MARRY ME, WHOEVER YOU ARE

If there is one thing that liberals and conservatives can agree on, it is that the media is biased towards the opposing view. Conservatives long ago made a cliché out of the “liberal media bias”, and any liberal worth her salt can tell you that the mainstream media is owned and operated by the same corporations for whom the Grand Old Party is transforming America into a client state. I am not interested in asking which side is right, because that is a trick question designed by both sides to ensnare those foolhardy enough to wander into the trap. Both sides of the aisle adopt the pose of media bias victim, but if they can not convince you of their victim-hood, they will settle for a debate. Because once you are affixed to the sticky-trap of the media bias debate, you are not going anywhere that either side can’t keep an eye on you. When you enter a debate that can never be won, you have already lost. And what you have lost is the ability to ask the first question that should always be asked of politicians and their parties: What’s in this for them? In this set of particulars, what do both parties have to gain by portraying themselves as victims of the media?

Avoiding such bottomless pits as the futile media bias debate is where the rubber hits the road for the body politic of a democratic America. Citizens leaping into the abyss of the media bias debate enable political entities, both right and left in orientation, to concentrate on their real ambition, the consolidation and expansion of political power. Americans wishing to hold politicians accountable to the citizenry they purport to represent must remember that a magician distracts you with his right hand so you won’t see the tricks he’s up to with his left. Conservative and liberal politicians have us all arguing about the media over here, while they are both over there dividing up what belongs to us like kid brothers and sisters measuring who gets the bigger glass of milk.

Both liberals and conservatives are entrenched in the role of media bias victim because of the political ammunition accessible from the victim role. Donning the cloak of victimization infuses a political entity with greater potency, which more than makes up for the slight cloud of weakness that lingers over the victim. The potency of the victim flows from the pall cast over the alleged oppressor from the other side of the political spectrum. Right and left are so quick to paint themselves as victims in order to smear the opposition as oppressors. The universal desire by both ends of the political spectrum to be identified as victim of the media reflects how important holding the moral high ground remains in the war without guns that is contemporary American politics (see the attempted character assassinations of Bush via dubious National Guard duty and of Kerry by way of swift boat veterans as the central acts of violence in the political war without guns; so far the conservatives have better snipers). Holding the moral high ground is the sine qua non for success in American politics, and has been ever since the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock with their own brand of moral fervor. Seizing it gave liberals desegregation and the end of the Vietnam War, just as it fueled the success of the recent conservative campaigns for war in Iraq and the Patriot Act (note that liberals most often attempt to seize the moral high ground on the coattails of social justice, while conservatives lean heavily on the American public’s belief in the sanctity of patriotism-ergo the aptly titled “Patriot Act”).

When conservatives and liberals play the media victim role they resemble nothing more than a fraudulent employee wearing a neck brace to work in order to get workman’s compensation. The employee is not really hurt, but he knows that by portraying himself as injured by his employer he will be able to manipulate the employer to his own ends. The false wound grants true power. Have you ever faked an illness just to miss a day of work? Imagine what politicians are willing to fake to get their hands on their drug of choice, power.

The breadth of the myth of political entities as passive media victims is matched only by the depth of its absurdity. Political spin doctors are the most capable and calculating manipulators of media breathing air (ad wizards give them a run for their money, but ultimately it is easier to convince someone to buy a Coke than it is to convince him that you are the right guy to run his life). The media bias debate is perfect cover for the real battle by both right and left to more effectively manipulate the media to their own respective ends, a battle now fought to the (political) death. The real question is not whether right or left are the true victim of media bias, but whether right or left is the reigning victor in media manipulation.

Of course, the two party system guarantees both right and left a perpetual bout on the championship card. In real boxing, one or two losses send a fighter into retirement or obscurity. In American politics there are no real defeats, because no matter how many times the right or the left lose, they are right back in the ring for the next championship fight. As vicious as the war between right and left is on one level, with both sides vying to play the Don, on another level the never-ending skirmish between institutionalized right and left is actually a dance. As long as the two keep up their never-ending political tango they have the dance floor all to themselves, making American politics nothing more than an infinite 1950’s dance-a-thon, where the last couple dancing wins the prize.

In order to believe in the reality of their democracy, Americans focus exclusively on the war between right and left for Big Enchalada status. The fact that almost every American, whether Conservative or Liberal, believes that their side is the victim of media bias originates from our need to believe that our democracy is real, that our participation in elections has real consequences, that the future really is at stake when we cast our ballot. To accept that right and left are ultimately collaborators taking turns as Head Honcho would be to deflate the drama of political theater into farce. The dominant cultural myth of America is the greatness of our democracy. For Americans to continue to believe in the greatness of their democracy it must be increasingly infused with the meaning of war. American democracy needs the weight of war to hold it down. Otherwise, having severed its legitimate connection to the populace by failing to offer real choices, it would float away, a farce whose plot is lighter than air.

Americans are now fighting a war to establish “democracy” on the other side of the world. The war in Iraq is something of a wedding ceremony for war and American democracy, in a courtship that is at least as old as the military industrial complex. The difference between the war-without-guns to keep democracy real at home, and the war to make American democracy real in Iraq, is that we can use real guns in Iraq. The symbolic violence enacted by American democratic theater at home is no longer vivid enough to keep the American audience in its seats. Now we must spill the real blood of brown skinned Muslims to keep the show of American democracy in production; As ever, the show must go on. This week’s revelation that the National Security Agency has begun spying on Americans at home is the first indication that the blood spilled in Iraq will not suffice, and that the marriage between war and democracy in the Homeland will no longer be symbolic. Americans sang “Over there, over there” during World War I, but will soon be singing “Over here, over here” in the War (without end) On Terror, a war whose drumbeat has become the beating heart of American democracy.

To divorce democracy from war, Americans must remarry their own democracy. But, like any successful second marriage, this reborn marriage must tell a new story the second time around. The false divide between American right and left, encoded in the myth of media bias, is the lie that undid the first marriage. Americans, no longer able to make real choices for their country through the levers of democracy, became legally separated from both the right and the left, who had in the meantime married one another. It was the ultimate marriage of convenience, like a seventeenth century marriage between rival European royal families that sewed up the map for both of the involved clans. Polygamy has now ensued, as in order to finalize their divorce with the American citizenry , the right and the left have together now married war.

For a second marriage between Americans and democracy to work, it will have to be a lot like the movie Somersby, in which the Richard Gere who returned from war to Jodie Foster became the mensch he had never before been. In fact he may not have even been the same person at all. But that’s okay, because Americans are looking to remarry a mensch this time, and don’t really care if our new democracy isn’t really our old one. Power will always be seductive for politicians, but for a second marriage to work the bond between Americans and democracy must be strong enough for fidelity to trump seduction. If we can craft such a relationship between Americans and democracy, Jodie Foster can look that new democracy in the eye and say “I never loved him the way that I love you.”