Volume 47, Number 14 · September 21, 2000
The Shame of Political TV
By Mark Danner
Like ill-matched partners in a bad marriage, American politics and American television seem bound inextricably together, unable to escape a relationship that increasingly degrades both partners. Television, 'the business of selling audiences to advertisers,' produces programs that at bottom are brightly colored conveyer belts carefully designed to deliver to corporations particular segments of a mass market: Ally McBeal's success lies in the efficiency with which it delivers the 'eyeballs' of young urban females to gaze upon the products of L'Oréal, Monday Night Fooball's in how many middle-aged male eyeballs it attracts for Budweiser and Chevrolet. Yet American politics, however important its workings may be to the future of the republic, simply does not deliver enough eyeballs. In order to obtain them, politicians, like corporations, are forced to pay, forming a system that has left American television increasingly rich, American politics increasingly corrupt, and American voters increasingly ignorant. Television is the means by which democracy has been absorbed by the market, producing a new hybrid: call it 'democracy commodified,' and we have seen its emergence this summer in its purest form yet.
Feature, 1764 words
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