Everytime I turn on the television or read the newspaper, there is some pundit/journalist talking about how the democratic party can get back into the game by understanding some invented class of Americans: South Park Conservatives, Nascar Dads, or some other invented category of (primarily red-state) Americans. David Brooks has basically made a career of making caricatures of the South and mid-west-not to mention the effete liberals that apparently populate the whole of the north-east and west coasts. The lastest article in this vein is Matt Bai's
King of the Hill Democrats where he explains how according to Mike Easley (my own governor) Democrats need to understand King of Hill viewers.
More Ranting Below
I suppose what annoys me most about this story is its total lack of journalism. Sure Bai talks a lot about Hank Hill and how he is some kind of model for Mike Easley. Bai notes that Easley does really well in a red-state like North Carolina and Easley:
says he thinks that understanding the show's viewers might resolve some of the mysteries confronting his party about the vast swaths of red on the electoral map. Easley is reasonably progressive -- he raised taxes during his first term to protect education spending -- but he's also known as a guy who cracked up a race car during a spin on a Nascar course.
I love having a Democratic Governor like Mike Easley in North Carolina and I am amused that he does a great Boomhauer impression. However, there is one name that is surprisingly omitted from this article and that name is Jim Hunt - the extremely popular- Democratic- Governor who proceeded Easley in office. Easley has decent political skills including running ads about all the wonderful things he did as attorney general before he ran for govenor the first time, however, having a democratic governor in North Carolina is not unusual.
I suppose what annoys me is that Matt Bai wrote a non-story about Governor Easley watching King of the Hill and somehow that being the source of his political sucess without even mentioning that the last governor was a democrat or pressing Easley for some concrete details about how he crafted a Hank Hill strategy. Don't get me wrong, it is great when Democrats get positive coverage in the press. But, isn't it about time the press actually practiced journalism instead of repeating the questionable claims of politicians or the ridiculous lies that somehow if we understood voters X, Y and Z better that we would win. Maybe, if Bush wasn't president on 9/11, then he would never have been reelected with such abyssmal approval ratings and perhaps that is what his high approval rating for fighting the war on terror reflect- at least there is some evidence for that hypothesis.
I am so tired of soft journalism and the simplistic bordering on People magazine glossy stories that come out of the MSM. I would like to see Matt Bai go out and look at what Howard Dean is doing at the local party level. OR maybe go to a red-state and interview local demcoratic party officials to see what they think is wrong with the paryt. Now maybe that story would take more work, be more complicated, and less flashy. It would be a story that I would like to read and I think it would be an important story to write. So, damn it, forget Hank Hill, Cartman, and Dale Earnhart Jr!
Matt, I beg you, go to Peoria or Tulsa and talk to red-state voters and cleanse your mind of these useless classifications and maybe you might produce a decent piece of journalism. Talk to Bill Moyers about it (maybe he can give you some pointers) and then maybe you won't be hurting America. Matt, I hear you are writing a book about the future of the democrats- maybe you might want to have something substantive to talk about.
(I should add I apologize to Govenor Easley for making fun of his devotion to King of Hill. If it works for you Governor, keep watchin.)