Posted by
flagwaver on Friday, April 20, 2007 9:35:06 AM
Watching the coverage of the Don Imus affair and the recent massacre of students at Virginia Tech, I have been struck by just how political everything has become. Nothing that happens in our society can be seen simply as it is, it is now all filtered through a political lens whether it has anything to do with politics or not.
I know this is not a new phenomenon, but the attitude that all things are political just bothers me somewhere down deep. And the politicization is not just coming from the left, oh no, it comes from the right as well! Take the Don Imus affair for example. I have been hearing people that I usually respect and agree with floating some of the most preposterous things about the whole Imus imboglio. Somehow, Don Imus and his comments went from being about what he said and whether or not he should be punished to a discussion of the politics of the affair. I heard a reporter ask a question at the White House news briefing about what the President thought about Imus's remarks and what should happen to him. As if the President of the United States has nothing better to do than follow the ramblings of Don Imus! But the question was just an attempt, in my view, to try to get the President caught up in the mess and to use whatever statement made from the White House to paint a negative political picture. But I also listened, in stunned disbelief, as my personal favorite on talk radio tried to spin it in a different way politically. I heard Rush Limbaugh say on his show that the firing of Don Imus was orchestrated by the Clintonistas, and that it was really a shot across the bow to let conservatives know that they're next. Then I logged on to TownHall and read the same sentiments from posters here and I wondered: When did this become a political issue?
Then came the horrific events at VaTech, and sad is may seem, my thoughts went straight from the massacre to waiting to see how quickly the talk would turn to politics...gun control in particular. And it did not take long at all. One of the first reports that I saw was at my mother in law's house on CNN and the reporter and anchor were already talking about how easy it was for people to purchase handguns in Virginia, and how the laws pobably needed to be tougher. Then I heard some conservatives talking about how this could have been avoided if there was not a "gun free" zone on the VaTech campus and how that is a symptom of the liberal influence on society....then I came to TownHall and read some of the same things here. And the arbiter of all that is political, Rosie O'Donnell, came out trashing the President for going to the VaTech campus to speak at the convocation when it took him 5 days to get to New Orleans after Katrina. And I asked myself again: When did this become political?
The answer, I guess, is when we the people decided that everything was to be looked at from a political standpoint. As much as the news media has to do with it, and they are a big influence, they wouldn't cover stories that way if we weren't eating it up. We don't tune in to watch the news anymore, even on FNC, we tune in to watch the politics. We tune in to root on our side and to boo and hiss the other side; I know because I am just as guilty as anyone else of doing it. I only watch about 10 minutes of national news coverage a night, and that is the roundtable segment on Brit Hume's show on FNC; the news has ceased to be news because we want to see our gladitorial political battles played out in front of us.
So the next time we are watching some report about...oh a car safety issue...and we start to wonder why it is being reported as a political issue, don't get mad at NBC. Take a look in the mirror and think about how quick YOU were to see the political perspective there. It's not their fault, they're just giving us what we want.
All politics, all the time.