Many years ago I was talking with a veteran local TV political reporter. It was the Newt Gingrich era. You know, “balanced budgets” and “term limits” and all that other transparently cynical “revolutionary” bullshit.
My question was, “Why are you taking this seriously? Why even give it respectful attention?”
His answer was, “At least there are some ideas there”, avoiding any acknowledgment that the Gingrich PR machinery was “the hot issue” at the moment and, in straight pendulum terms it was time for the press to shift balance after a couple years of mostly favorable Bill Clinton coverage.
The overwhelming scent of bad faith politics, of the “loyal opposition” doing nothing other than throwing gravel in the gearworks of government was, you know, a “speculative” judgment. Reacting to manufactured topicality was a better position, journalistically speaking.
This comes to mind with the latest “revolutionary” proposal from Minnesota’s anything-but-loyal opposition. Namely, the transparently cynical proposal by top Republicans, including gubernatorial candidate Paul (Cotton Mather) Gazelka, to require the state’s teachers to “share” curriculum with parents — and should parents object to heretical texts like, oh I don’t know, “To Kill a Mockingbird” — offer “alternatives”, like, who knows? “The Selected Sermons of Jerry Falwell Jr.”
With Tim Walz still in office and Democrats controlling the House, this latest exercise in shameless pandering — dubbed the “Minnesota Parents’ Bill of Rights” — isn’t likely to go anywhere. But, still, there it is.
After two years of throwing up nothing but impediments to combating an international pandemic, and dismissing the impacts of police violence, this naked appeal to Critical Race Theory racists … (there, I said it) … is what Republicans are selling as a fresh idea. Something that truly improves the safety, prosperity and happiness of all concerned.
I have several teachers and ex-teachers among my family and circle of friends and it’s safe to describe them as universally disgusted. On top of Republicans regularly deriding the work of public school teachers for decades, (because as a group they tend to read a lot of books, have a union and vote Democrat they are a threat to Trump-era conservative ambitions), this latest brainstorm would add hours … and hours … of uncompensated time to every teacher’s workload. (Feel free to suspect that this “fresh idea” was handed down to Minnesota’s deep-thinking Republicans by some ALEC-like dark money cabal which is simultaneously sliding cash to their campaign funds.)
My problem, on the beat reporter/editor level, is declining to aggressively confront the naked pandering of this and other even more cynical positions taken up by 2022 conservatives.
Like, for example, the “fraudulent 2020 election” claims pushed by Trumpists and widely-to-unanimously accepted (publicly) by Minnesota Republicans.
Post January 6 there was a brief moment when a truly revolutionary idea kicked around professional journalism circles. Namely, every interview with any politician would begin with the simple question, “Did Joe Biden win the 2020 election fair and square?”
Any answer other than, “Of course he did”, meant the interview was over and the politician, self-revealed to be a pathetic toady for a corrupt reality TV performer, would have to get his free publicity from some other outlet. (Working reporters could hand him business cards for Joe Rogan.)
That moment dissipated an instant later. Which means we have returned to treating cynical nonsense like “sharing curriculum”, (more accurately described as “censoring” or “canceling curriculum”) as though it is a good faith proposal to improve the academic outcomes of Minnesota students.
So I ask again, does this crowd have even one constructive idea?
Don’t everyone answer at once.