Suspension of disbelief

IN THE NEWS
When I travel on business, as I did for the last two weeks (hence the drop-off in postings), I do something in passing that I never do at home: watch the news on television. Long ago, I got sufficiently disgusted with TV news that I swore it off altogether. It felt like (from what I've heard) abandoning alcohol after a long binge. After the habitual grab for the bottle or the remote fades, you notice how much better you feel. The constant, urgent buzzing in your head disappears. You begin to think clearly again. You find sustenance in other places, such as printed or online news sources.

Unfortunately, swearing off TV news puts you out of touch with the way most people experience current events. Since I travel every couple of months, I get infrequent snapshots of TV news in hotel rooms, mostly when I'm ironing a shirt for a meeting later that morning, or having a room service dinner after finishing a long day's work.

This strobe effect--an occasional flash of TV news, then darkness, then another flash--may give me a perspective that people who watch the news regularly lack. When something changes about the standard coverage of current events, the transition is more jarring when you don't watch the news daily. There's no gradual slide from one attitude to another; you feel the full force of changed sentiments.

So what has changed? Apparently, the suspension of disbelief that many in TV news have been giving the Bush Administration has collapsed. I switched from one news station to another, just to make sure the change wasn't confined to a single news outlet. On every one, to slightly varying degrees, the Dubai ports controversy had changed the tone of news coverage. Instead of accepting at face value what the Administration claimed was necessary for the security of US citizens--the Dubai ports deal, the warrantless wiretaps, and yes, even the Iraq War--the commentariat suddenly seems willing to question all of it. Lou Dobbs on CNN seems to have turned his entire show into a jeremiad against the Bush Administration, blasting every Bush policy related to "homeland security." (At times, I thought the normally avuncular Dobbs was going to jump through the camera and throttle some of his guests.)

Something has definitely changed. The Republican-controlled Congress' repudiation of the deal, followed by President Bush's first veto threat in his entire tenure in the White House, is a clear enough sign that something's afoot. It's more, perhaps, than just the ports issue, which is clearly channeling and spreading discontent about the course of American domestic and foreign policy since 9/11. Speaking as someone who experiences TV news in the odd fashion that I do, I can say that I haven't seen anything like it since Bush took office in 2001. With Bush's approval rating in the thirties, it's clear that many Americans' suspension of disbelief about him, the actions his Administration have taken, and the actions this country didn't take since 9/11 has unraveled.

Comments

[Professor Matthew Søberg Shugart/Fruits and Votes]

Bush also had threatened to veto the torture ban. As a scholar of comparative executives, I think you can tell a great deal about a president's priorities by what he vetos (or threatens to veto).

Torture and selling port operations to a government that recognized the Taliban but not Israel. Some set of priorities.