The Gore/Moore syndrome [View All]

I think an interesting part of our culture right now is that we greedily accept paraphrased accounts more than we should. I know I am often guilty of looking at an article in LBN or the Editorial forum and just reading the snipped paragraphs before making a comment or leaving the thread, while ignoring the link and the full article. And really, one can miss the entire point of the article, being fooled by a selective bit of editing or an obfuscating paraphrase.

The media are able to pull off this exact same thing, but to much greater effect. Therefore Soledad O'Brien can call Gore's recent speech a 'rant', when if one watched the whole hour, one would never use that word to describe it. This also allows people who have never seen Michael Moore's films to call them biased, shrill, and propaganda--the actual films can be appreciated no matter what your politics. You can also bring this into the realm of politics, where calling Dean 'too angry', Gore 'phony', or Kucinich 'crazy' is easy to do because so few have paid any real attention to the candidates themselves without the media middlemen.

Now, people familiar with the entire matter being discussed have no problem seeing the spin for what it is, but those who haven't will get their perception colored forever. For example, an argument could be made that Bush is a phony (2000 campaign-season purchase of Texas ranch, elite East coast education) or a flip-flopper, but the press choose not to paraphrase him that way, almost as though it were by unspoken agreement. I think the low attention span of all of us, and the media's ability to manipulate it, has a lot to do with where the country is right now.