Guest Blogger: Dave on "Media-logical Myths"

The post below was written to me in a note by my friend Dave. He read my blog post "Dear Media" and had some particularly interesting insights. I asked him for permission to post it and he said yes. I think you'll enjoy reading this as much as I did:

Dear L/L,

Sounds like you are almost as excited by the election hoo-ha as I am. I find myself unable to watch any of the debates or election coverage because it is all so trivialized with people yelling at each other and trying to make something meaningful out of things that are frankly insignificant, meanwhile ignoring the important elements. We did this twice when George Dubya ran and the mess today is our deserved reward. If we make a better choice this time it will be largely serendipitous since none of the main stream media seems willing to do good old-fashioned reporting. Worst of all, the media seems to have generated certain myths or plot lines, for example "John McCain is a maverick" , that they can't seem to rid themselves of despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.

What I find absolutely most intriguing is how the media buys into republican representations of democrats for being "elitists", key evidence being that John Kerry drinks green tea and Barack Obama eats arugula although both of those are on the menu at most mainstream casual dining restaurants these days and are available at wal-mart and every other grocery store I've visited.

When I think of "elitists", I think of someone who went to an elite private high school and then got admitted to Yale despite his weak high school academic record , getting admitted only because he had a father and a grandfather who created a legacy for him at Yale, and then was admitted to Harvard Business School despite a weak academic record at Yale. He then used his family connections to get a variety of postions in the family businesses of oil and politics proving largely incompetent in most of those positions.

When I think of "elitists", I think of another someone who managed to be admitted to the Naval Academy, an elite publicly-funded academy, despite his own self-described "undistinguished" high school academic record, perhaps getting admitted only because he had a father and grandfather who were four-star admirals and who created a legacy for him at the Academy. He succeeded in compiling a dismal academic record in which he graduated 894th out of 899 in his class. (As an aside, do you suppose being the legacy of two four-star admirals might have been a factor in the Academy graduating him at all?).

He ultimately divorced his first wife to marry an exceptionally wealthy trophy second wife, hobnobbing with the rich and famous, even being reprimanded by the United States Senate for his inappropriate relationship with a central criminal from the savings & loan scandal. Yes, according to the media he was a "war hero" forty years ago, having achieved that status for being shot down over VietNam and abiding by (most) of the military code of conduct although he himself acknowledges that being shot down doesn't make one a "hero" . One might also question how many Naval pilots were allowed to continue flying after destroying four military jets in non-combat duty, perhaps raising the question as to how much influence his father and grandfather, the aforementioned four-star admirals, had to exert on his military career.

When I think of elitists, I don't think of someone who came from humble beginnings, growing up in a single parent household, living with his maternal grandparents for much of his life, starting his college career at lowly Occidental College, and EARNING his way into Columbia and Harvard. I don't think of someone achieving sufficient academic success to be selected as editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review and then going on to teach at the equally prestigious University of Chicago before launching a career in public service. Rather than "elitist", I would see this type of individual as the star of a Horatio Alger dime novel; a rags to riches achievement of the American Dream and someone who pulled himself up by his own bootstraps while gratefully acknowledging all the support and assistance he received from many people along the way.

Two men who largely squandered the special opportunities they were afforded by their respective powerful influential families and another man who earned his way from the bottom to the top. Which of these would you be most likely to describe as "elitist" ??

Ah, but when the facts don't fit with the preconceived story as told by the media elite then the facts must be ignored for mythology is more powerful than reality.