BEST
SUMMER
EVER
HUFFINGTON
05.26.13
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were really to blame for Congressional gridlock, saying, “If Americans
want to know why their elected
officials can’t compromise, these
scholars and pundits say, perhaps
they ought to look in the mirror.”
(Thomas Ferguson swatted this
away by pointing out that available
data demonstrated that there was
“little evidence that Congressional polarization is rooted in sharp
differences in public sentiment.”)
Stollberg wasn’t alone — days earlier, Tom Brokaw summed up the
summer’s debt ceiling crisis by suggesting that the American people
got what they deserved.
Of course, when it comes to August’s effects on the media’s brainpan, you really can’t find a finer
example than the August of 2010.
That was the year a bored media
managed to elevate an otherwise
non-notable, anti-Muslim crank
named Terry Jones into a media
celebrity, as the culminating event
in their slipshod coverage of the
“Ground Zero Mosque” controversy.
More than anything else, the
“slow news month”/“silly season”
signifiers exist to absolve the media in advance of whatever terrible nonsense they are about to get
up to, because they are bored and
LINKINS: LOOKING FORWARD IN ANGST
LIFESTYLE
TRAVEL
sweaty and sad that all the powerful elites to whom they normally
have access are away on vacation.
So that’s what summer is like,
for those who ply their trade in
the world of Beltway politics: a hot
swamp of idiocy, laziness, and error, where seriousness rarely finds
The media ... are bored
and sweaty and sad that
all the powerful elites to
whom they normally have
access are away on vacation.”
a purchase. I still recall the words
of one of Washington’s most decorated soulless government functionaries, Bush White House Chief
of Staff Andrew Card, who said,
“From a marketing point of view,
you don’t introduce new products
in August.” The “new product” he
was referring to? The Iraq War,
which I think we can all agree was
much too sensible and intelligent to
be associated with “silly season.”
Oh wait, you say the White
House Iraq Group was formed in
August? Never mind, then.
That’s just perfect.