Posted on 05/18/2009 9:03:19 PM PDT by jazusamo
The media have an obvious vested interest in constantly urging that cameras be allowed in more places where governmental decisions are being made, including the Supreme Court of the United States. Like so many things that are said to be good for the public, this is something that would be good only for its advocates — and harmful to the process of making decisions in the public interest, as distinguished from providing a forum for grandstanding.
The adage that "seeing is believing" should be a warning. What you see in politics is what politicians want you to see. You believe it at your own risk — and at greater risks to the country.
Televised Congressional hearings are not just broadcasts of what happens to be going on in Congress. They are staged events to create a prepackaged impression.
Politically, they are millions of dollars' worth of free advertising for incumbents, while campaign finance laws impede their challengers from being able even to buy name recognition or to present their cases to the public nearly as often.
The real work of Congress gets done where there are no cameras and no microphones — and where politicians can talk turkey with one another to make deals that could not be made with the public listening in.
To be a fly on the wall, able to listen in while these talks were going on, would no doubt be very enlightening, even if painfully disillusioning. But that is not what you are getting in video footage on the evening news.
Some might argue that, in the absence of the cameras, many people might not know what is going on in Congress or in the courts. But being uninformed is not nearly as bad as being misled.
For one thing, it is much easier to know that you are uninformed than to know that you are being misled.
Quite aside from the fraudulence of a photographic facade, even if everyone involved played it straight, there is often remarkably little to be learned from observing a court case, for example, unless you understand the legal framework within which that case is to be decided. That is especially so in appellate courts, including the Supreme Court.
The same thing applies in many other contexts. You could watch televised brain surgery for years without getting a clue, if you had no medical training that would enable you to understand what is being done and why — and what the alternatives are that you do not see on camera, much less know whether the surgeon has consummate skill or is botching the whole thing.
The more complex the issue, the more likely that understanding the context is vastly more important than seeing a picture and hearing sound bites.
Wars are especially susceptible to being distorted on camera. A dramatic event with emotional impact need not tell you what its military significance is. The viewer is able only to react emotionally, in circumstances where rationality can be the difference between life and death, not only for the combatants, but also for the societies from which they come.
Even when televised Congressional hearings are meaningless in themselves — the real decisions having been made off camera — their implications can be devastating. But implications cannot be televised.
Over the past two decades, judicial confirmation hearings have often become exercises in character assassination against nominees that Senators oppose for political reasons having nothing to do with the inflammatory charges that are aired on nationwide TV.
Judges who have for years supported civil rights have been depicted as racists. Other events in their careers have been twisted beyond recognition. Utterly irrelevant questions have been raised to appeal emotionally to uninformed television viewers.
The most direct harm is of course to the nominees. But the most important harm is to the public and to the country. Not only are many top-notch people lost and many innocuous second-raters appointed in their place, many other top-notch people refuse even to be nominated, rather than see the sterling reputation of a lifetime destroyed by political demagogues.
None of those lost people and their talents are televised, though they may be far more important than what is televised.
OK.....everybody pony up ten bucks and let’s get this FReepathon over....
Thanks.
read
BUMP! to that, BTLD.
Thanks, Jaz........
Pay no attention to that man behind the screen, Dorothy!
In Lyndon Jonson's time in the Senate, the leaders of both parties would gather in his office. Over "branch water" and sour mash whiskey the deals would be made that actually counted. That is how it works. It still works today only the names are different.
Lyndon Johson is still the Poster Boy for sleazy Senate politics.
Why anyone would want a Johnson for president is beyond me.
That is correct! However he did love country. That can not be said for the current group of sleaze.
I wish he was 25 years younger and was running for president.
Cerially, let's turn the rules back on them!
Congress and their immediate families shall have no other income except that provided by the people.
We are the employers, they are supposed to represent us. When we are outspent by billions, what do we expect to happen.
Cap and Train Congress!!!!
Thomas Sowell is such a very smart man. He is at the top of a short list of brilliant conservatives. I hadn't thought of cameras in politics like this ... but reading his thoughts gives one a much smarter perspective. He is a blessing from God.
Yes. I told my daughter and son-in-law that I like Sowell because he agrees with me. And that is almost perfectly true . . . after I have read his opinion, that is. Before I read his opinion, I might very well disagree with him, at least weakly. After I read his opinion, not so much.I wish he was 25 years younger and was running for president.
I too wish he was 25 years younger - but he was never going to run for president. The great missed opportunities were
- Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor on the same day that the WSJ published a letter arguing that there should be an economist on SCOTUS. I read it, and thought all the while that Sowell would be perfect for that position . . . and then I noticed that it was from Thomas Sowell.
- When Bob Dole got the nomination for POTUS he named Jack Kemp, noted as an exemplar of reaching out to blacks, as his running mate. And during his acceptance speech at the convention, Dole complained about all the criticism of the Republican Party as not being inclusive. Well, he could have named Thomas Sowell as his running mate; that would have dramatized inclusiveness as nothing else possibly could have done - and would have put the Democrats in a position where they would have had to "bork" Sowell. I wonder if that would have worked.
I think that the general point is that production values tend to stir the emotions to block reason and logic. That is why the talk radio format is so conducive to conservatism - video of talking heads generally only distracts from the facts and logic being propounded.
Cameras readily tell partial truths all too convincingly.
Thanks for the ping jaz. Yes the cameras do inhibit the process of Government, and it was well argued prior to their allowance as pacification to the Leftist Drama Queens promoting the action.
Oh, that is JUST priceless! So true for me as well, on occasion! Though what's REALLY gratifying is when my take on an issue is out of step with current conventional conservatism. A recent example: the mindless charge of "greed" levied by conservatives to describe the motives of others in the private sector such as "greedy" bankers and Wall Streeters. I cringe when I read or hear it from people who call themselves conservatives. Charges of "greed" applied to the private sector NECESSARILY spring from envy, and they don't call envy a deadly moral sin for nothing. Indulgence in envy and pop culture's failure to ostracize those who vocalize and act on envy (taking away from those who have more just because they have more), is a major reason for the decline in our nation. Envy is a deadly MORAL failing.
No conservative should levy the charge of greed and whine that it's the cause of problems, unless it's against the government or its officials, where "greed" is just another word for theft. But in a free market, greed reaps its own punishment (I think John Stossel wrote a column about it recently). Greed on the part of a "mark" is often how con men work their cons. Greed is subject to market forces. Where does self-interest end and "greed" begin? I guarantee that drawing that line will always be a case of "good for thee, not for me."
So I was gratifed to read a take from Sowell where he said, in essence, the same thing. I know that I'm on the right track when that happens.
Very well stated. He can comment on very complex issues, at least to my thinking, and explain them in the simplest of terms so that even I can understand them.
Perhaps if our politicians had just a little of the insight and common sense of Dr. Sowell our government would be run as the Founding Fathers intended it to be, of course the majority of those politicians never will because of their self interest.
Great posts by the both of you. Many posts on Sowell threads are so very interesting and well thought out.
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