Michael Jackson, Iran, and the Media

I was getting ready to fix myself a bachelor’s dinner of hot dogs last night when I noticed that it was 6:30 and time for the NBC Nightly News. I love me some Brian Williams (even if his whole I’m-a-salt-of-the-earth-type-of-guy-with-blue-collar-roots-just-like-my-viewers shtick has worn a bit thin), so I opted to put my exquisite dinner on hold and turn on the television. Before the picture on the screen faded in, I could tell that Mr. Williams was talking about a death.

That makes sense, I thought. Farrah Fawcett died earlier today.

But when the screen finally vivified and the graphics were clearly visible, it said that Michael Jackson was dead.

Huh-whaaaat?! I implored my TV set. Michael Jackson died?

And since we’re living in 2009, I naturally jumped on the nearest laptop to verify what Brian Williams was telling me. Sure enough, everyone else was saying that the King of Pop had passed away. Apparently, everyone else in the world was hitting the 'net just like me to learn about the breaking news or weigh in on the situation.

After my initial shock had subsided, I took a step back to reassess the situation. Hmmmm, I thought, he was only 50 years old, but he was a pretty eccentric guy. Plus he obviously had some phsyical problems, and lord only knows what sort of state this guy's mental health had been in. It's actually not that surprising to hear that he died.

I then did a quick perusal of Facebook and Twitter to see measure others' reactions to the news about MJ. Sure enough, it had already begun to dominate Facebook messages and was the hottest trending topic on Twitter. And since I've been so cynical when pondering the news media recently (y'know what I'm talking about: the saturation of "Jon and Kate" stories when some fairly momentous history is playing out in Iran) I hastily wrote this quick thought on my Facebook wall:

Sadly, a large portion of Americans are going to forget about what's transpiring in Iran because the news media will probably devote an ungodly amount of coverage to Michael Jackson's death.

Sure enough, before the Nightly News had concluded, Brian Williams informed me that Ann Curry would be hosting a two-hour special later in the evening to remember Fawcett and Jackson. And so it began...

Now, allow me to lay my cards out on the table. As I said, I was initially shocked to hear about MJ's death. Less than 24 hours before it all went down--in some eerie, cosmic coincidence--I had been singing along to "Man in the Mirror" and "Billie Jean" as they played from my iTunes library. I won't deny the musical genius and the physical gifts with which he was blessed. Brother could do the Moonwalk! A lot of pop stars living in the lap of luxury today (*cough* Justin Timberlake *cough*) owe approximately 98.9% of their careers to Mr. Jackson. The point I'm trying to make is that this man deserves to be memorialized. He had too much of an impact on American popular culture for too long a time to simply be ignored and forgotten.

But I'm only hoping that the media (CNN and Fox News, I'm looking at you two) will exercise some restraint. I can't help but think back to February 2007 and the inordinate amount of coverage given to Anna Nicole Smith's death. And my god...she had absolutely no talent! No redeemable qualities! (Well, not completely true. She could apparently perform oral sex on that wheelchair-bound geriatric without vomiting all over his lap.) My generation is going to have to atone for the sin of having polluted the airwaves with some truly vacuous crap about that woman and her overdose.

What will be worse, however, is if we allow the coverage of this celebrity death to trump the coverage about the protests in Iran. The Iranian reformists opposing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the religious clerics have been buoyed by the attention the United States and other nations have paid to their struggle. Serving as the audience for their courageous citizen-journalism, we must continue to bear witness to the saga. It's quite distressing to think that the heartbreaking video of Neda Soltan might have flown under the radar if Michael Jackson had died at this time last week. But in the culture of round-the-clock infotainment that we absorb and perpetuate, it's fairly simple to imagine that it might've played out that way.

So, please: mourn the loss of a cultural legend. It's natural and it's right. But let's not allow ourselves to get mired down in murky, trivial details surrounding his death.

As I wrap this up, CNN's reporting that the authorities are looking for MJ's doctor, since his cardiac arrest may be drug related. It seems that they want to ask the doc some questions. I'm sure we'll be privy to more of these riveting details in the days to come.

Oh, brother...

The Paradox of the News Media

This past week, President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court. Naturally, there are both supporters and critics of the decision, as there are whenever a President nominates someone whom they want to interpret the law in a certain manner. Thanks in part to our frustratingly bipartisan political system, those on the right are quite skeptical of the pick, just as those on the left were equally critical of G.W. Bush's two picks (John Roberts and Samuel Alito).

I, like every other patriotic American, support this process. Sure, it's not the greatest example of representative democracy, but it ostensibly allows members of Congress to debate over Sotomayor's qualifications and decide whether or not she belongs on the highest court in the land. An intense debate--fueled by the facts and information surrounding Ms. Sotomayor's record--is yet another example of the wonderful "freedom" and "justice" with which this country is blessed.

Yet as the first decade of the 21st century races to its conclusion, we are facing the paradox of the 24-hour, instantaneous news cycle. Although we can access the web from our fancy phones, connect with others sharing the same interest through Twitter or Facebook, and choose from a handful of round-the-clock news programs on cable television, we aren't as well informed as we might believe.

Yes, that may sound like a bold assertion to you, but hear me out. It's been nearly five days since Obama announced his nomination, and in that time the news media has managed to successfully label her a racist. You'd have to scour to find evidence of her judicial record, or even basic biographical information about her. But that stuff doesn't seem pertinent to the news media. In fact, if you've listened to any of the critics wheeled out before the cameras to judge the Justice-to-be, you assuredly know nothing more than Sotomayor's history of "reverse racism." Oh, and the fact that she hates fire fighters.

But how can this be? How on earth could President Obama nominate such an evil, evil woman?

Oh, that's right. She's actually not a racist.

You see, professional blowhards like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and other pudgy, middle-aged white males with their own television and radio programs have illustrated Sotomayor's racist record by citing one sentence (yes, one sentence) culled from a speech she delivered at the University of California in 2001. It reads as follows:

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life."

Okay. I've taken a step back. I'm trying to appreciate that quotation from their perspective. I suppose it does look a little damaging, especially when you switch around the two races mentioned within (which, Newt Gingrich contends, would get a white dude fired faster than you can say Sotomayor). Although one could also say that this quotation is more about bringing a diversity of opinions and perspectives to a judicial body. Perhaps we should examine the whole speech in an effort to understand where she was coming from when she said this. I'm sure that professional pundits, who have an obligation to best inform their viewership/readership/listenership took the time to examine Ms. Sotomayor's argument before they made the bold claim that she is a racist.

Oh, wait. It appears that they didn't. How careless of them! She actually was speaking to the benefits of having a variety of perspectives in the judiciary. In nearly the same breath as her supposedly inflammatory quotation, she actually recognized that whites on the Supreme Court have historically made some decisions that positively affected minorities. In fact, she said it a whole hell of a lot more artfully than me. Take a look for yourself:

"I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown."

Getting back to my main point, the coverage of Sotomayor's nomination is just another example pointing to the rapid devolution of our country's news information. A quick browse of a site like Media Matters for America shows you how many talking heads have parroted this tripe. Rather than news sites providing text of Sotomayor's speech, that one sentence is dragged completely out of context and presented to the public as if it were representative of the woman's entire stance on race. Outlets like CBS News uncritically report on former Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter's opinion of the quote, but don't even bother to mention what Sotomayor's speech was about.

The larger idea that I'm trying to address is that in this age of ubiquitous information, one must be critical of that which they read, hear, or watch. I'm anything but a Luddite, as I actively Twitter and start every morning with a cup of coffee and a perusal of the internet. I take my cell phone with me everywhere and I even maintain a list of the music I listen to so that others in cyberspace can check out my tastes. So I'm not swearing off technology or anything like that. This is just a plea to constantly question the information you receive. We should never part with our curiosity, as it's one of our greatest intellectual traits.

So when you hear someone label Sonia Sotomayor a racist, take it with a grain of salt. Ask why she is labeled a racist, and if you're offered a sound bite in lieu of an answer, determine its source and seek to place it within its context. Not everyone has time to do all of that, I know. But that's all the more reason to be wary of the things you hear in the news media.