Wednesday Morning Rant

One of the more interesting things to happen during the aftermath of the 2016 election was the brief passion for anthropology among America's news media. These contemporary adventurers shucked their skirts and suits, replaced them with blue jeans and short sleeves, ventured out of their coastal enclaves and beat the bush into the American Interior. They went on safari into the wilds of Ohio and Indiana to study the natives.

This brief era of "safari journalism" ended as quickly as it began. The news talkers went to the Midwest, gazed upon the natives as a deer gazes into headlights, packed up and went home. They learned nothing. But then, of course, they wanted to learn nothing. They merely wanted to pretend to be open-minded. But if it was good once, it's just as nice twice, and safaris may be moving back into fashion. With COVID in the rearview mirror and Trump back on the ticket, the anthropologists are back out in the bush.

The pre-election safari that stands out so far is from ABC News. No, not that one, the one from Australia. They have launched a special new series that seeks to answer one question, not just about the Interior but about America as a whole. The title of this series? Why, it's absurd of course: "Do Americans hate their democracy? | America, Are You OK?"

The short summary for this episode: "polarization." This episode is framed in a way that probably makes sense to a foreigner: geographically. The news talker stands equidistantly between two nearby congressional districts: Alabama 4 and Georgia 5. These are several hours from each other, but share a region and radically differ politically, with one an overwhelmingly safe Republican seat in Trump country and the other an overwhelmingly safe Democrat seat. You erudite readers can probably already guess. If you said, "I'll bet that AL-4 is heavily rural and that GA-5 is Atlanta," go collect your winnings.

In fairness to the report, they do go over this and the Democrat dominance of urban areas. There are other bits of interest in it, as well - like the statistical shift into "safe seats" for many districts, against historical norms where many more districts would "switch parties" between elections. The Democrats party on in Atlanta, sure of dominance and hoping to take Georgia, while lamenting the lack of reasonable discussion in AL-4, where it is sure of defeat.

The special segment also touches on a few other American electoral phenomenon - participation rates, "get out the vote," candidate campaigning strategies, the preference for strong partisans by the parties, etc. It's interesting as an outsider's perspective.

It also isn't all that good. It's fairly superficial and a bit overproduced. It's also for a foreign audience that likely doesn't know much about American politics, so the superficiality is forgivable. It at least gives a sop to even-handedness and talks to partisans from both parties in each of the strongholds, both "men on the street" and party men and candidates. Superficial as it is and as unlikely as it is to remain ostensibly committed to even superficial "even-handedness" in future episodes (the tease for the next episode is incredulity over suspicions that there may have been election fraud in 2020), it is, as of now, a high water mark for "safari journalism."

Australia isn't a free country and its press is nearly as bad as ours, yet even they are better than the inveterate propagandists that populate the domestic press. I can't wait to see the new American safari programs that launch from New York and Los Angeles if Trump wins in November. Should be a hoot.

posted by Joe Mannix at 11:03 AM

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