Supercommittee Failure – Super Dooper Hysteria Mongering.

It’s commonplace now, but still astonishing, the sense of panic consistently created by our news outlets, most recently, supercommittee madness. When the dire consequences then fail to emerge, pundits and newsheads wonder how such hysteria ever occurred. Case in point: the supercommittee sequestration deadline.

I’ve been aware of this falsely created hysteria for some time now, but, like the media I’m about to criticize, I haven’t written about just how false the “deadline” was. It’s significance flew over my head. Classic fly-by. Mea culpa. What the mainstream media pundits and newsheads seldom mentioned is the most salient fact about the Supercommittee: it’s lack of recommendations, the “trigger” for sequestration of mammoth proportions, were, by statute, slated to begin in January 2013. That’s more than a year – and a complete session of Congress – from the statutory “deadline.” Yet, our newsheads kept the word “deadline” and “sequestration’ closely tied. Is this laziness? No (or let’s hope not, that would be even worse than their hysteria mongering). The newsies and their staff were aware of the practical “non-eventness” of the sequestration deadline. Then why the shell game?

It’s simple, as most of us know. Media thrives on creating ticking clocks, now more than ever. So, rather than mentioning that sequestration would not begin for another year, if at all, they deliberately “forgot” to mention that tidbit. Also, the year long (new) sequestration enforcement “deadline” leaves ample room for negotiating entirely new “deadlines,”   budget cuts, or (hopefully) tax increases on the you-know-who. Moreover, despite President Obama’s veto threat, Congress can game play a bill that amends the entire idea of sequestration in such a way that Obama will be unable to use his veto for political or other reasons. 

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer – of the worst of the hysteria-encouraging newsheads – is notorious for this. He does it unreservedly. Once a pretty good reporter, he’s now a shill for CNN’s ever more rightwing take on events. (Last night, he waxed lovingly about Newt.) Other networks fared little better.

So, the civics-undereducated American public (through no fault of their own) was, for the most part, consistently kept in the dark about what a superdupercommittee failure would bring in its immediate wake. Many folks were counting off the seconds, fearing immediate cutbacks affecting everything from Medicaid to defense spending.

What a show! And that is what it’s all about in the era of entertainment news. Walter Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley, Edward R. Murrow, rest in peace, you’re all in a better place.