Democracy are us
Thursday, September 4th, 2008 By Mike Maurer
Portage is a village near Bowling Green where I grew up, physically, anyway. The Blade reports the current mayor is fed up and walking out. General petty allegations all around and back and forth. A lawyer friend once identified this as the “Three-year-old Defense”, e.g., “I didn’t violate the permit; you violated the permit.” Same thing here: “I’m not the one with the petty, secret agenda; you’re the one with the petty secret agenda.”
You might think that this changes with sophistication but if you did you’d be wrong. There’s a nice little blurb in the Dispatch today about John Kasich taking the obligatory shot at Gov. Strickland. (Sorry, couldn’t find a link.) It’s about four column inches. This kind of thing barely makes it over the bar as news. Partisan eruptions, okay, you have to cover them, especially at a convention, because that’s all there is and people need to be able to pay attention to it if they choose to.
But two of the four column inches are boilerplate Strickland response. Good Lord, that’s a pure waste of time. That was just as weak when it was first published as news as Kasich’s attack, and it certainly isn’t news rehashed.
In reality, it’s probably not necessary to publish the opponents’ response to what is initially nonsense anyway. But if you feel obligated to follow the form, even if it results in predictable crap, then at least limit yourself to a sentence.
Tags: journalism, Politics
