Mick Clifford: A simple plea after a week of watching election coverage on TV: Make America sane again

While broadcasters will claim they are just telling the story, the reality is they are front and centre in the depressing vista that is America right now, piling on the stress and widening divisions that are haunting American society
Mick Clifford: A simple plea after a week of watching election coverage on TV: Make America sane again

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris at a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Wednesday. Picture: AP/Allison Joyce

Ari Melber is worried about your mental health. Melber presents a programme, The Beat, on the US television channel MSNBC and he is concerned people’s mental health may be shot to bits as a result of the US presidential election.

“We’re going to talk to an expert about how you deal with stress and intensity at this time,” Melber tells the viewers. 

“What we think has a huge impact on how we feel together. That is why we are bringing on Deepak Chopra to talk about being in mind and being strong. After the break.” 

The break is full of adverts that are very intense and liable to add to your stress about the election. There is an add on abortion that is graphic and distasteful. Another add concerns an illegal immigrant murdered somebody and why that means you should vote for Donald Trump. 

Kamala Harris greets the Wisconsin Badgers women's volleyball team. Picture: AP /Jacquelyn Martin
Kamala Harris greets the Wisconsin Badgers women's volleyball team. Picture: AP /Jacquelyn Martin

Then there is an ad full of Black people telling the camera that Kamala Harris did nothing for the Black community. By the time Melber returns, you just want this election to be over.

Ari introduces Deepak who has reputation for being wise. What can we do to escape the stress? “Don’t get involved in the fray,” he counsels.

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Ari replies with a straight face. It would have been nice to chill with Deepak for a while, many imaginative miles away from politics, but the caravan has to keep on rolling. Back with you after the break when we will excavate the lower reaches of the barrel of human decency in our latest look at the election. Stay tuned in and stay stressed.

Welcome to US television at a time of living dangerously. The election has exposed and widened deep divisions in American society. And while the broadcasters will claim they are just telling the story, the reality is they are front and centre in the depressing vista that is America right now, piling on the stress and widening divisions that are haunting American society.

The destruction of a politics befitting a developed democracy cannot be analysed without examining the impact of television. There is where the outer reaches of decency and acceptability are explored. If you, for instance, watch Fox News you are living in a completely different country from the people who get their news from Ari Mebler and his colleagues in MSNBC. 

Donald Trump holds a press conference from inside a garbage truck in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Picture: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Donald Trump holds a press conference from inside a garbage truck in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Picture: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Both of those channels plumb depths in an attempt to corral viewers in a shrinking market. They sensationalise and denigrade the other side, reaching for the lowest common denominator. Others, such as CNN, make, at the very least, a superficial attempt at balance and sanity, but one can only be sane and reasonable for so long when there are 24 hours of airtime to fill each day.

Then you have Jon Stewart and those who follow down the path he beat over 20 years ago in making the news accessible by highlighting the crazed elements in TV culture. 

There was a time when a huge chunk of the public got their news from Stewart’s Today Show, but since his return in recent years even he is finding it difficult to laugh in the right places and keep a straight face when the madness turns really dark. 

One thing is sure. If television was banned in the morning, the base fare now retailing as normal politics would have no choice but to begin raising itself out of the gutter.

Take CNN. Kerry’s own Donie O’Sullivan produces some in-depth and fascinating journalism out on the road across America. But back in the studio, Kaitlan Collins has a panel of guests who are discussing the two candidates. Everybody present is dressed and coiffed like they’re working in a top law firm where most of the lawyers spend more time in a beauty salon than the court. 

Kamala Harris supporters at a campaign rally in Madison, Wisconsin. Picture: Scott Olson/Getty Images
Kamala Harris supporters at a campaign rally in Madison, Wisconsin. Picture: Scott Olson/Getty Images

There is a clock in the corner of the screen ticking down to a programme in three hours, 10 minutes and four seconds in which Kamala Harris will be interviewed. When that clock runs out, the screen will revert to the clock ticking down to polling day. 

Well, not polling day as such because that’s not the main event. It ticks down to the closing of the polls when the main event kicks off, which is the coverage of polling day. There is nothing more stressful than watching a ticking clock and wondering when the world might end.

At some point Wolf Blitzer — quare name but great stuff — appears with his programme. Wolf is a serious guy who regards the camera like he knows the secret of when the world will end. 

“CNN has a new interview, a new interview [he actually says it twice] with a swimwear model who met Donald Trump in the 90s,” he says. “She was seeing Jeffrey Epstein at the time. Coming up.” 

With that, more ads on abortion and murder and why the other guy or girl is about as clean as something the cat dragged in overnight. 

In another lifetime, Wolf’s swimwear model might have changed the course of an election but this is the time of Trump.

If CNN tries to be the parent in the room, MSNBC does its best Denis the Menace. Presenter Chris Hayes is having a rant on his show about Trump. His eyes widen when he gets to the crazy parts about a crazy guy and when the whole thing is too crazy for words, he effects a laugh that might scare children. 

Chris has all the appearance of the uncle whom everybody avoids at the family wedding. But that’s just because he’s telling it like Trump is. Or whatever.

Donald Trump arrives on stage for a campaign rally Green Bay, Wisconsin. Picture: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Donald Trump arrives on stage for a campaign rally Green Bay, Wisconsin. Picture: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Later on MSNBC, presenter Alex Wagner is talking about Trump and his sidekick Tucker Carlson. In the background is a shot of the two homies with the legend underneath saying ‘Daddy Issues’. Ms Wagner is discussing serious issues about possibly the future of democracy but turn the sound down and it looks like a joke from a late-night chat show.

Any rational analysis would have to conclude that one station above all others is responsible for how election TV has gone. Fox News brings, and has brought, denigration and moderated lies to a new level in recent years. 

Bill Reilly, its one time star, had to go because of allegations about his personal behaviour. 

The aforementioned Tucker got the bullet last year, despite having some of the highest ratings in the country, because even his schtick was too much for Fox.

One of their new stars is Jesse Watters, and, boy, is she in a hurry somewhere. One night last week she was ranting to beat the band about poor Ms Harris. In the background was a cartoon image of Kamala’s head over a swimming pool. 

“How is this race even close?” Jesse asks. And on she rants.

At the bottom of the screen, the strap keeps changing: “Kamala is a media fantasy,” it reads. And then: “Kamala is afraid of herself”. Followed by: “The media turn on Kamala.” 

For over 15 minutes, Jesse Watters goes on about how Kamala Harris was stupid, manipulative, unable to read her lines and barely fit for employment. By the end of it, the neutral observer might conclude that Harris would be hard pressed to get a job sweeping the streets, not to mind as president of the United States.

A week of watching this TV fare in the forlorn hope of catching even a small bit of rational, sober analysis would leave one with a simple plea. Make America sane again.

American TV's distortion of politics

The distortion of politics by TV was evident in one recent example. On October 22, Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly, a highly decorated military man, told the New York Times Trump met the definition of fascist. He also said that while in office the former president suggested at least once that Hitler “did some good things". 

The following day, Kamala Harris was interviewed by CNN’s Anderson Cooper in a town hall meeting. Cooper asked Harris if she thought Trump was a fascist. “Yes I do,” she replied. Later, she returned to the topic without prompting, saying if elected Trump would be “a president who admires dictators and is a fascist". 

Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons arrives to perform at a campaign rally for Kamala Harris at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison, Wisconsin. Picture: AP /Jacquelyn Martin
Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons arrives to perform at a campaign rally for Kamala Harris at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison, Wisconsin. Picture: AP /Jacquelyn Martin

Two nights after that, Fox News’ star ranter Sean Hannity was apoplectic at Harris for dissing his main man. He replayed the CNN clip and said Harris was now calling Trump a Hitler. She said nothing of the sort. The only politician who compared him directly to Hitler was JD Vance, a number of years ago, long before accepting the invitation to be his running mate. The only one who mentioned Hitler to Kelly was Trump himself.

Then Hannity suggests Republican leaders over the last 50 years had all been compared by Democrats to Hitler. As evidence, he produced a quote from some nobody congressman in the 1980s who mentioned the Nazi dictator. There is no record of any presidential candidate or senior politician on the democratic side engaging in this kind of stuff. But now, Hannity has created a context based on lies. Then he adopted the pose of serious person in the room trying to rein in mad Kamala.

“She is being dangerous,” he said. “This needs to stop. There has been an assassination attempt on Donald Trump. We know an Iranian hit squad is supposed to be going after him and his family. Kamala Harris is putting them and election workers in danger. She needs to stop. She is the danger, not Donald Trump.” 

His whole rant was based on lies. Not just that, but at no point over 15 minutes of this did he mention John Kelly or particularly that Kelly was the one who related it was Trump who brought up Hitler.

Finally, Hannity then shows an advert the Republicans were putting out. It depicts Jerry Wartski, a 94-year-old Holocaust survivor criticising Harris for comparing Trump to the man who murdered six million Jews. “I know more about Hitler than Kamala will ever know in a thousand lifetimes,” Mr Wartski says. 

For the Fox News viewer, Kamala Harris had plumbed the depths by introducing the base notion that Trump was a Hitler clone. She was thus putting the lives of Trump, his family and workers in danger, giving cover for an Iranian hit squad and finally also managing to denigrate a survivor from Nazi death camps. 

And Sean Hannity? Sure, wasn’t he just fearlessly calling out the cynical Harris and coming to the aid of poor, stricken Donald Trump, the victim in all this. 

And everybody, always, keeps a straight face as if all this is some version of serious journalism.

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