Bumper Stickers and Sound Bites. And Games

I find others who put an idea I have much better than I can and present it to you, gentle reader. I like the blog by Stanley Fish, Think Again, which appears in the New York Times from time to time, and I particularly like what he wrote yesterday, which I quote (too extensively) from:

"It is not my job either to defend or repudiate every statement made by someone I know. Neither my integrity nor my life’s work depend on my clearing myself of suspicions provoked by the words of others. ...

"In politics, and in much of the rest of life, being held responsible for your own words comes with the territory. Once you’ve opened your big mouth, others have a perfect right to ask, 'Do you really mean that?' or 'What did you mean by that?' or 'If you say that, would you also say…?' ... But why should you be held responsible for words spoken by someone else ...?

"Yet this is the position we routinely place our public figures in. The demand that Barack Obama denounce and renounce his pastor, who delivered himself of sentiments a million miles from anything Obama has ever said, is only the latest and most publicized example. ...

"This denouncing and renouncing game is simply not serious. It is a media-staged theater, produced not in response to genuine concerns – no one thinks that Obama is unpatriotic or that Clinton is a racist or that McCain is a right-wing bigot – but in response to the needs of a news cycle. First you do the outrage (did you see what X said?), then you put the question to the candidate (do you hereby denounce and renounce?), then you have a debate on the answer (Did he go far enough? Has she shut her husband up?), and then you do endless polls that quickly become the basis of a new round.

"Meanwhile, the things the candidates themselves are saying about really important matters – war, the economy, health care, the environment – are put on the back-burner until the side show is over, though the odds are that a new one will start up immediately. ...

"...Usually we denounce our opponents, not our friends or associates or loved ones (unless we are living in a totalitarian state where denunciations are offered as proof of loyalty). So it seems overly dramatic to denounce a supporter because he or she has uttered an opinion you find distasteful. Better to say something mild and nuanced – I don’t agree with that, but I’m not going to turn my back on someone because of a few unfortunate remarks – and get on with the real business at hand.

"That is what Obama did in his justly praised speech. He rejected Reverend Wright’s rants against the United States and against the white power-structure, but he refused to reject the man to whom he had looked for spiritual guidance. And he deplored the tendency 'to pounce' on every 'gaffe,' because, he said, if we continue to do that, we’ll just be 'talking about some other distraction, and then another one, and then another one.'

"The odd thing is that the press that produces these distractions and the populace that consumes them really believe they are discussing issues and participating in genuine political dialogue. But in fact they have abandoned genuine political dialogue and have committed themselves to a conversation that differs only in subject matter from conversations about Eliot Spitzer’s and David Paterson’s sex lives. It’s not politics; it’s titillation clothed in political garb.

"We should collectively denounce and renounce denouncing and renouncing."

Thanks to Stanley Fish for another attempt to reason with us as adults. (Barack's attempt was the first.)