Early this summer, on the influential "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," a
leading pundit sat in front of TV cameras and made the kind of broad
pronouncement often favored by media commentators. "American politics is
about optimism," Mark Shields declared. "Americans are the most optimistic
people on the planet."
Uttered with great assurance, such statements are more than silly. They
sound like descriptions but function as prescriptions. Claiming some
extraordinary national trait -- in this case, depicting the USA as the
global headquarters for hope -- these cheery proclamations end up
instructing the public as to proper attitudes.
That's hardly surprising when we consider the sources. Shuttling between
newsrooms and TV studios while earning hefty salaries, big-name journalists
are fond of rosy windows on the world. Overall, the powerful politicians
they cover have similar vantage points. And when large numbers of them
gather together, the upbeat -- and facile -- rhetoric is thick.
A lot of speeches at the Republican and Democratic conventions are fated
to echo a familiar theme: The other party is the party of doom and gloom,
filled with pessimism, foolishly contending that America's best years are
behind us, but we know that much more greatness is ahead for our nation.
Speechmakers remain in sync with audio tracks laid down long ago. "It has
been the tough-minded optimists whom history has proved right in America,"
President Dwight Eisenhower said in 1958. "It is still true in our time."
Six years later, while campaigning for a full term just a few weeks after
the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution opened the bloody floodgates to the Vietnam
War, President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed on Sept. 16, 1964: "Somehow or
other, optimist that I am, I just believe that peace is coming nearer."
The nonstop media flow of syrupy optimism can cause millions of people to
feel badly out of step. Yet many Americans currently say that they are not
hopeful about the future. Buried in the results of a recent New York Times
poll were statistics that refute the myth of predominant optimism in the
United States.
The Times survey asked, "Do you think the future of the next generation of
Americans will be better, worse or about the same as life today?" Fewer
than half of the respondents -- 44 percent of blacks and 39 percent of
whites -- said "better," while 35 percent of blacks and 30 percent of
whites said "worse." (The newspaper touted the poll as a gauge of "race
relations in America" but confined it to African Americans and whites,
ignoring the country's Asian Americans, Latinos and Native Americans.)
On July 11, a story about the survey appeared on the Times front page
under the headline "Poll Finds Optimistic Outlook But Enduring Racial
Division." Why use the word "optimistic" when most people say that they
don't expect the future to be better than the past?
The spin for optimism exerts pressure to override or suppress the contrary
conclusions that we might draw from our own perceptions of the status quo.
At times, media commentators seem to be implying that Americans who lack
the appropriate optimism are of inferior mettle or insufficient resiliency.
When Americans mobilize to protest, their downbeat messages usually don't
get very far in mass media. The coverage rarely amounts to more than a
smattering of soundbites or a few drops of ink, with brevity reinforcing
the notion that demonstrators are simplistic. Inevitably, the ritual
optimism from inside the glitzy convention hall glows in stark contrast to
the protests in the streets.
Meanwhile, affluent journalists are apt to project sanguine world views.
The social order is likely to look reasonably good to those near the top of
the economic ladder. They're much more inclined to find reasons for
optimism than people at the lower rungs.
Paradoxically, the upbeat focus can be quite depressing: for people
excluded from the media picture, discounted and rendered invisible. When
news outlets keep reporting that "the economy" is doing great, it may feel
especially grim to fall farther and farther behind while struggling to pay
basic household bills.
Every day, we wake up in a society squeezed by priorities that favor the
wealthy and large corporations as they tighten their grip on government
policymakers. And every day, the optimistic pundits and happy-talk news
anchors babble on.
Norman Solomon is a syndicated columnist. His latest book is The Habits of
Highly Deceptive Media.
