Those of you contemplating the role of the media and political firestorms in the Tucson shooting might want to read Matt Taibbi today. He does a certain amount of soul-searching…and some of it is about why those who inflame the rhetoric don't dare indulge in any of that. I want to quote one section that I think is important and absolutely true…
You can make vast fortunes riling up mobs. And because it's a fiercely competitive market, there's an obvious and immediate benefit to using superheated rhetoric — it's more entertaining, gains more attention, and definitely gets more viewers and listeners and, er, readers.
And not only is there no incentive for restraint, there's actually a huge disincentive for restraint, because for many of us in the punditry world, our livelihoods depend upon cultivating audiences who come to expect a certain emotional payoff for tuning in. If you've trained them to expect to have their prejudices validated and their sense of Superiority Over the Other stroked every time they turn on your program, they're not going to like it when the show comes on and the editorial storyline is completely opposite. For the same reason audiences checked out when Mork married Mindy, or when a straightforward detective show like House became a sappy relationship drama, political audiences who get off on anger will start turning the channel when their needs aren't met.
So when you the pundit start admitting to being wrong, and forgiving your enemies, and questioning yourself, and making your message that even people with views different from your own are thinking, feeling human beings who deserve your respect — well, none of those things tend to help you keep your market share. What does win market share is bashing the living fuck out of people your audiences love to hate (and most of the time, it's you who've trained them to hate those people). That's just a fact, and anyone in this business who's honest with himself knows that. That's why Rush Limbaugh can't come on the air today and start telling his Dittoheads that his whole career isn't serious at all but rather a schtick, a thing he does to make money, and that while he maybe does believe some of the things he says, most of the venom is a wholly fictional additive, that the liberals he spends all day implying to you are not really human and don't love their country are citizens just like you, who in reality want all the same things for themselves and their children that you do. He can't do that, because it would be professional suicide for him to say so.
Last week or the week before, there was a minor controversy because Tucker Carlson said something silly about how Michael Vick should be executed. People got up in arms and Carlson eventually had to walk back his statement and say he didn't mean it literally. But my reaction to it was like, "Tucker Carlson? Why does anyone care what Tucker Carlson says?" He's not an elected official. He's not a particularly well-respected pundit. He has no constituency and he's run out of networks that would give him a regular series then cancel it. He's news only because he said something stupid and violent. The way our media works, that's the only way he matters. If he says something that spreads unity and common sense, no one is hearing it.