Now that Texas might be of significance in, at least, the Democratic race for presidential nominee, I seem to have lost interest. I don’t know why that is. Maybe I have finally overdosed on the incessant 24/7 “horse-race” coverage everywhere in the media world. God knows there are mornings after I am awake and am watching CNN that I crave for a good old scandal or world crisis or whatever. Unfortunately, when news rises to such a level it usually has to do with dead people and, after years of chasing car wrecks to fill an ever-hungry news hole, I am not really up for that first thing in the mornings much anymore.
Jack Shafer, whose Slate media critiques are more reliably than others of his ilk on the mark, recently acknowledged the depth of campaign coverage can be overwhelming with what I thought was a very on-point analogy:
“Even political news gluttons must feel as staggered by the surfeit of coverage this campaign season, as did the proverbial Soviet émigré the first time he wheeled a shopping cart into a 1960s Safeway. The big difference is that today’s news supermarket is a 24-hour Wal-Mart with miles of aisles instead of a few manageable choices.”
Da.
Despite such surplus of campaign news and analysis, Shafer goes on to say, the media (large “M”) are actually doing well what it ideally should be doing in a society such as ours. That would be, simply put, giving the public information which may help them make some semblance of an educated opinion before drawing the curtains and pulling the lever. It is up to the public, of course, whether the lever is one on a voting machine or on a one-armed bandit although sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference.
So perhaps by the time the March 4 primary rolls around in my beloved Lone Star State I will have self-generated a little more excitement about the election once again. If I still have a deficit of enthusiasm by that time, it certainly won’t be because I didn’t have a chance to give the candidates a careful going-over.