The State of Our Media; the Shape of Our Discourse

by Shaker rrp

I'm not sure what to do with this post of Tristero's, but I think he's onto something here on how the media shapes the discourse. This popped into my head yesterday when I was reading the thread on Obama's tossing the family planning provisions overboard to appease those Republicans (who, face it, are never going to be happy with anything for the next four years).

Even here, among a pretty savvy bunch of folks, we're accepting some mainstream frames:

So 'bipartisanship' still means doing what the Republicans want?

That's all it's ever meant, and all it ever will mean until we get a new class of Democrats in that realize that the Republicans don't want to work with them because they know they don't have to, they can just go on Fox News and talk about how any Dem-supported bill or issue helps the terrorists/let the homos destroy marriage/turn America communist. The Dems need to figure this out and start kicking some ass.

and:

So 'bipartisanship' still means doing what the Republicans want?

All they have to do is THREATEN to filibuster and the Dems CAVE.

You know what I want to see? I want to see the dems TRY to do the right thing, and have the republicans block it and try to explain to the country why we're not getting our jobs."

—the frame being that there's a big difference between most Democrats and most Republicans.

Although the outer ends of the distributions are nearly in other universes, there's a lot of overlap of wealthy (mainly white, mainly male) folks whose interests are not those of the people they "govern," not even close.

So, the question up for discussion is this: How realistic are our expectations, and, in whatever measure they deviate from what's reasonable, how much of that divergence is attributable to the media dictating the frames?