Emily Hoeven | The politics of attention

Growing Pains | Why we should be choosier about what we watch, read and produce

By Emily Hoeven 10/17/16 10:35pm

This past week, I went to go see the Mask and Wig show “Magic Mike and Ike.” The last skit was about why they hadn’t performed any skits about Trump. It was my favorite skit of the evening, not only because its paradoxical nature — a performance about the very thing about which they refused to perform — appealed to my English major sensibilities, but also because I agreed wholeheartedly with the message it put forward.

Which was, in a word, that enough has been said about Trump. That enough has been said about the election in general. To quote the skit, “If we write about him / we just give him what he wants.” This applies to both candidates. The goings-on of our country cannot and should not be reduced to a constant rehashing of verbal insults between two people whose words and actions have made them caricatures both of themselves and the United States.

I am thus writing this column about why I haven’t written columns about the presidential election for two reasons: first, because I think the media is just as complicit in the absurdities of the election as the politicians themselves. Second, because the theme of my column is Growing Pains, and one of the things I grapple most with is the double bind of finally being old enough to exercise my vote, yet lacking faith both in the system in which I am voting for and the candidates that I will be forced to choose between.

I genuinely feel lost about what to do. And the multitudes of articles and videos posted every day about the election only serve to exacerbate this feeling. I am tired of not being able to find a headline that doesn’t feature the name “Clinton” or “Trump” or both. It has gotten to the point that the more I read about the election, the more videos I watch, the more posts my friends share on Facebook, the more apathetic I become.

Of course, electing a president is an incredibly important process and has immense implications. Who we elect matters, their views matter, the things they say and the morals they uphold have a great deal of impact, both within and outside of the United States. But the president is not the United States. If they control the government, should they also monopolize the media?

It seems to me that the media, both at the collegiate and national level, need to reevaluate their role in relation to politics. They have a duty to communicate truth. They have a duty to relate what happens to what effects, they have a duty to inform, they even have a duty to pass opinion on what they think the consequences or significance of a particular thing might be. But they are not obligated to constantly feature a person just because he or she is running for president. And are we obligated to sit in front of the TV and watch two people argue and insult each other, evading all questions posed to them, preferring instead to continually bring up the same scandals and voting records and previous associations, for two hours?

Well, you might say, what’s the alternative? And I would say that the media make things too easy. They think that just because someone is running for president, they automatically deserve front page stories and breaking news clips for months on end, either to be applauded or condemned. Although presidential candidates do necessitate thorough coverage, we, as viewers, as readers, as consumers of media, don’t have to accept sensationalism as the norm.

But, you’d reply, the media have to work with what they have, as do the voters. We only have the choices we have in front of us, after all. So we put their names on the ballots, and we put their faces on TV, and we put their names in the newspapers. These are the facts and we have to deal with them.

Maybe this is just because it’s my first election, but I can’t help but think that this isn’t quite the case. Without the people who produce the media and without the people who consume it, the presidential candidates would essentially be powerless. They would not really be able to reach us. Their faces and voices would not be omniscient. And it seems to me that if we truly want a higher standard from our politicians, if we want them to thoughtfully answer questions and not just recite vague statements or point fingers, we should realize that they need to earn our attention and time — that our power lies not just in our vote, but also in how we choose to employ our pens, cameras, keyboards, eyes and ears.