Does Romney think we are all stupid?

[Cali Coug]

I don't understand what he is trying to do. He is quoted as saying things that some could take to be a slight on Utah (I don't, and I actually agree with him). In response, his spokesperson makes a totally indefensible statement that creates a problem where none existed.

Here is what he said in 2002:

"I'm not convinced that a state would be better off with all Republicans. As a matter of fact, I've been in a state like that for the past three years. Not a good thing."

"I lived in a place that was a one-party state that was primarily Republicans and I thought, 'Oh, won't that be nice?' The answer is no."

Here is what his spokesperson said about Romney's quotes in 2002:

But Romney spokesperson Kevin Madden says Romney's comments about a one-party state were made when he was running for governor of Massachusetts, "where he was warning of the dangers of one party, the Democrats, controlling all aspects of government in Massachusetts. It was not a proxy argument about any other state."

"It was in the context of a gubernatorial race" in Massachusetts, not in Utah, said Madden.

Not a proxy argument about any other state? Not a statement about Utah? How can you read what he said and come to any other conclusion? Sad thing is, what he said is true. If he is going to go this far to deny something this small, what will he do when something important arises?

[Tex]

Originally Posted by Cali Coug

I don't understand what he is trying to do. He is quoted as saying things that some could take to be a slight on Utah (I don't, and I actually agree with him). In response, his spokesperson makes a totally indefensible statement that creates a problem where none existed.

Here is what he said in 2002:

"I'm not convinced that a state would be better off with all Republicans. As a matter of fact, I've been in a state like that for the past three years. Not a good thing."

"I lived in a place that was a one-party state that was primarily Republicans and I thought, 'Oh, won't that be nice?' The answer is no."

Here is what his spokesperson said about Romney's quotes in 2002:

But Romney spokesperson Kevin Madden says Romney's comments about a one-party state were made when he was running for governor of Massachusetts, "where he was warning of the dangers of one party, the Democrats, controlling all aspects of government in Massachusetts. It was not a proxy argument about any other state."

"It was in the context of a gubernatorial race" in Massachusetts, not in Utah, said Madden.

Not a proxy argument about any other state? Not a statement about Utah? How can you read what he said and come to any other conclusion? Sad thing is, what he said is true. If he is going to go this far to deny something this small, what will he do when something important arises?

Do you have some links for these?

I follow you until your last sentence. While the juxtaposition of the two statements certainly raises an eyebrow, I think extrapolating that on to his larger decision-making process is quite the leap.

[SeattleUte]

Romney is soulless.

[il Padrino Ute]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

Romney is soulless.

Which is why he has my vote.

[Sleeping in EQ]

Spokespersons frequently depend on the average person being stupid, and most of the time they can take it to the bank. Those who can actually think get frustrated and indignant, but usually there aren't enough of them to make a difference.

Am I being cynical?

Walter Lippmann would say, "no."

[il Padrino Ute]

Originally Posted by Cali Coug

I am consistently disappointed in the reporters who are present to ask questions. How do they let people get away with nonsense like this (which certainly isn't peculiar to Romney)?

Because today's "reporters" are not reporters in the journalistic sense. They're more like "suggesters". They all push their own agenda to gain readers who think along the same lines as they do.

[Sleeping in EQ]

Originally Posted by Cali Coug

I am consistently disappointed in the reporters who are present to ask questions. How do they let people get away with nonsense like this (which certainly isn't peculiar to Romney)?

I'll have to do a full-on post on this sometime. I study the media for a living.

[All-American]

Better question: would Romney be right?

[Sleeping in EQ]

Originally Posted by Cali Coug

I am guessing part of the problem is that the reporters would be ostracized from the politicians if they pushed the politicians too far, and the reporters (and their networks) need sound bytes from the politicians to air, so they let the politicians get away with murder. Any truth to that?

There is some truth to that. What you have described is what some researchers call "lap dog" journalism. Other kinds of journalism "dogs" are the guard dog, attack dog, big dog, and yellow dog. One of its less obvious results is that it lends itself to an overrepresentation of official voices in the media: governments, the military, big business, entertainment and other institutions that have equipped themselves to "handle" the press get called on by journalists who need a quote or a soundbite or whatever. As a percentage of total content, today's news reports have more official voices in them than did the media of previous generations. In many instances the relationships are so smooth between journalists and officials that documents are just faxed (or e-mailed, or sent via text message to a cell phone) to the news room, and sometimes already written articles are faxed. It is not that uncommon for these "prewritten" articles (which were written by some PR person) to be published word-for-word (or nearly word-for-word) with the journalists' by line with a wink and a nod. Of course, deadline pressure greases the wheels for this kind of thing too.

The big picture is more complicated and involves wrestling with modernism and postmodernism (and the sub-issues of the possible collapse of reason into the aesthetic, into spectacle), different theories of the press, the commodification of information, notions of public sphere and public relations, media fragmentation and the decline of democratic discourse, the privelidging of the consumer over the citizen, and so on.

[Sleeping in EQ]

Originally Posted by Cali Coug

Sounds interesting. Sadly, I think the media news today is more about entertainment and less about news.

If by "news" you mean something like "information valuable to an informed citizenry and a functioning democracy," I agree. But recent scholarship has shown that the very notion of news--of the update, of the incoming, of the latest, of the pop up ads, of the channel surfing, of the clicking for something new, of the desire for new sensory stimulation--is entertwined with entertainment. News is itself an entertaining spectacle, or part and parcel of our capitalistic phantasmagoria. One of the disturbing things about this line of scholarship is that its history goes back to critiques of fascism.

Well, that was pretty depressing for a Saturday afternoon. Sorry about that!