Media Criticism

The religious conservatism that arose in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan and in the 1994 Republican revolution promised an increasing role for leaders like Gary Bauer. Bauer failed in 2000 to gain the Republican Party nomination and has focused his attention on affecting change on the party from the outside. This past weekend’s Values Voter Summit gave evangelicals an opportunity to listen to speeches by Republican candidates while leaders of the Holier-Than-Thou club met in private in their version of the smoke filled room.

The conference did not seem to accomplish anything that had not already been determined through televised debates and live events. Rudy Giuliani is a secular devil, Fred Thompson is a conservative, Mitt Romney is religious but the wrong kind of religious and so forth. The New York Times article discussing the Values Voter Summit mentions support among the brain trust for Governor Mike Huckabee which makes sense if value voters are solely concerned about their values.

One reason this type of conference does not work is that Christian conservatives are becoming increasingly irrelevant in politics. The ties of religious conservatives to President Bush at every step of his administration have been disastrous. American voters are worried about those stupid secular concerns like Social Security, health insurance and international affairs that diehard evangelicals are only loosely concerned with. The concentration of the eyes of the faithful toward what is wrong with American politics including the potential evils of two New York politicians gaining party nominations shows that evangelicals are guilty of politics as usual. Americans need to blend the good parts of their religious faith like justice and compassion with their political concerns when they vote for president.

On a blog titled “Media Criticism”, a post with this title ought to be surprising. My job is to reveal that just because it’s printed doesn’t make it true. However, when it comes to culture, the media is often shouldered with too much responsibility for shaping mindsets. At some point, people have to be trusted (and able) to make their own choices about information.

One of the most trite examples of easy media-bashing deals is, indeed, culture. MTV is lampooned for its influence on teenage youth; clothing companies are blasted for telling kids what’s “cool” and what isn’t. Celebrity magazines dictate hair and clothing styles. At some point, though, doesn’t the responsibility for our choices lie in us?

I was flipping through the most recent issue of GQ and found an article that made me as angry as it made me depressed. It’s titled Why I’m Cool (With Being Uncool), and its premise is the story of a 39 year-old learning what he should have learned at 20: others’ opinions shouldn’t define a person.

It’s amazing to me that this article is even printed; what he writes as a so-called great victory over social standards is really nothing more than overcoming debilitating immaturity. I would argue that the solution to the cultural bandwagon effect lies not in the media, but in us.

It’s easier to blame MTV for espousing conformity than it is to take responsibility for our own decisions, I guess.

media, MTV, conforming, GQ