The past couple weeks have seen the U.S. national news dominated by conservative vs. liberal agendas. A liberal frenzy was kicked off when gay activist, blogger, and Miss USA judge Perez Hilton asked a very divisive question of Miss California, Carrie Prejean, during the competition. The question asked for the contestant’s opinion on legalizing same sex marriage. Prejean responded that she believed marriage was between a man and a woman.
This answer sparked a firestorm of bitter, personal attacks towards Prejean and anyone who supported her or her position. Same sex marriage activists uncovered and proliferated bare breasted fashion photographs of a younger Prejean. Additional dirt that Prejean may have had breast augmentation surgery was also dug up and thrown into the mix.
About the same time, Bristol Palin went public with her support of abstinence for teens. Bristol Palin was also personally attacked for this opinion. Much of the media and liberal pundits based their attack on the fact that she was herself, a teen mother. Additionally, Palin was attacked for having previously felt and stated that teen abstinence was “not realistic”.
Neither of these two divisive issues is new to anyone with liberal values, conservative values, or anyone who reads or watches the news. We all know the issues and where each side stands. There are plenty of politicians, pundits, news writers and readers on both sides of the issues. So, why the personal attacks against these two conservative advocates?
The answer lies within the attacks themselves. All of these attacks focused on tearing down the person rather than the position. Liberals, especially the media, realize the dispute on these two issues is academic. These are classic ideological debates.
True ideology is a realm of values, morals, beliefs, and spirituality. We attempt to define, or categorize ideologies on the simplified liberal vs. conservative, or left vs. right continuum. Even with such a simplified, one-dimensional model for ideology, the media recognizes that staking out a position as right vs. wrong, or moral vs. immoral might violate journalism principles and risk alienating the audience.
Consequently, it is safer for the media to attack the person, rather than the position. This is the realm of opinion, emotion, attitude, and judging others. Facts and diligence are not even required, hearsay is perfectly acceptable. As I watched regular updates to these stories unfold, it occurred to me that the mainstream media is under pressure to constantly provide the latest updates, hold the audience’s attention, and sustain ratings. New irrelevant photos and quotes are easy to obtain, and salacious. This is lazy and irresponsible journalism.
In comparison, intellectual debates on opposing ideologies by true thought leaders can be hard to orchestrate and uninteresting to those wishing not to think hard.
Do the liberals and media truly expect us to believe that is perfectly OK for a sitting President of the United States to commit adultery with an intern/employee but a U.S. Citizen voicing a position on a single issue should be ignored because of a comparatively minor personal mistake from their past?
Trash journalism; what was once the exclusive domain of the tabloids, has now become a core tenet of the mainstream American media.
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