'Johnny Two Note'

It certainly seems that way. You’d think that, with all the huge issues facing the country, our politics and media coverage would be overwhelmed in a scramble to present substantive stories, serious argument-crammed think pieces, and intelligent TV coverage and policy discussions that could significantly advance a crucial national debate.

But in today’s political culture, the way to advance your new or even mainstream media career, or soil the image of another party, partisan or writer, is to be outrageous, over the top, searing, sarcastic or indignant.

Or you create an issue by seizing on something small, then blow it up like a political blimp until it becomes a narrative with “legs” that others will jump on, even if it’s a non or fabricated issue. The name of the game is getting attention. Who cares how?

All of this has now become so ingrained in our political culture that it brings to mind the title of a Rodgers and Hart song from the 1937 musical “Babes in Arms,” called “Johnny One Note.” Its opening words: “Johnny could only sing one note and the note he sings was this: Ah!”

Our politics increasingly seems to be mired in two sour notes: the predominance of hate and anger as a political motivational and discussion tool, and the seizing of small events or issues which are then dissected, and peppered with generous dashes of paranoia and hatred. Speculation is packaged as fact or probability when they are often neither.

The synthetic event or issue then takes on a life of its own as others want to cover what others have covered — because others are covering it. Our politics is therefore increasingly easy to manipulate, and our media oftentimes not gatekeepers but partisan rant and negative image-dissemination systems.

A telling moment in our politics came when Bay Buchanan, conservative columnist Pat Buchanan’s assertive, articulate and often-vitriolic sister, and a key media spokesperson for Mitt Romney during the GOP’s failed presidential campaign, proclaimed that she’s fed up with politics — and is going into real estate. Buchanan was the quintessential TV partisan talking head when she was on the tube; always in a race against time to load answers with as many talking points as humanly possible, and present them with angry, quotable zingers aimed at Democrats and Barack Obama.