This is a class blog for the students of POLSCI 426: Congressional Politics at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.

Who Cares About the Next American President When We've still Got an Idol to Crown?

For those of you who may have missed ABC's Good Morning America this morning, you missed the typical softball GMA story. This link is to the video from this morning. More people on the street could identify the contestants from a glorified karaoke contest than the potential next president of the US. Frightening, but I know I expected it. I mean who likes karaoke when drinking isn't involved anyway?
Seriously, I don't watch American Idol, never have and never will. The only info I know about it is from the seemingly endless flow from competing national news outlets. I couldn't tell you who any of those people are, but I can name all the candidates for president. Somehow that seems less funny and makes me sound like I'm the weird one. Anyway, I can understand not getting people like Thompson, Hunter, Romney, Dodd, and Biden. For the love of God, Giuliani was on TV for like a year after 9/11, McCain ran before, and Obama has been the media golden child since his speech at the Democratic Convention in 2004.

4 comments:

franda2 said...

Sad but true, our society is a bunch of idiots for the most part. We become consumed with mindless garbage. Don't get me wrong I watch shows that have no point or meaning to them, but I don't let them consume my life like people with idol do. However, society must not have changed that much since the beginning of this country, because even back then the founding fathers knew they were idiots.

Reidy said...

This is such a prime example of the ignorance of so many people. How can people refrain from watching the news and keeping up with our nation's political agenda (which directly affects them) but they definately make time to watch kareoke on TV?

B Field said...

It is hard to beilieve that so many people can not pick out top 08 hopefulls but that is not that new of a trend. I am more upset over the emense attention that idol gets,I can't turn on my TV or PC and make it 5 mins. with out seeing something idol related.

D Schultz said...

We all know American media is sad, but what can we do about it? What can we do about distortion, partial coverage, oversimplification, gatekeeping, and just bad press?

Maybe supporting media that is not sitting in the lap of the government and has special interests outside of journalism. Independent media sources can be a breath of fresh air after the "news" of which contestant lost weight.

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