Op-Ed: Why the media are still failing Americans as we lurch toward Nov. 8
It’s been over a week since Americans voted in the presidential election. But the election is being seen as a distant memory, which is why, once again, there’s been no need to talk about it.
To recap: A guy named Donald Trump won the presidency after waging a scorched-earth campaign against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
For the first time since the 1970s, the news isn’t dominated by a parade of major events and controversies that have become the hallmark of our era. We’re just being bombarded with political commentary — on MSNBC, in The New York Times, in the pages of The New Yorker, on Facebook and Twitter, and on the radio.
It’s a media landscape in which a small-minded, anti-science group called Donald Trump’s America has become a significant influence on the political debate, while the free market has become little more than a slogan — a throwaway line — in the last presidential campaign.
We are talking about a country where a presidential candidate who promised to restore the promise of America has been elected by just 35 million votes.
We’re talking about a country where for the first time ever a majority of Americans believe our country is on the wrong track — one where the electorate hasn’t been told that the election was close and that a second-term president is on the way — even with a president elected with just a 35 percent disapproval rating.
It’s a country in which the top priority for many, if not most, white Americans is to get over the fact that many, if not most, black Americans have had the audacity to vote for a black president, and to call that a black president instead of a president.
We’re talking about a country in which many Americans are so sick of politics that they’re willing to write off the Republican Party as an institution and to dismiss as not-real a political party that has been in government for over a