Off to a great start, the IR’s new blog on politics starts off with the singularly most important topic of the 2006 Senate race. Is it health care? No. The war? No. The stalled disaster relief for farmers? Nope.
It’s the crowd at the damn debate in Hamilton. I’m sorry to keep writing about this…I want to stop, honest, but I am so frustrated by the laziness of much of the coverage of this race–and the insane focus on non-issues that I can’t stop myself from responding. This isn’t a partisan issue; it’s a reflection on a broken system. How can representative government, which depends on an informed citizenry, continue to work when the Fourth Estate refuses to do its job? They’re like infants–distracted by shiny objects and easily amused. Of course, children grow out of that–but the media, alternatingly obsessed by and apologetic for its coverage of Monica Lewinsky, the Swift Boat liars, shark attacks, and entertainment news, never seem to grow or change.
As a side note, I wonder if it ever occured to someone that this quote, cited on the letters page of the IR and this new blog, might be a GOP talking point:
A Clancy resident noted that as he was leaving the debate one Helena-area resident noted: “They want to govern, but they don’t even know how to behave.”
Funny that Barbara Ford said this, in the latest issue of the MT-GOP E-Brief:
The debate did indeed provide me with the needed information: The Democrats want to rule but they have no idea of how to behave!
Golly…I wonder how two people could have come up with almost exactly the same phrase like that? And I wonder if Barbara is Barbara Ford from Missoula, the past president of the Montana Federation of Republican Women?
Lazy, lazy, lazy.
I can already read the post-election editorial, decrying low voter turnout and the lack of an issues-based campaign. Don’t blame me for it, or hell, even Conrad Burns. How about writing an editorial about the failure of the media to cover anything that matters?
Update: The letter that the IR editor cited appeared in the paper today. Who was that gentleman from Clancy? Tim Fox. Who’s he? The Lewis and Clark County chair of the Burns campaign! That, my friends, is quality journalism on display.
Article by Don Pogreba
Don has written 1332 posts for us. He is an English and debate teacher in Helena, MT. When not writing here or working on debate handbooks, he is writing about educational issues at Prairie Pedagogue.
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Are you sending these comments to the IR? Perhaps you should request an editoral board visit. Get out there and earn some column inches on this stuff, you can’t shame us blog-o-readers into changing the IR. These are great points, get them published!
I gave up. I never even got so much as a response after sending repeated comments to the IR. They seem to have an awfully insular culture, and take criticism very personally. Of course, more I was ignored, the more biting my comments have become.