time you laughed at the Daily Show’s treatment of you with no companion sense of dread. (They’re on to us.) Every time you said “the truth is probably somewhere in the middle” when you really had no clue. Every time you pointed with pride to the criticism you were getting from both sides, assuming it meant you were doing something right when you might have been doing everything wrong. Every operative you turned into an expert. Every unprincipled winner you admired for their savvy. Every time you thought it was not up to you to judge when it was on you — especially on you — to assess, weigh and, yes, judge.
All of it, every moment like that had the effect of implicating you in this mess.
This is becoming a very serious problem because by acting as if Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are speaking as mainstream politicians — mainstream Americans with mainstream views — and failing to challenge them on specific points, make them explain themselves and square their comments with commonly understood norms and rules, it ends up changing those norms and rules.
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