Ben Sasse's Them [...]
Ben Sasse's Them [...]We’ve all heard the phrase “cherry-picking,” a form of selective reasoning where someone cites facts that support his preferred position while ignoring conflicting data. In modern America, though, cherry-picking looks like a sophisticated rhetorical device compared to the trend called nutpicking. (Not, mind you, “nitpicking,” which is pointing out irrelevant details just to antagonize.) “Nutpicking” is when people scour the news to find a random person saying or doing something really dumb, and then use that nutjob to disparage an entire group of people, as if the nut is representative […] To many national commentators worried about polarization, the great divide in American life is between Fox and MSNBC—the rhetorical homes of the political right and left. Often they aren’t even reporting the same stories. When they do, the coverage is so different that it’s hard to believe they are describing the same set of facts. This is one of the reasons it’s so difficult to have fruitful conversations—we can’t even agree on what happened. I know some folks in Nebraska who, after a series of disputes over politics, decided to “trade primary news sources for a week.” The conservative could watch only MSNBC and other progressive outlets; the Democrat could watch only Fox and listen to conservative talk radio. At the end of the week, each side felt like they understood their friends on the other side much better—and both sides resolved to start watching less cable news. A local stockbroker, one of the conservatives, reported: “It was amazing. It was like I took a trip abroad without leaving my living room.” Obviously, the networks target different political audiences—but this is, in an important sense, a superficial distinction. Both channels put politics and power near the center of America. Both are impatient with the often ho-hum rhythm of ordinary life. Both want simple, good-versus-evil dramas. It’s no accident that both networks covered Donald Trump (the quintessential showman) obsessively even in the weeks prior to the start of his campaign in the summer of 2015. Indeed, contrary to so much hand-wringing and finger-pointing, the president did not create our polititainment problem. The incentives to gin up short-term outrage were already there. He’s just exploited them better than anyone else has.