It’s not whether you win or lose that counts, but did you beat the point spread? Anyone who’s ever risked a friendly fiver on a football game knows the truth of that statement. If you bet on the underdogs, you don’t need them to win, you just need them to make it close enough to put you in the money.
In last year’s presidential campaign, George W. Bush spoke of the “soft bigotry of low expectations” and yet Mr. Bush turned low expectations to his advantage and sneaked into the Oval Office with that same soft bigotry picking the lock.
Using the soft bigotry of low expectations as our guide, few people have been surprised in the past few weeks by Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on dissenting voices in the Russian press. First it was the television network NTV, then a couple of print outlets. Why should this be a surprise? Mr. Putin is the former head of the KGB, he is heartlessly pursuing a relentless war in Chechnya, he is the same leader who let the crew of the submarine Kursk slowly suffocate while he balked at asking for international aid. So now when his henchmen shut down dissenting press outlets, accusing them of being “unprofitable” – which in Russia’s new market economy is the code word for “disloyal” – no one is surprised. We have low expectations.
Almost the same thing happened in the Czech Republic a few months ago. The government tried to put a political loyalist at the head of a television network and muckraking journalists were dragged into court on spurious charges. Just as was the case in Russia, the journalists rebelled. The Czech people took to the streets to support them. The president, Vaclav Havel, one of the non-troublesome politicians, supported the journalists, too. The troublesome politicians backed down, the journalists won. It’s the kind of thing you might expect to see in the Czech Republic, which is considered to have the most open democracy in eastern Europe. For the Czechs, we have high expectations.
In America, well, we have different problems. News outlets are owned by fewer and fewer corporations, some of which are also major players in the military-industrial complex. The media is free to report what it wants, but it really doesn’t want to report on anything anymore. Mr. Putin, the bad actors in the Czech Republic, the Chinese and various other oligarchs and dictators could learn a good deal from the American media. Concentrate ownership and replace news gathering with a steady diet of empty calories and there will be no need to crack down. The most effective censorship is self-censorship.
There is National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System, but ever since the Republicans took control of Congress, NPR – worried about its funding – has been as vapid as NBC, the only advantage being that one need not look at it, and PBS now specializes in bad singing by European tenors and animal fornication.
Unlike their Russian and Czech counterparts, there will be no revolt of American journalists. They’re too well paid, they have too much to lose, they worry about what people might think. We’ve lowered our expectations considerably.
The exceptions to this rule have been the journalists at Pacifica stations. A minuscule broadcast network dedicated for the past half-century to reporting news that the mainstream media didn’t have the courage or compassion to confront, Pacifica was journalism worth caring about – until recently – when a new board of directors, longing to join the American media’s practice of self-censorship, engaged in the eastern European tactics of midnight firings, locked studios, armed guards and cutting the broadcast signal in mid-sentence.
Many Pacifica journalists, like their overseas colleagues, are fighting to keep their voices alive. It would be easier and more lucrative for them to go along and get along, but they can’t. They have higher expectations of themselves and too much esteem for their audience.
If this were a betting matter, I’d bet on the underdogs – and to hell with the point spread.
Great Expectations
It’s not whether you win or lose that counts, but did you beat the point spread? Anyone who’s ever risked a friendly fiver on a football game knows the truth of that statement. If you bet on the underdogs, you don’t need them to win, you just need them to make it close enough to put you in the money.
In last year’s presidential campaign, George W. Bush spoke of the “soft bigotry of low expectations” and yet Mr. Bush turned low expectations to his advantage and sneaked into the Oval Office with that same soft bigotry picking the lock.
Using the soft bigotry of low expectations as our guide, few people have been surprised in the past few weeks by Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on dissenting voices in the Russian press. First it was the television network NTV, then a couple of print outlets. Why should this be a surprise? Mr. Putin is the former head of the KGB, he is heartlessly pursuing a relentless war in Chechnya, he is the same leader who let the crew of the submarine Kursk slowly suffocate while he balked at asking for international aid. So now when his henchmen shut down dissenting press outlets, accusing them of being “unprofitable” – which in Russia’s new market economy is the code word for “disloyal” – no one is surprised. We have low expectations.
Almost the same thing happened in the Czech Republic a few months ago. The government tried to put a political loyalist at the head of a television network and muckraking journalists were dragged into court on spurious charges. Just as was the case in Russia, the journalists rebelled. The Czech people took to the streets to support them. The president, Vaclav Havel, one of the non-troublesome politicians, supported the journalists, too. The troublesome politicians backed down, the journalists won. It’s the kind of thing you might expect to see in the Czech Republic, which is considered to have the most open democracy in eastern Europe. For the Czechs, we have high expectations.
In America, well, we have different problems. News outlets are owned by fewer and fewer corporations, some of which are also major players in the military-industrial complex. The media is free to report what it wants, but it really doesn’t want to report on anything anymore. Mr. Putin, the bad actors in the Czech Republic, the Chinese and various other oligarchs and dictators could learn a good deal from the American media. Concentrate ownership and replace news gathering with a steady diet of empty calories and there will be no need to crack down. The most effective censorship is self-censorship.
There is National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System, but ever since the Republicans took control of Congress, NPR – worried about its funding – has been as vapid as NBC, the only advantage being that one need not look at it, and PBS now specializes in bad singing by European tenors and animal fornication.
Unlike their Russian and Czech counterparts, there will be no revolt of American journalists. They’re too well paid, they have too much to lose, they worry about what people might think. We’ve lowered our expectations considerably.
The exceptions to this rule have been the journalists at Pacifica stations. A minuscule broadcast network dedicated for the past half-century to reporting news that the mainstream media didn’t have the courage or compassion to confront, Pacifica was journalism worth caring about – until recently – when a new board of directors, longing to join the American media’s practice of self-censorship, engaged in the eastern European tactics of midnight firings, locked studios, armed guards and cutting the broadcast signal in mid-sentence.
Many Pacifica journalists, like their overseas colleagues, are fighting to keep their voices alive. It would be easier and more lucrative for them to go along and get along, but they can’t. They have higher expectations of themselves and too much esteem for their audience.
If this were a betting matter, I’d bet on the underdogs – and to hell with the point spread.