Television and Politicians – an only semi-humorous comment

If there was ever a match made in hell, television and politicians would surely be it. I think one could easily hypothesize that many of our current political ills are a direct result of politicians have accessing to the public via television .

Before there was television, politicians had limited opportunity to communicate directly with the public. Yes there was radio, but the listening public had no way of knowing where the broadcast was coming from or what the politician was wearing. It did not matter. There was no attempt to sway the public by wearing V necked sweaters or walking around in perfectly tailored white shirts with the sleeves rolled up. There were no logs burning in the fireplace or perfectly decorated Christmas trees, no office desk with just enough papers on it to look like the person actually worked there, no pictures of the wife and kids to prove you were a family man - just a voice coming through a poor quality radio speaker. One could do other things while listening to the radio, one was not being compelled to watch the speaker. There was no daily, televised question period where politicians preened and performed for a bored and hungry-for-a-scandal public. There were no televised interviews with questions from learned correspondent that only reinforced the party’s platform.  If someone wanted to see a politician speak, one had to actually go out to a meeting to see and hear them.  If one wanted to learn what the politician said they stood for – you had to actual sit down and read. Before there was television, there were not generations of people trained by Sesame Street and other similar programs to get their information in 90 seconds burst.

There are some who argue that television (and all of the social media) has increased our access to politicians; that they are more accountable to the public; that they can get away with less because we are watching them so much more closely. Balderdash!!! While it is true that we have greater access than ever to the images that the politicians want us to see (can there be any doubt that the daily question period in the Canadian Parliament is a scripted play with poorly trained actors regurgitating lines used  hundred times before?), we do not have greater access to the politicians themselves. While it may appear that those politicians are more accountable and therefore more responsive to their public, they are not. As opposed to television making the politicians more accessible and more accountable, it has given them one more avenue to manipulate the oh so gullible public.

Donald Trump’s surprising (at least to the pundits) rise to the position of being the Republican Party’s candidate for the U.S. president may be the best example of a superb showman manipulating the airwaves to gain popularity. There are however, many other examples of how politicians shamelessly use our willingness to sit mindlessly front of a screen, on the presumed assumption that one can learn all one needs to learn through osmosis. As a matter of fact it is hard to think of examples of a politician on television when it was not staged to present them at maximum advantage.

Having said the above, I must confess that I am somewhat confused as to why political leaders go on late night television to be interviewed/mocked by the show’s host. An example of which is Trudeau’s interview with correspondent Hasan Minhaj as part of the Daily Show’s satirical look at the anti-Syrian immigration rhetoric of the American right. While I hope it was clear to most watchers that it was satirical and that the Daily Show is on record of being supportive towards immigration for Syrian refugees, one cannot ever be sure. What possible value does such an appearance have for a Canadian Prime Minister. It does nothing to enhance his or our image, it is difficult to believe that he did it to increase his popularity or that he thought by doing so he would change some American’s minds. He did well and passed on his standard message but why bother?

To Mr. Trudeau and all other politicians – less acting before the cameras and more work when the cameras and lights are turned off would go a long way to convincing me that you  actually care about the issues you profess to and are prepared to do something about them.