I saw this piece on CBS the morning of May 23 profiling talk radio star and Fox News personality Sean Hannity, where they asked the question that I've been dying to ask every vocal, opinionated, Bush-supporting pundit and talking head:
What is your definition of a liberal?
You know what Hannity did? He suavely sidestepped the question and started talking about something else! I was immensely disappointed.
It's really quite amusing: a word that he probably uses dozens of times a day on TV and the radio, and he cannot, or chooses not to, provide a definition. I really wanted to know because most of the time when I hear people like him use the word "liberal," I wonder, "Just who are they talking about? That doesn't sound like me or that many of the 'liberals' I know. We don't want to do what they say we do."
That's because most of the time in these kinds of political discourses when someone talks about or trashes "liberals" or "conservatives," they're really just beating up a straw man they've constructed in their mind who does not really exist.
What happens then is these make-believe stereotypes then get absorbed into our consciousness, and we start to actually believe there are these robotic hordes of liberals and conservatives who all march in a monolithic group, speaking the same ideas and thinking the same thoughts.
Sorry, but the real world is not like that. There's such great depth and variety among the ideologies and motivations of those whom most would label "conservative" or "liberal." Vice president Dick Cheney, talk radio hosts Michael Savage and G. Gordon Liddy, Sen. John McCain and Sen. Richard Lugar, Pat Buchanan, Rev. Pat Robertson, and Bob Dole are all very different. It's foolish to lump them all together as one cohesive unit. Call them "conservative" if you want but don't assume that they have as much in common as it might seem.
One of the traits of a successful pundit is the ability to take something ridiculously complex -- virtually all issues worthy of discussion -- and oversimplify it to fit in a quick sound bite or a 550-to-750 word opinion column. The reason many people read opinion pieces or listen to pundits is because they want an easy answer to a complex problem. They don't want to realize that the issue is deeper than they imagined.
This dialogue is highly functional for both dominant parties. In the context of a "culture war" and an election year, if you want your "side" to "win," you do not want to admit that the other "side" might have legitimate points, intelligence or any shred of humanity.
No, it's better to caricature them as angry people who knowingly tell lies and want to stick their noses in your life and make you live like them.
Both "sides" have this perception of the other. While there are bad apples who embody the stereotypes, the vast majorities within both movements do not.
But hey, I guess we just have to accept the simplistic dialogues. After all, when it comes down to presidential politics, we can only exercise a simplistic option: choice A or B. It makes sense.
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