Political Journalism: Maiden voyage

1/17/09

This past year was eventful both for Obama and for me. He broke through racial barriers to become President-elect and I broke through the age barrier and became twenty-one. As a newly empowered spectator to the chaotic arena of American politics, I doubt that I will have many golden apples to throw out on the track. But hey, if a man with less than five years of political experience can become president than Cate Pilgrim can become a political commentator. Maybe both of us will learn a little bit more about how this country works.

First rule of the blogosphere: If you're going to do it, be informed. With that in mind, I checked out my usual news sources for political coverage. And since Obama is at the top of the food-chain (in a different sense than Bush of course) all the articles were about him. Good place to start.

Wired Magazine reported that in September 2008 60-plus Nobel prize winners were backing Obama – new ways to use energy equals a better economy, right?

Wrong. Or rather, unlikely.

Obama promised &150 billion for research into alternative energy sources, but he never specified where is was going to come from, although it is likely he was planning something along the lines of: slap companies & manufacturers with expensive-to-enforce standards regulating carbon dioxide emissions and greenhouse pollutants, and they in turn search harder for earth-friendly alternative energy sources. Voila. A self-supporting system that won’t guzzle government funds. However, the immediate consequences to that are that gas prices would soar and cars would become much, much more expensive. No wonder politicians campaign on vague generalities. Details can be alarming.
Granted, WIRED Magazine isn't exactly the go-to place for political journalism, even if David Goldston, former chief of staff for the US House Committee on Science contributes to them.

So I checked out The New Republic, which advertises itself as "A Journal of Politics and the Arts." Apparently, Obama has been busy trying to mend "a grievously wounded relationship between our arts and our sense of national character."
Wow.
It really pays to have a blog. Otherwise I would never have known that the state of the American arts is at bloody odds with the national character. It's tragic. Ever since the late 1980s our nation has been embarrassingly backward in the arts community. Republican ignoramuses banned Mapplethorpe's sexually enlightened photo art, and censored Serrano's Piss Christ. But there is hope if we transfer Obama's argument that "there are no red states or blue states, just the United States" to the our national artistic psyche. Embrace the truth that art is mysterious and cannot to be narrowly labeled "good" or "bad" but just "American. Thanks for the heads up, Jed Perl (Vogue editor & art critic), and thanks for the Obama quote: "Our art and our culture, our science, that's the essence of what makes America special."

I wholeheartedly agree: Americaness makes Americans American. Possibly you could add a few other things to the essence of what makes America special. Like the fact that kids can get through three years of higher education and still be outraged when a professor assigns work due before class begins, or that those same kids get their political news coverage from fluffy pop culture magazines.

Let's just say it's going to be an interesting year.