Greatest Show On Earth
I do not mean to belittle the elections or the picking of our next President, the leader of the “free” world, but we really were not given much choice to begin with. After almost two years of campaigning and millions of dollars spent, no one should be surprised at the results. And no one should hold much hope that anything is going to change for the better when we are choosing between two equally ineffective personalities that only hold out the promise of more of the same. We are still going to have surpluses that mean nothing more than that you’re overtaxed. And we’re still going to have government robbing entitlements.

Simple probability theory provides the real answer to this year’s elections. If you have two equally weighted choices without much in the way of distinguishing differences, then what you’ve got is equivalent to the flip of a coin. One side is heads and the other side is tails, and that’s about it. Pick your cult. If you are dealing in millions of tosses of that coin, the probability that it’s all going to even out at 50-50 is extremely high.

The thing that I would like to talk about is the news media and the way that most of them have laid out their silliness and ineptitude for all to see. Let’s make some observations chronologically from Election Day.

First of all, the media had to play its game of what I call “talking to itself” where it’s very important to them that they “scoop” their competitors and be first with the news. While the general thinking public couldn’t really care one way or the other and would probably prefer honesty and accuracy over speed, the various media have it in their heads that being first gives them some standing, credence, and value in terms of advertising dollars.

In other words, if Mother Media satisfies the spoiled child’s need for instant gratification and does it first, regardless of fact, then she will be rewarded not only with happy children but more advertising dollars.

While the effectiveness of advertising has never been proven and never will be translated into bang for the buck for anyone, the media has little idea and nothing but theory to say why they may or may not be getting more advertising than their competitors. And about all that their ad supporters know for sure is that no consumer company wants to go the way of Twenty Mule Team Borax or the Gold Dust Twins. Back in the old days, these companies believed that their customer brand loyalty was so strong that they didn’t need to advertise. They disappeared from the shelves in no time. From that point forward, everyone has had faith in advertising. It became a religion.

Somehow, with the news media, this gets translated into being first in reporting the news. While it’s just one of the things they feel a need to sell, besides pretty news readers and authoritative deep voiced anchormen, live on the spot immediate coverage and beating out the other networks has become their number one priority. It even gets to the point of spending more time trying to figure out what the other networks, reporters, and so forth are doing than actually covering the stories or investigative journalism in much depth. There isn’t time for the latter.

Well, what did it get them this time? We had at least two of the major news networks breaking the story of Florida’s swing to Gore while the polls were still open in the Panhandle area of the State. Forgetting that a good part of Florida is on Central Standard Time, these two broke the story that Florida’s Electoral College votes would probably put Gore over the top. Never mind that it was only about 6:30PM down there, the polls were still open, and the network’s estimates were based on “exit polls” conducted by interviewing a limited number of people after they had just voted, instead of actual voting results.

Interestingly, we find out later that the Japanese stock market immediately went down quite a bit, and so did the European. But then, they both recovered when it all was reversed and the networks had to admit that it was still a close race in Florida. How would you have liked to have been a Japanese or European trader during those hours in between?

Of course, millions were watching. Of course, many of us were channel switching or surfing. That’s what we’ve all learned to do so well. And we all saw what fools the media made of themselves in the quest to be first. What do you suppose that did to their credibility? And how much of that foolishness might have slipped over into distrust of the products they were advertising at the time. Stick that in the image mix and see what you get.

On top of that, who’s to say that the media didn’t immediately turn to other “voting irregularities” around the country just to cover their butts, to make their own mistakes seem less obvious? In no time at all, we had reports about selected voting booths staying open an extra hour in St. Louis, servicemen who were not getting their absentee ballots and other possible irregularities.

Worst of all, come November 8th, the very next day, we were still left without a final resolution of the vote. Now, it looks like it all might drag on for weeks, even months before we know which side of the coin probably wins by a narrow margin. So what good was the rush to judgement?

We’re left with a lead story that’s dragging on and on to the point of the ridiculous. You would almost think that there was peace in the rest of the world. Meanwhile, the media beats us over the head and bores us to death with live coverage of people recounting ballots in Florida page by page, sorter stack by stack, and all the different kinds of vote counting machines involved. Data processing techniques that are from the fifties, by the way. To fill the airwaves, we get stories of dummies in West Palm beach who claim they were cheated because they couldn’t read or follow the arrows, and questions of the worthiness of the Electoral College. The follow-up drags on and on. We watch because we’re waiting to see the results and because there’s nothing else on the tube.

At one point, the Comedy News Network (CNN) even got into a talking head debate about gridlock. How the new Democratic versus Republican representation in both the House of Representatives and the Senate was bound to give us a “do nothing” Congress. Coupled with an ineffective President, they said that this could be a good thing. Even business types in on the discussion were saying, without realizing what it implied, that having a federal government doing little or nothing would be better. In other words, we don’t need them at all, most of what they do is harmful, or just keep them out of the way.

At another point, they interviewed a reasonably intelligent girl who said that the entire country ought to have the same voting ballots and counting machines. But then this same girl went on to say how Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands should be allowed to vote too. She had no idea of what a Federation of States means or why we’re called The United States. Maybe she was thinking that, if the District of Columbia can have three electoral votes, why can’t these others.

There’s no way you can miss it folks. The dumbing of America has penetrated the Fourth Estate and the real issues went by the wayside long ago. We’re left with nothing but entertainment and, in-between and if you pay attention, lessons on what sort of government we have and the process left to us by our founding fathers. A process that, would take us until December 18th anyway. That’s when the Electoral College votes.

The real comedy is that current controversy is centered on the fantasy capitol of the country. Palm Beach is one of the wealthiest areas in the world, with servants and services just across the Intra Coastal waterway. There’s not much else there but the usual crowds that follow the truly rich and famous. And Walt Disney didn’t choose Orlando over Pittsburgh for nothing. Mickey Mouse for President in 2004.