Editorial
I understand the absence of my editorial column in last week’s edition was noticed by more than a few readers. I know this because many of you made the effort to not only point out its absence but add how much the commentary was missed. To answer the only half-joking question about whether I have run out of things to say: I have not... sometimes the idea just has to simmer.
For instance, my wife was reading an article about changes at CNN and the media outlet’s rebranding efforts to return to unbiased reporting. The main question I had was why a news agency would need to “get back” to balanced reporting. Isn’t the primary function of a press to report unbiased, accurate, and factual information?
There once was a time in our nation’s history when politicians feared the power of the press, not because of the opinions of its commentators, but because officials knew that if the public were told the facts, citizens would act on this knowledge and call for change.
This idea is the root of the later Speaker of the House Thomas “Tip” O’Neill’s often repeated mantra, “All politics is local.”
O’Neill was a master at translating his national bill propositions into a way that showed constituents at local levels how their lives or communities would be affected. We have a great example of this concept currently playing out here in Texas.
Gov. Abbott has been calling for assistance with border control issues for years, but those pleas have largely fallen on deaf ears. That is until he started bussing asylum seekers to non-border cities in the northern states, which made border control problems a local issue for the politicians in New York.
It would seem that O’Neill’s statement that all politics is local is true, but it’s not. Unfortunately, it’s not. What is true, however, is all politics is personal.
The reason the statement seemed true in O’Neil’s day was that politicians still had to win campaigns through the promise of action and the level of accountability voters held them to for keeping it. And politicians wanted to keep hold of those offices for the same reasons they do now: Power and money.
Our elected officials at all levels have the power to affect great changes in our lives, and as my grandfather was always fond of saying, “I never met a man that was poorer coming out of politics than he was going in.” And while politicians worked to keep their positions, voters were regularly kept informed on what officials were up to through the dedicated work from members of the press.
What changed? The two most prevalent changes I see in our society from that time to this is cash-flow and the consumption of information.
In April 1993, the source code to the world’s first web browser was made available to the public. The internet connected the world in ways imaginable, and as of this month, three of the five richest people in the world, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates operate companies directly related to the industry.
Collectively, they represent over a half-billion dollars, and they are just three guys. One of the more prominent political influencers, George Soros isn’t anywhere near that level. Neither is Donald Trump.
The point is that with that level of cash out there, who do you think a politician is going to be more fearful of, wealthy businessmen who are in a race to becoming the world’s first trillionaire or voters who are more interested in what a celebrity is wearing than what a politician is saying. Although that explains why number four on the richest person list is the CEO of Louis Vuitton.
The second, and more important change is that there once was a time when the public wanted to know the truth, even if that truth was inconvenient or uncomfortable. The truth seems to be a taste that is no longer palatable to the American consumer.
Facts have less sex appeal than opinions, the truth is rarely trending, and public outrage over political corruption only lasts until the next TikTok challenge.
I wish I could say this was not the case in our little part of the nation, but most of our local politicians have either run unopposed or have been appointed to office, and one entity we cover hasn’t needed to hold an election in a quarter of a century due to lack of interest in civic duty. This is an uncomfortable, inconvenient truth. Unfortunately, it’s a truth that is likely not to survive past the next viral video.