I hear it from time to time. People I meet during a given week occasionally engage me in a conversation that begins: Do you think the nation is more polarized than everĀ before?
My short answer generally goes like this: Well, maybe not since the Vietnam War. But we got through it. I believe we’ll be OK.
The polarization today, though, seem to be taking on another dimension.
Politicians, chiefly those on the right, now are taking dead aim at the media. Oh, I forgot: the mainstream media, thoseĀ folks with the liberal bias.
Ted Cruz is the junior U.S. senator from Texas. He’s running for the Republican presidential nomination. He took some reporters pheasant hunting with him in Iowa this weekend.
Cruz scored plenty of points at the latest GOP presidential debate by taking aim not just at CNBC, which moderated the event, but at “all media.” The crowd in the Boulder, Colo., hall roared its approval — as did conservatives all across the nation.
The media now are seen as the enemy of the right. The left-wing, liberal media are out to “get” those who hold different views, say Cruz and other politicians on the right.
Cruz then took his beef an interesting step further. He suggested — with a straight face at that — that GOP debates should include “moderators” more friendly to their cause. He mentioned Fox New commentator Sean Hannity as one who he’d prefer to “moderate” a debate among GOP presidential candidates.
I agree with my pals on the right on this score: The establishment media — and I include conservative-leaning journalists in that group — have become legends in their own minds. They at times interject themselves into the stories they are covering. They become confrontational and snarky when neither is warranted. I believe we saw some of that from the CNBC moderators.
Then again, have our Republican friends forgotten — already! — what happened at the first GOP debate that Fox News sponsored. Fox’s Megyn Kelly got things started with a question to Donald Trump about the candidate’s history of anti-female statements. It went downhill rapidly from there.
The Republican presidential field of candidates has done a good job of demonizing the mainstream media as a tool of the left. It has cast the MSM as an institution to be loathed and mistrusted.
Are we polarized? Yes, we are. I’ll stand by my short answer: We’ll get past this … eventually.
“He suggested ā with a straight face at that ā that GOP debates should include āmoderatorsā more friendly to their cause.”
So this gets your tighty whiteys in a bunch but not a peep about the “moderator” for the second Democratic debate? I’d like to give you the benefit of the doubt a assume you don’t know it’s Rachel Maddow. And I’d place good money Jorge Ramos moderates the Univision debate. I’m sure they’ll get tough questions here.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/rachel-maddow-to-moderate-first-in-the-south-democratic-candidates-forum-on-msnbc/
I did not know that. Thank you.