A participant at a Republican National Committee fundraising retreat committed an inexcusable faux pas earlier this week when he forgot to pack a document from the meeting before checking out of his hotel room. The media feeding frenzy over the controversial 72 page PowerPoint presentation has forced the RNC to issue several denials. One of my buddies called me to find out what was going on. “Nothing we didn’t already know,” I told him.

Democrats on Wednesday sharply criticized a Republican National Committee fundraising document that caricatured President Obama as the Joker, while Chairman Michael S. Steele sought to distance himself from it. Also depicted were House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.), presented as Cruella de Vil and Scooby-Doo, respectively. The three Democratic leaders were gathered under the heading "The Evil Empire."

RNC's Finance Director Behind Controversial Fundraising Pitch       Washington Post

 

One of the things that bothers me about all of this is the way the media is now pointing to the defaced images of President Obama, Senator Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi as the proverbial “smoking gun” by which they can link the GOP to the extremists who make these kinds of statements the centerpiece of their opposition to the Obama Administration and the Democratic controlled House and Congress.  It is as if the mainstream media has decided to quit playing cat-and-mouse with its audience long after the audience has already deduced the connection.

The other thing that bothers me is how little the mainstream media is willing to invest in exploring how much of the GOP’s strategies rest on the messaging sleight-of-hand they pay Dr. Frank Luntz hundreds of thousands to dream up after researching actual voter responses, and how much actually of their strategies rest on new solutions or new ideas.

In an era where the watchwords are “accountability” and “credibility”, the mainstream media has done little to rebut the charges by many that they serve the interests of the elite. In a lot of ways, their situation, in which they are left to police their own actions and agendas, are analogous to the doctor who foolishly tries to treat his own ailments.

Because if you spent any time this morning watching the Sunday political talk shows like Meet The Press, you quickly saw how willing the talk show hosts and pundits were to stick to the “asked and answered” routine when it came time to grill their Republican guests on the issue. Instead of simply asking Orrin Hatch or Mitch McConnell what their opinion was on the matter, after running clips of the damning document, why didn’t the hosts show these Republican leaders how the revelations dovetailed with their recent actions, and then make them defend their actions? 

Is that too much to ask from an industry that claims its job is to act as the people’s watchdog against political malfeasance?

In the military, they call what we’ve witnessed on our televisions and radios and newspapers this past few months “dereliction of duty - the avoidance of any duty which may be properly expected.”  Instead of removing any ambiguity in situations like the one the GOP finds itself with the release of their actual fundraising tactics, our media ads continues to add to the confusion.     

Why ask only about the media? Don't we all have a responsibility to be more discerning in our consumption of news and more demanding of political figures? I'm tired of being handed he pat explanation all the time. I want and deserve more.

The weather's turned, and the old neighbors creep out
from their crammed rooms to blink in the sun, as if
surprised to find they've lived through another winter.
Though steam heat's left them pale and shrunken
like old root vegetables,
Mr. and Mrs. Tozzi are already
hard at work on their front-yard mini-Sicily:
a Virgin Mary birdbath, a thicket of roses,
and the only outdoor aloes in Manhattan.
It's the old immigrant story,
the beautiful babies
grown up into foreigners. Nothing's
turned out the way they planned
as sweethearts in the sinks of Palermo. Still,
each waves a dirt-caked hand
in geriatric fellowship with Stanley,
the former tattoo king of the Merchant Marine,
turning the corner with his shaggy collie,
who's hardly three but trots
arthritically in sympathy. It's only
the young who ask if life's worth living,
notMrs. Sansanowitz, who for the last hour
has been inching her way down the sidewalk,
lifting and placing
her new aluminum walker as carefully
as a spider testing its web. On days like these,
I stand for a long time
under the wild gnarled root of the ancient wisteria,
dry twigs that in a week
will manage a feeble shower of purple blossom,
and I believe it: this is all there is,
all history's brought us here to our only life
to find, if anywhere,
our hanging gardens and our street of gold:
cracked stoops, geraniums, fire escapes, these old
stragglers basking in their bit of sun.

"The Old Neighbors" by Katha Pollitt, from The Mind-Body Problem. © Random House, 2009.

Temperatures getting close to 60 today and I hope to get down to the Potomac River and celebrate being outside again. I love it when good weather makes its comeback in Spring and we all meet each other again.