Elizabeth Edwards to the media: Do your job, so we — as voters — can do ours

Elizabeth Edwards laments about how the traditional, er, mainstream, media continues to fail the American public by merely providing us “Cliffs Notes of the news,” where “the outlines are accurate enough but we cannot really see the whole picture.”

Mrs. Edwards writes:

[T]he news media cut candidates like Joe Biden out of the process even before they got started. … Few people even had the chance to find out about Joe Biden’s health care plan before he was literally forced from the race by the news blackout that depressed his poll numbers, which in turn depressed his fund-raising.

And it’s not as if people didn’t want this information. In focus groups that I attended or followed after debates, Joe Biden would regularly be the object of praise and interest: “I want to know more about Senator Biden,” participants would say.

Who is responsible for the veil of silence over Senator Biden? Or Senator Dodd? Or Gov. Tom Vilsack? Or Senator Sam Brownback on the Republican side?

The decision was probably made by the same people who decided that Fred Thompson was a serious candidate. Articles purporting to be news spent thousands upon thousands of words contemplating whether he would enter the race, to the point that before he even entered, he was running second in the national polls for the Republican nomination. Second place! And he had not done or said anything that would allow anyone to conclude he was a serious candidate. A major weekly news magazine put Mr. Thompson on its cover, asking — honestly! — whether the absence of a serious campaign and commitment to raising money or getting his policies out was itself a strategy.

[…]

Watching the campaign unfold, I saw how the press gravitated toward a narrative template for the campaign, searching out characters as if for a novel: on one side, a self-described 9/11 hero with a colorful personal life, a former senator who had played a president in the movies, a genuine war hero with a stunning wife and an intriguing temperament, and a handsome governor with a beautiful family and a high school sweetheart as his bride. And on the other side, a senator who had been first lady, a young African-American senator with an Ivy League diploma, a Hispanic governor with a self-deprecating sense of humor and even a former senator from the South standing loyally beside his ill wife. Issues that could make a difference in the lives of Americans didn’t fit into the narrative template and, therefore, took a back seat to these superficialities.

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All of this leaves voters uncertain about what approach makes the most sense for them. Worse still, it gives us permission to ignore issues and concentrate on things that don’t matter.

[…]

If voters want a vibrant, vigorous press, apparently we will have to demand it. … Do your job, so we can — as voters — do ours.

Devout Christians & the RNC

If one is really offended about the contemporary notion/misconception that devout Christians are somehow aligned with the “conservative right-wing” and with the Republican party, then, one should direct one’s ire against the leadership of the Republican party and its public mouth pieces (i.e., Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson, the 700 club, the Christian Coalition, and others).

Unfortunately, the Republican party has mounted a blatant and concerted effort to court born-again Evangelical Christians, and have thereby equated being “Christian” with being aligned with the Republican party (and, rightly or wrongly, with the conservative right-wing). By way of example, about a month ago the Republican National Committee (RNC) urged Evangelical pastors to actively recruit members of their congregation for the Republican party and, too, the RNC requested that pastors forward to the party contact information on their congregation. By making such a self-serving request, the RNC actually placed the churches that responded in jeopardy; because those churches could’ve have lost their (557) tax-exempt status with the IRS — whereby non-profit, including religious organizations, receive certain tax benefits as long as they don’t directly advocate for a political party.

Again, if there’s anyone that should rightfully be the recipient of one’s ire for exploiting and mischaracterizing people of the Christian faith, its the Republican party and its cohorts. In the first presidential debate, for example, Mr. Bush resorted to his religious crutch once again. In his closing statement Mr. Bush clearly invoked biblical imagery when he uttered:

Bush: We’ve climbed the mighty mountain. I see the valley below, and it’s a valley of peace.

Once again, if there’s anyone to blame for the contemporary notion that devout “Christians” are somehow aligned with a particular party, it’s the Republican party and those that do not stand up for their faith’s core values: tolerance, love of neighbor, charity and forgiveness.