In the same way health care reform and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell affect folk outside the Beltway more tangibly than they do senators and presidents, or pundits and bloggers, the policies discussed in the SOTU have a very human, almost apolitical face. This is more than stating the obvious. And it is similarly true that it’s not anything new to say we must always remember those who are on the ground when reporting on the policies that will affect them. But it can be easily forgotten in this call-write-push-publish-next age of the hungry digital media’s maw.
So as we report on the political implications of the State of the Union address, let’s also remember to bear in mind those outside the academy—the popcorn-munchers who have to sit through the movie—and focus our reporting on just how they might be impacted by the president’s plans, regardless of their political shrewdness. The State of the Union, in one sense, is an appropriately theatrical launch to that most outrageously theatrical, shallowly reported, hyperventilating, draining, and fascinating quadrennial (sort of) event: the presidential election campaign. It would be worth a bipartisan standing ovation if we kicked it off in the right thoughtful style.
"Budget cuts will do more than enrage the left: they will cost jobs and services."
Federal budget cuts may cost jobs in the coercive, non-productive (govt, public) sphere, but there will not be a net loss in services: it's not as though public service (sic) nets real productivity, wealth, efficiency, or innovation. Moreover, the less taxpayer money being wasted by the federal govt, the more money available, supposedly, for efficient investing in the voluntary, productive (private) sphere, where real prosperity is fostered through actual productivity, saving, investment, mutual exchange, and so on. That is, unless the money is spent by state govts; in which case, the results should be only slightly better than the results of federal spending.
"As would an end to earmarks ..."
Ending earmarks does nothing to reduce spending: it merely and unconstitutionally lets the Executive, and not the Congress, decide how to spend the already-allocated funds.
And that being the case, "the left" (sic: authoritarians, imperialists, Hamiltonians, et al.) should be quite pleased. Traditional liberals, on the other hand, should be enraged.
#1 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Tue 25 Jan 2011 at 11:48 PM
Theater, I don't mind. Kabuki theater, that gets a little wearing. Do British writers, often greatly admired by Anglophile-American journalists, make this big a deal about the Queen's annual 'speech from the throne'?
#2 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Wed 26 Jan 2011 at 12:42 PM
I sense that Congress across the board got hit by innumerable emails and phone calls etc to be more civil in all their actions so we got it more like an avalanche than daily doses--the latter would have been ignored. Also, too many of our citizens prefer to read or listen to "the fluff" you mention than about the protests in Tunisia, Egypt, the bombings in Iraq and Moscow and the "new country" called Somaliland, the new Parliament that Karzai finally allowed to sit--as if he had much choice!!
Most of the above I did find in the NYTimes but not today--last week, weekend or BBC. Good old BBC!! Where would I be without it!!??!! But then how many of our 310 million civilians know there is a Somaliland or where it might be?? or how many care if Egyptian or Tunisian citizens yell at each other or get burned by their governments?? Not very many I'm afraid. Few could tell you where much of any of them are or who gathered to discuss what the governments are planning to do with their respective budgets at home and worldwide. It isn't a pocketbook issue to most, so most don't care--and too many journalists know that. But that is a passion of mine so I subscribe to magazines in paper and online to find out more than just a few headlines. NYT will give me a few here and there but not after they had to stay up late listening to the President. For me it was only dinner time--6pm PST. Hopefully NYTimes and others will catchup with the world come tomorrow or next week. Do you think so??!! I won't hold my breath!!
#3 Posted by Patricia Wilson, CJR on Wed 26 Jan 2011 at 11:17 PM