It's really not such a mystery, Betty

"Mean Betty truly wants to know: Why can't they be more CLEVER and DISCREET about their infidelities? Is that really too much to ask? Whether it's that pathetic anti-prostitution crusader Eliot Spitzer being caught with a hooker, or this latest yokel Governor Sanford with his caliente mistress down Argentina way - one really does have to wonder how they managed to land themselves in office in the first place." - BettyConfidential.com

I hate to be mean, Betty, but the answer to your question is pretty obvious.

They land in office because we pay more attention to Jon & Kate, Angelina & Brad, Britney Spears or just about any bit of B-list celebrity gossip than we do to the people who run our country, our states, our cities or even our schools.

They don't have to be clever or discreet because most of the time they don't get caught. They know we're not paying attention. And let's face it, we're only paying attention now because the guy got caught with his pants down. The stuff that he did with his clothes on does not have the same hold on our 10-second attention span, though I can pretty much guarantee, Betty, that more people got screwed.

There is a price to be paid for our national obsession with celebrity gossip, scandalous sex and 5-minute makeovers.  Because while it might be fun to engage in a little drive-by badmouthing, it surely does not encourage any sort of thoughtful debate of the stuff that matters. Meanwhile, the journalists who actually do the work of trying to hold some of these dumbshits accountable are being told their services are no longer required. You want to know why Betty? Because it's so much easier to just click on some gossipy website and read the recycled version, extra snark please - and hold the attribution.  It's not your fault, Betty. You never claimed to be The New York Times.  And god knows how depressing that can be.

It's just that I worry that the public officials who decide everything from what our fourth-graders will be required to learn to how much it will cost us in taxes to pay for the legal bills they run up  fighting our efforts to see how they are spending our money, won't take us seriously anymore.

Your readers are outraged that Jon & Kate got a lot of free stuff. But what would happen, I wonder, if you told them that in Wheaton, Ill., a school district so hard up for cash that it considered cutting fourth-grade orchestra, workbooks and intramural sports programs, spent $62,000 fighting to keep its $380,000 a year contract with its school superintendent secret? They fought the case for four years, Betty, all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court - before being told that, uh, that's public money you're spending, morons; you can't keep it a secret from the public.

Can you imagine how pissed off your readers would be to learn that?

Still, government goes on in secret all over the place. The Wheaton Warrenville school board struggles to "maintain financial stability" in the face of "significant financial challenges" that may or may not include paying its lawyers to keep things secret.  What else don't we know? Raise your hand if you know how much you are paying your own schools superintendent.  Anyone? Who will bother to find out when the newspapers are gone and we are left with nothing but gossip for our news?

Want to know who's really getting fucked, Betty?  We all are. And we probably deserve it.

Photo: Jon and Kate Somebody doing something. Who Cares?

Comments

[MommyTime]

You are my hero articulate.

[Audubon Ron]

Damn it, I agree. No really, public figures are in the public eye. They can't sue you for thorough investigation. As a person who works closely with elected officials, I say too bad, they are held at a higher standared or don't run. If we close down effective reporting, we close down the windows to the truth.

That's what they signed up for. I for one, have a milk toast politically influenced paper. I know that and why. Where are the hard reporters? They are paid squat and beaten about the eyebrows by the editor. "Oh no, we can't be that hard, now can we? After all, it might get us sideways with the powers at be." I say, 1% sales tax to fund newspapers so they can remain untarnished.

[Audubon Ron]

...and also, fuck the 800 word rule. A reporter can't tell the story in 800 words.

[nthnglsts]

Beyond me that the newspapers let a simple change in delivery systems turtle the whole industry. News is still there, so are journalists. Everyone else has gone paperless and survived. What? You can only have a real newspaper with PAPER? TV was a bigger threat than the internet and you weathered that. An attorney i work with reminds that buggy whip makers only went out of business because they forgot they were not in the buggy whip business, they were in the acceleration business. You are still in the NEWS business. Get it together news people. There's no crying in reporting!

[Suburban Kamikaze]

You don't need paper necessarily, but you do need readers. And when the readers go to places where the "news" is recycled, gossip-heavy fact-bites thrown together by people who never make a phone call, let alone leave their laptops, then the business model for doing first-hand, shoe-leather reporting on matters of public import starts to look bad.

[Ruth]

And you need a way to pay those hardworking, reporters slogging through all the crap to get to the news. Imagine Watergate if there was no one to pay Woodward and Bernstein, they would have been reporting on the latest gossip from Hollywood (instead of) the sinister rumors from the White House and Nixon would be just a quaint bumbling President from the 70's. For those of you willing to get all your news from the Internet just remember your news will be geared towards a 13-year-old girl with lavender nail polish. You deserve it.

[Sue]

I started a subscription to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel several months ago after email discussion with one of the reporters who worked on their "Wasted in Wisconsin" series. Seems the paper has publicly committed to devote serious resources (people!) to investigative journalism. You're right; reporters can do the good work but people have to be willing to be engaged by it. And since my elected State representative is a moron, I need to support a newspaper that will publish whether and how he responds to questions about killer issues like drunk driving. (Answer: he doesn't.)

[Sue]

Oh, and while I'm at it - one of the big cable news channels at noon was talking about the "big void" left by Billy Mays. They had trouble working this story in among the Michael Jackson speculation stories.

[Jennifer A]

Stop by Westmont CUSD 201 sometime. We just got the superintendent's contract released two and a half years after the first FOIA request was submitted. Because same thing, he thought it was a private contract but mine and a lot of other people's taxes pay his salary. The district's law firm paid something like $30K to keep the contract secret.
Thank god for a group of parents who never gave up and the local paper or we would never have learned about his contract. It still probably would have been a secret.

[nthnglsts]

I still say news is news and journalists need to figure out how to get it out and get paid for it. All internet news isn't bad and isn't blog. Deal. Paper isn't coming back; newspapers aren't coming back, not for now anyway. Brand new world. It was as far back as 1985 but the Newspapers are just noticing. Just like GM just noticed they weren't making cars anyone wanted. Ford, who did not need a handout, actually makes cars people buy....

[Suburban Kamikaze]

A key difference: (unintentional pun, but now I really want to take credit for it...)
Newspapers, unlike automobile makers, have an obligation to serve as the public's watchdogs, even if the public would rather read Jon & Kate's divorce pleadings. It's expensive and time consuming - qualities the Internet business model does not currently reward. That's not to say someone won't figure out how to do it - I just don't think our national addiction to the celebrity soundbite is much of an incentive.

[Suburban Kamikaze]

Jennifer - What an unbelievable story - parents had to fight to see not only the superintendent's contract, but the goals the district had set for him. What else is none of your business in that school district, I wonder? Keep up the good work.

Here's a link to a good local paper doing its job (and a local school board not doing theirs):

http://www.mysuburbanlife.com/westmont/news/x2085754784/Superintendent-s-contract-goals-released-by-district?popular=true

[MomZombie]

Journalism has to reinvent itself and get out of the gossip peddling business. The public has to place a value on ethical, worthwhile reporting. Right now I fear the majority do not place value on it. Two words: citizen journalist.

[nthnglsts]

"Google doesn’t kill newspapers. People kill newspapers." -- Michael Connelly, May 20, 2009 (requoted from Vickie Brennan's FB page)