The Fantasy Years

FREEDOM WAS ON THE MARCH IN AMERICA. Beyond the freedom given to one-sided political discussion blanketing the airwaves night after night, there was also the freedom for companies to operate unfettered by the demands of public responsibility. There too was the freedom for millionaires to become billionaires. Few Rush fans would doubt that.

But freedom needed its special outlets to get its message across. It needed organizations that could work under the radar to get its story to the media and to the public. Places like the American Enterprise Institute – nee American Enterprise Association, created during the Depression to protect the interests of big business. And places like the Cato Institute, created in 1973, the Competitive Enterprise Institute created 1984, the Free Congress Foundation founded in 1977, Citizens for a Sound Economy started in 1984 and not to mention the more dowdy, more opaquely named , the Institute for Contemporary Studies in Oakland founded in 1974, the Small Business and Entrepreneur Council 1994, the National Center for Policy Analysis 1983, Reason Foundation 1968 (“Free minds and free markets”), Claremont Institute 1979, George C. Marshall Institute 1984, the Hudson Institute 1961, the Hoover Institution (founded in part by Herbert Hoover himself in the 1950s), the Manhattan Institute 1978, the Ethics and Public Policy Center 1976, the list went on and on.

The think tanks meant nothing to viewers at home. To see them in action on C-Span TV, they looked just as boring as any other Washington organization. To see them in action on C-Span TV was to flip right past them, as a viewer prowled the channels looking for something else more interesting to watch, like say a car chase, or a swimsuit fashion show.

Besides, if viewers at home wanted news they flipped on CNN or the new competitors MSNBC or Fox. Those channels knew how to package the news. A network like Fox understood acutely that if CNN showed car cases and hostage situations, Fox would have to show airshow disasters and chemical plant explosions. The producers knew it was a matter of ratings. And ratings equaled advertising sales. And so if one network carried footage of a building demolition in Philadelphia or an elephant on a rampage in Thailand, the other had no choice not to do the same.

And even if a producer in the control room cringed at the utter vacuousness of the “news” they presented, then you know what? Too bad, that’s capitalism! And if you don’t play the clip of the baboons running loose in a South Florida neighborhood on your news network, your competitor will. And your competitor will get those ad dollars. So next time a deer was caught on tape in the aisle of a Wal-Mart, or a parliament somewhere in the world erupted into a brawl, the news producer learned to get that footage up on the air. Pronto. Otherwise, the ad-revenue bearing eyeballs of the nation would rotate to more spectacular sights in the TV universe.

In this way, the dynamic sucked in all news networks. None of them could turn away from the spectacle to offer facts. The market said so. And this too was freedom: the freemarket.

Occasionally, out in the great yard of America, the vast flyover country, a lone liberal foolishly defended himself, innocently assuming that the rhetorical playing field was flat. Blithely supposing all things were equal when really the right-winger had a sling full of endlessly vivid, effective rhetorical arrows to use.

Some lone voice cried out on the plains of Iowa, animated and indignant: “So there you go. Your Newt Gingrich got a taste of power and now he’s threatening to shut down the government.”

“He’s just fighting Big Government.”
“He’s obstructing it.”
“It’s Big Government.”
“It’s important to the functioning of our country.”
“Visualize your paycheck without the IRS.”
“Visualize this company I mean country without the Department of Health or the Department of Education!”
“So the bureaucrats would have to go out and find a real job. So what?”
“This is the government’s work.”
“So you say. I say it’s bureaucracy.”