I am one of those people who think the relentless coverage of Donald Trump in 2016 essentially handed him the election.
I get it, the stakes are high. Everyone is in a state of anxiety that keeps getting worse.
He outrageous-headlined his way into the Oval Office. We ate it up. Those headlines were like the jalapeño poppers of the electoral process. You don’t order them frequently, but when you do you eat too many, resulting in a spice- and cheese-addled tummy ache that reminds you to never order them again.
Did I just disclose too much about my digestive system?
Anyhoo, the media blew it. They wanted the viewers, not to mention the money, so they kept bloviating about the bloviator. Then, waiting to push The Donald over the edge was the Electoral College. It was a perfect storm. I assumed we all had a tummy ache and would behave responsibly the next time around.
But here we are again. The poppers are still popping. The media are 2016-ing the 2020 election, with a spritz of pandemic.
Remember those headlines about all the babies that were going to get something like Kawasaki disease? I have a toddler so those freaked me out—until I realized that the media had taken a COVID-19 anomaly and turned it into all-encompassing and inevitable baby murder.
Do you know how many panicked phone calls I got from my family? Multiply that by every American family and you’ve got 300 million people running around freaking out about Kawasaki disease! Who does that help?
Those articles should have said, “Hey guys, coronavirus is still happening, keep wearing your masks.” And then, down in about the fifth paragraph, “Oh yeah, a couple of young kids have something similar to Kawasaki disease, which is inflammation caused by coronavirus. It’s super rare so we’ll let you know if you need to panic but right now, nah.”
What about the first American dog to get coronavirus? That German shepherd led the NBC Nightly News! And don’t get me wrong, he’s cute. But does one dog’s positive test—several months after the pandemic had arrived in the United States—deserve the kind of airtime that his panting mug got, especially given that he was expected to make a full recovery? No, it does not.
Of course, amid this pandemic is a world-historic election. I get it, the stakes are high. Everyone is in a state of anxiety that keeps getting worse.
We’re told every day that the Postal Service has been taken over and our votes aren’t going to count. The stories are being reported as if no other institution is involved in running elections. There are fifty states that run fifty different election processes. In many, there are drop boxes to assist in early voting. There are election officials and lawyers and public servants whose job it is to ensure that people can vote. The best way to get people not to vote is to put them into a heightened state of anxiety about the very idea of voting.
Writing only about the possible failures of voting instead of the many legal guardrails in place to support and defend voting is . . . irresponsible. And it’s dangerous. It makes me feel like I ate a ton of jalapeño poppers.
You know what got people to the voting booths in 2008? Hope! Optimism! Remember the hopey-changey guy? That draws people to vote.
I want to see headlines like “Early Voting in Pennsylvania Begins.” Then, in the fifth paragraph: “The President has tried to thwart some of these early voting processes, but Pennsylvania is a lot smarter than that.”
My family is from Iran, a country where votes literally do not get counted. But here in America, we get a meaningful right to vote. How great is that?