Thursday, October 4, 2012

Thoughts on "Big Bird" and Mitt Romney Meme -- Why the Media Sucks

Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts,...
Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, 2008 US presidential candidate. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The media sucks. It really does.

To preface this, let me just say that I am voting for Barack Obama. I think that he has done a decent job for the four years he's been in office, I think that he'll do a decent job if voted in again, and -- as I am a democrat -- I don't see a compelling reason to switch teams and vote for Mitt Romney.

Having said that, the media really does suck when it comes to coverage of political events. For my international readers, the first 2012 United States Presidential Debate was last night between incumbent Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney. A lot of things were said about each candidate's vision for the U.S. economy, social security, jobs, and government programs -- important things which could help shape life in the U.S. for the next four years.

And then there was a comment made about Big Bird.

That's right, out of all of the things the media could focus on from the debate, somehow an off-the-cuff comment by Mitt Romney that he would cut funding to PBS and thereby cut funding for programs like Sesame Street (and Big Bird) was somehow the item that made the cut, that the media is running wild with at the moment.

I hate to invoke the whole media conspiracy angle to this, but I can see how my friends on the right could conclude this. According to most polls of viewers watching the debate, Obama got his clock cleaned by Romney. Obama was passive, distant, and seemingly confused at times about issues about which he should be very passionate. Romney, on the other hand was confident, aggressive, and presidential. Even so, much of the media has chosen to ignore this performance and seize onto the minor gaffe Romney made about Big Bird, mentioned above. The bandwagon feel of it all has been so widespread, so universal, that it really does make me wonder if there is something deeper going on with the different media outlets.

Or maybe I'm giving the media too much credit. Maybe they're just a bunch of idiots that like to laugh at the same shallow, insipid jokes.

In any case, I would be much more impressed if the media was calling out Romney for things that he obviously lied about, like the fact that he can somehow make massive cuts to taxes for the rich AND not increase the deficit by closing 5 trillion dollars worth of loopholes (over 10 years). Not only is it idiotic to suppose that there is 5 trillion dollars worth of slack in the U.S. budget, but closing loopholes, as Romney calls them, would include things like not allowing rich people to write off taxes for mortgage interest and charitable deductions -- which is the same as raising the tax rate. So, what Romney is doing is the classic Ponzi scheme of shifting the money around to make it look like something is happening that is not.

I wish the media would call out Romney on that.

Instead, we have Big Bird jokes, as posted here on my blog.

Idiots.

We should go back to the better days of Obama girl.

Obama Girl

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