A friend points us to a column in the Boston Globe wherein Michael Kalin puts his finger on something worth noting: People like Jon Stewart are not the harmless chuckle-meisters they seem to be. Rather, by striking a pose of supercilious superiority to the hapless politicians who fall prey to their wit, they actually contribute to an unwillingness on the part of bright, sophisticated young people to enter the realm of politics. Stewart and others like him send the message that politics is for buffoons whose chief purpose is to provide sport for clever, intelligent people like himself. Kalin thinks the problem is most acute for Democrats since liberals dominate Stewart's audience and are most likely to absorb the message that politics is for chumps.
Kalin observes:
Stewart's daily dose of political parody characterized by asinine alliteration leads to a ''holier than art thou" attitude toward our national leaders. People who possess the wit, intelligence, and self-awareness of viewers of ''The Daily Show" would never choose to enter the political fray full of ''buffoons and idiots." Content to remain perched atop their Olympian ivory towers, these bright leaders head straight for the private sector.
Observers since the days of de Tocqueville have often remarked about America's unique dissociation between politicians and citizens of "outstanding character." Unfortunately, the rise of mass media and the domination of television news give Stewart's Menckenesque voice a much more powerful influence than critics in previous generations. As a result, a bright leader who may have become the Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson of today instead perceives politics as a supply of sophisticated entertainment, rather than a powerful source of social change.
Most important, this disturbing cultural phenomenon overwhelmingly affects potential leaders of the Democratic Party.
The type of folksy solemnity brandished by President Bush does not resonate with "The Daily Show" demographic. According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, only 2 percent of the show's audience identify themselves as conservatives. At a time when the Democrats desperately need inspired leadership, the show's self-conscious aloofness pervades the liberal punditry.
There's another aspect of this that Kalin doesn't touch upon but which might also be worth noting. People wonder why it is that pundits seem so quick to tear down those in public life. Why is it, folks wonder, that so much vitriolic criticism is heaped upon those in public office.
Perhaps part of the reason, at least, is psychological. The desire to tear others down is rooted in personal narcissism and pride. Pundits, or at least some of them, are supremely egotistical, they want people to think of them as intelligent, sophisticated and highly competent observers of the public scene. One way to subliminally communicate one's superiority to an audience is to persistently give the impression that the people they are reporting upon are blundering fools and that the reporter, were only he or she in the position of power currently occupied by the dolt being skewered, would do far better. They massage their own egos by cutting other people to pieces.
To find fault with another person is to tacitly assert one's own pre-eminence. It gratifies the same psychological need that causes people to make racist remarks or, for that matter, any sort of humiliating comment about another human being. By heaping reproach upon the other one elevates oneself to a loftier position vis a vis the one who is denigrated. There is a place for legitimate criticism, of course, but when the criticism is consistently unkind, unfounded, unfair or trivial we can't help but think that at least part of what motivates it is the satisfaction of one's own ego.
Soren Kierkegaard, the 19th century Danish philosopher, had a slightly different take. He imputed this phenomenon to envy. He wrote:
Every outstanding individual is always an object of envy. Human envy cannot endure the thought that a mere individual should amount to anything, let alone that he should be pre-eminent, and exercise genuine leadreship.
Among journalists and others in the communications culture are many, it seems, who cannot abide the fact that George Bush will go down in history, while they themselves will be historical ciphers. They think this affront to their ego a cosmic injustice, and thus, if they can't gain the recognition they are convinced they deserve, they'll seize every opportunity to destroy those, like the President, of more substantial achievement. That way society will esteem these insignificant scribes as worthy of note even as public contempt for the truly accomplished waxes and deepens.
Envy and egotism are very toxic and corrosive human traits but very common ones, alas, among those who report upon our public servants. They are also, as Dan Rather has discovered to his grief, quite self-destructive.