Why Do No-News Politicos Continue to Make Headlines?

The entire country is seemingly abuzz about a gaffe committed by Bill Shaheen, formerly Hilary Clinton's chief campaign strategist, when he commented that Barack Obama's pro-active admission that he did drugs as a youth would untie any chances among Republicans should he win the Democractic nod to be the party's next presidential candidate. But there's a question no one, especially the media, is asking: Why is this news?

As we've all come to grips with, no one is more humanly fallible than politicians. What really gets our goat, however, is the blatant hypocrisy of public office. George Bush is by and large a boob who skirted military service, has made questionable decisions to say the least on an entire array of topics endemic to our national security domestically and abroad -- and I'm not talking just about terrorism but the ability of our country to take care of its people, SCHIP anyone? -- and has stripped away many basic constitutional rights as his administration has utilized fear tactics to get what it wants. And I won't even get into possible charges of war profiteering or the fact he’s a horrible public speaker.

But these allegations, or more appropriately grievances, are really nothing new to politics. While history might reflect on George Bush as one of our worst presidents -- or according to him our best -- many of his predecessors can be accused of similar activities or worse.

Bush is certainly not the only politician to have done drugs, and he admitted previous philandering with cocaine and alcohol. Before him, Bill Clinton admitted to smoking pot. Despite what the Christian Right says on the subject, or the myriad other social evils plaguing our society, both men were elected to the highest office in the land, the world even. So Bill Shaheen's forecast that Obama's admission would hurt his chances in a national election can be viewed as flawed. With that said, I’ve only seen – so far – one journalist question why such comments were taken as far as they were. Sure, Shaheen was a respected and successful strategist on a host of Democratic campaigns for the last quarter-century, but why was there a story about this in the first place?

Television and print news has become infiltrated with spin artists, so called “experts” who are little else but hired guns by either party to push respective agendas on the public. FOX News is the biggest example, but all the major networks are guilty. I won’t say such insiders are totally worthless because, with the intrinsic complications surrounding the political process, such people explain to the common folk how Washington, D.C. really works. There are many, many legitimate reasons why bills drag through Congress and there is much minutia and intrigue at play within the Beltway. The whole mess is daunting; these people can and should shed light on the nuances that can help all voters toward making educated decisions on matters of our country’s political course.

But, instead, these people jump at the opportunity to push their own agenda or that of the politicians they represent. Too often the words of these “experts” are taken as Scripture, and the media has done a horrible job in communicating when comments are accurate reflections on current events or simply spin designed to help their bosses in the polls. In Shaheen’s case, such spin evidently hurt not only him, as he resigned from Clinton’s campaign, but possibly Clinton herself. Yet who’s truly to say? If you read any host of articles, you’d be lead to believe it may hurt her a lot. But upon closer examination, the ones who say this reside in the camps of Obama himself or that of John Edwards. Whether this was a calculated risk or plain lack in judgment remains to be seen, so just how much to heart should we take these opines?

Certainly the media plays much too big of a role in determining societal trends and, as we learned with Iraq, oftentimes takes the bait and force feeds the public exactly what pundits and politicos want us to hear rather than offering the nuance and truth we really need and want. Instead of allowing different groups to dish dirt on one another, the press should be filtering the wheat from the chaff to help the public make more informed decisions. A big part of the problem is that the media, especially Washington correspondents, become themselves part of the game.

Instead of reporting what some campaign strategist says, why is the media not taking it with a grain of salt and then digging deeper to find the true meaning? The very first questions I would have asked Shaheen is, “Well Bush’s drug use certainly didn’t hurt him among the Neo-cons, so, besides the fact he’s a Democrat, why do you think Obama would suffer? Isn’t being truthful in this day and age of public relations spin and double-speak refreshing?” Instead, we got a story worthy of the gossip column.

The watchdog has been asleep on the job for far too long.