The postmodern strike zone

Even balls and strikes are now subjective - if you are the media.

A recent Zogby poll found that a plurality of Americans (46 percent) think that we may be headed toward civil war. Yes I know, Zogby is frequently dismissed by many left-leaning critics. Perhaps with some justification. But even if he’s off on this by a fair bit, it’s still disturbing news. And other polling seems to indicate that there’s at least some truth to what he found.

So what’s driving all of this? It’s not overly difficult to discern: the equity movement, gun control, abortion, public safety, illegal immigration, the pandemic, voting rights and elections, economic disparity, winner takes all politics, rising extremism on both the left and the right, government overreach on a variety of issues — the list goes on.

Now for what it’s worth, I do not think that we are headed for civil war. I maintain, as always, that our best days are ahead. I still have faith in our institutions (though some more than others). There’s good evidence in very recent history which suggests that, a few obvious exceptions aside, you should too.

Are we perfect on this score? Far from it. But adequate for the task? In most cases, I think so.

But if I’m wrong, if our republic does fail and we do descend into civil war, the antecedent most directly responsible will be the failure of the media to adhere to impartiality in reporting the news. To call balls and strikes honestly.

In case anyone is still wondering where I’m coming from on this topic after all of these years, let me lay it out for you: The media in this country, as a whole, occupies whatever level of professional responsibility exists below godawful.

I could write about bias in the media every waking moment for the rest of my life and not cover a fraction of it. It’s ubiquitous. And while it’s true that media on both the left and the right hew, unapologetically, outside of their bubble, it’s also true that about two-thirds of the media skews left. My friends on the right have better reason than my friends on the left to feel injured when it comes to getting a fair shake in the news.

Even when the media does attempt to play things down the middle, their propensity for exaggeration and fantastic levels of sensationalism frame issues in a false light. Just the other day I was explaining to my 5-year-old the fable of the boy who cried wolf. After we were done it occurred to me that it’ll be a cautionary tale only as long as it takes for him to become a consumer of news.

But back to balls and strikes. Just yesterday I read an AP piece (lazily repeated almost verbatim in The Hill) “Florida mayor: Desantis has been MIA during omicron surge.” This piece describes, at great length, how the mayor of Orange County (Orlando), Jerry Demings, has taken issue with the manner in which Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has responded to the new COVID variant sweeping the world. Yet nowhere in this piece is it revealed that Jerry Demings is married to Rep. Val Demings who considered running on the Democratic ticket to oppose Gov. DeSantis in the next election (she has apparently decided to run against Marco Rubio for the U.S. Senate, instead).