Let me start with a confession. I’ve fallen into a bad habit, although I have a lot of good reasons for it.
I seem to be chasing events lately, instead of looking deep into the future and predicting - with a remarkable degree of accuracy - what will be happening months or years from now. If I did that, I could tell you not only what will be happening, but what to do about it, as all good prognosticators are wont to do.
You can probably see why I’ve been slacking off. Events change so fast in this post-fact era that all I can do is reach out and try to grab them. New events are like painted horses on a fast-moving merry-go-round - pretty to look at but hard to catch, and all of them come back over and over again.
He’s fired. She’s fired. They are indicted, and indicted again. Our trade balance is getting worse. There are threats of war, and promises of peace. And, we’re back to trade and tariffs, and those potential witnesses are said to be co-operating, But the President says he never really knew them, and despite their impressive titles, they never worked for him long enough to actually do anything. And, it’s all fake news anyway.
See how easy it is to fall into my rut?
So, Let’s Try Something New
Well, here’s where I get out of it. Fearless Prediction Number One - to be put away and re-read six months or so from now. (If you think this is easy, write your own prediction, print out this blog, and read them both sometime between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. Then you can see who is closer to the truth.)
Here it comes: There will be protests. And, the protesters will be attacked for their bad behavior, their secret motives and for breaking the law, some law, any law. And, counter-protesters will spring up from the very earth itself.
“Heck,” you say. “There are always protests. That’s no prediction.” And, you would be kind of right. But, mostly, you would be wrong. That’s because protest movements grow and change, get bigger or fade out. They evolve naturally as they get bigger, and the more people they attract the more they are likely to drift away from their original purpose.
Unless they don’t. The anti-war movement didn’t change. The anti-nuke protests didn’t change, although a lot of offshoots sprang up. The current anti-government protests - too big, too liberal, too conservative, not doing its job - seem to have gotten lost in a swamp of different opinions.
Now, protests are as old as society, and society’s reactions to them hasn’t changed much over the centuries. There are just three basic ones - Ignore them. Stamp them out violently. Admit the protesters are right and - after a long and painful process - come together with the protesters and find common ground. Sometimes, that common ground is how badly other protesters, protesting some other thing, are behaving.
The Very First Protest, And The Reaction
Doubt it? Well, remember in the Bible when Eve said something like “who is this God who tells me not to eat that delicious-looking apple?” Well, society - read that as God - gave mankind death and original sin.
Want something more modern? Well, how about those women who got tired of writing nice letters asking to be allowed to vote, then took to the streets and disrupted things. Or those radical college students who were burning their draft cards, then occupied campus buildings to protest the Vietnam War.
Or those generally well-behaved Indian tribes who collectively owned much of what is now the United States. Their protests that treaties were being broken right and left didn’t get much traction in New York State - where I live - until some unruly activists decided to block the New York State Thruway. Then they got permission to open a casino.
Let me add that all the polite complaints and high moral condemnation of slavery in our country didn’t get very much done for a really long time. But we did get a lot of lengthy discussions about states rights under the Constitution. Human rights didn’t come about until long after the Civil War.
So, how do we deal with protests, and how good a job is the media doing in covering them?
Well, it depends. Our media generally love cute protests. I have seen scores of stories with cute children holding protest signs demanding a stop sign, and novel ones where parents uphold the right of their children to put up a lemonade stand. Animal rights protests get some attention, but not very much. Someone who pickets a dealer because they purchased a used car that failed inspection might draw a cable TV crew, but only on a quiet Summer day.
But Some Protests Go On For Months, Or Longer
Repeat protests are mostly ignored. Use non-union labor, and the daily picket line you put up may get covered once. Let teachers go out on strike, and it’s a story for one or two days. Denounce a politician for voting to take money away from Planned Parenthood or blocking a bill that would have required background checks for all gun buyers and you will likely get 30 seconds, max. Such is fame in this 24-7 media world.
Now, let’s say you have a big protest. How do your react? How does the media cover it?
Well, the people who protest want it on the front page of the local paper and want it to be the lead story on the nightly news. The people who are the target want it to be a two paragraph item buried on page 16 and a 30-second video clip, preferably interviewing someone who isn’t too good at expressing what the protest is about.
An honest and unbiased media will use a really flexible yardstick to decide how to cover a big protest. Values change depending on where things happen. A crowd of 1,000 people in a town of 30,000 is really a big deal. In Boston or Manhattan it’s hardly worth a mention. After all, the Boston Marathon draws about 30,000 entrants, and a lot more spectators. In Washington, D.C. a big crowd starts at half a million people.
So, what makes it a really big story. Usually, the opposition. People who don’t want to see the protest bring out police to clear the streets, or force demonstrators to hold their protest so far from the spotlight that no one will see them. Which often doesn’t work.
The best example, for me, was how Chicago Mayor Richard Daily tried to keep protesters away from the Democratic National Convention so the delegates would not have to be yelled at or otherwise shamed. In the long run, it didn’t work out well for the Democrats.
How Should We Grade The Media?
So, here’s the point. The media, as a whole, are pretty good at covering the day-to-day business of protests. But, they have a hard time putting events in context. Black LIves Matter protests get a lot of attention, but how that movement is changing isn’t given the attention it deserves. Maybe it’s because there aren’t enough organizations with the staff to put one or two people on the story for six months or a year.
Or, maybe, it’s because the whole issue of police conduct, the growing violence in some parts of our society, the entire issue of gun control are so intertwined that you can’t easily deal with something that is - simultaneously - a problem and a symptom of an entirely different problem.
Good heavens, does this all come down to lack of staffing on our media conglomerates, or the fact that viewers and readers don’t demand much more than pictures of a crime scene, with a single news anchor saying they don’t really know what happened, but it looks like a police car has left the scene?
Well, back to my prediction. More groups will be forming. More protests will be made on the streets. More and more competing claims - life is getting worse, life is really wonderful, trust me and buy the products our advertisers are selling - will be made all through the summer. Then we will turn over our airwaves and our mailboxes to candidates who promise much.
And then, the people will get to vote. And, at least some things will become clear. If the Russians allow that to happen.
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