Redirecting you to our blog in 5 seconds. If your browser doesn't automatically redirect, click here.

The first post below is now here

On October 4th we posted these comments at Capitol Confidential praising the people who particpate in the online panel discussion. For better or for worse, they are at least taking part, in a primary political principal. It prompted this further development, the launch of our own PunditP web operation.

The Time has come. The Time is now. Hold on to your hats, hang with us, and make it happen.

A 2004 article by John Bice we feel is somewhat well fitted to this “The Unknowns” topic. Certainly this Blog is doing an excellent job sharing candidates messages (and mistakes, and gossip, and inside baseball, and all the great things that satisfy the political junkie’s jonesings!)

However there is something seriously sad in the state of a state that barely knows who the candidates are just over a month away from the election. They may well find themselves with “the government they deserve.” How many of them won’t even realize the mess they’re in when they’re in it, so immersed as they are in of all the big flashy shiny objects available to them on 500+ channels of digital drivel?

Bloggers and commentarians, commend yourselves for countering a cryable condition. Even if you’re not convincing anyone else to cast for your candidate, you are keeping your own political mind current.

Excerpted below, read the whole thing.

http://www.statenews.com/op_article.phtml?pk=25092

Mainstream media outlets contribute to dumbing down democracy

Political and cultural commentator H. L. Mencken is credited as having issued this caution: “We get the government we deserve.”

Certainly, most of the blame for our dysfunctional government belongs with “we the people” for not bothering to become educated about important issues and participate significantly in our democracy. Barely half of all eligible Americans vote, and only a tiny fraction of those voters are involved in the political process in other meaningful ways.

…

Mainstream media contributes significantly to the problem of our poorly informed voting public. The overly profit-oriented and corporate-controlled news media inhibits necessary and costly investigative “watchdog” reports and panders to our culture’s lowest-common-denominator sensationalistic desires. We are fed a daily media diet featuring endless reports on high-profile trials, voyeuristic and mindless reality shows and ubiquitous cable news screaming matches that attempt to pass as political debates. It’s amazing anyone can still think, much less be an informed member of the voting class.

It’s easy to place all the blame on the corporate-owned mass media - largely because they’re blameworthy - but to do so ignores our own societal culpability. The reality is that the media moguls are often giving us what we’re asking for. If sufficient numbers of Americans recoiled from the infotainment gruel slopped down for their daily consumption, the media would be forced to change. Instead, Americans eat it up, implying they want more and more for tomorrow.

Comment by PunditP — October 4, 2006 @ 10:02 am