Tuesday
AMERICANS have a remarkable talent for creating transparently pointless political rituals. The most pointless of all is the “spin room”. The first thing that journalism’s finest do after every debate is rush off, notebooks in hand, to a special room where the candidate’s surrogates brief them about how well their man (or woman) did. Dennis Kucinich is building up unstoppable momentum! Tom Tancredo has the Republican nomination in the bag! The spinmeisters manage to impart all this nonsense not just with a straight face but with a look of complete sincerity.
The big question hanging over the next two weeks is whether the conventions are the most transparently pointless rituals of all. It has been decades since anything was actually decided at a convention. They have degenerated into little more than prolonged infomercials designed for prime-time television.
August 27, 2008
Pointless political rituals
From The Economist's Correspondent's Diary. I would have to agree, it does seem the Conventions "have degenerated into little more than prolonged infomercials designed for prime-time television." I'm sure the Republicans will deliver in kind.
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3 comments:
Politics, in the U.S., is no more than the selling of a product: a politician who represents the interests of the wealthy, of corporations, of special-interest lobby groups, and not the people of the U.S.A. It's a sham.
The spin room is ok. Tends to put out tons of points to refute and support sometimes better than the original speaker's.
And no diss to Great Britain - yet Great Satan isn't particularly concerned with what foppish foreign correspondents may think.
Perhaps their time could be better served - like helping Brit pols generate and create their own written constitutional device - especially since GB doesn't have one.
Just saying
Courtney (GSG)---At times, The Economist can be a bit too British, I agree. But the quality of the writing and analysis, while I may not always agree, especially on social issues, is usually pretty good.
The ancient Romans didn't have a written constitution either, and their government, in one form or another, went for 2 thousand years. The U.S. should be so lucky to last that long.
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