New top story from Time: The Real Congress is Kinder, Gentler Than What You See on TV

https://ift.tt/2OTvaMK

This article is part of the The DC Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox every weekday.

During normal times, when I’m visiting family and friends outside of Washington, the one question I am sure will always be asked is some variation of Are they really as crazy as they seem on TV? And my reply is always a negative. My friends roll their eyes in skepticism and lament the lack of a fictional politician like Jeff Smith, Jack Tanner or Jed Bartlett. Then I do my best to steer the conversation away from politics.

I’ve long argued that most members of Congress, any Administration and most White Houses aren’t as extreme as the coverage of the capital suggests. The vast majority are closet idealists who come to D.C. to do good, fix problems and push their pet projects. They caught the bug for service and decided to split their time between home and decidedly unglamorous shared housing in Washington. Maybe they get quasi-semi-famous, which then lets them push their agenda with a juiced-up microphone.

But my argument usually falls on deaf ears due to a handful of disdainful figures who think House of Cards was a workable strategy memo. Drama is entertaining. A bipartisan mark-up of a water bill is not. It’s actually about as interesting as watching a puddle dry. Which is why the actual work in Congress of taking ideas, making them into legislation that can pass and then sending them to the White House to implement gets far less attention than partisan attacks and clever memes.

Which brings me to a summary of a series of ongoing research projects from scholars at Louisiana State, the University of Mobile and Texas A&M. Their research, based on more than 46,000 network and cable transcripts from 2005 to 2013, finds that the producers and anchors of shows on the six major broadcast and cable networks highlight the extremes on both the left and right. The middle — where much of the country sits ideologically — often gets lost. Americans recognize less and less of themselves on TV, and Congress is typically portrayed as a coven of extremism.

You wouldn’t know it from watching these broadcasts—or the broader hand-wringing about the divided country— but the center-right stasis in America is actually pretty strong. Pew research finds moderates and conservatives are roughly the same share of the nation’s voters. About 35% of Americans identified as moderate in 2020, compared with 36% as conservative. The lawmakers in Washington representing this large middle ground may be doing a good job at responsible governance, but they make for lousy TV.

Having the hard numbers to confirm my hunch helps my case that, no, Congress isn’t broken. But the national media covering it does reward bad behavior. And that has a trickle-down effect to local news consumers. Local newsrooms are half the size as they were in 2008, and the result is Americans are getting their information about politics from national outlets, including the broadcast and cable networks. Treating the news like entertainment has consequences and it has pushed each side’s extremes further afield as they chase buzz.

The scholars reach this conclusion with about as clean a statement as I can imagine: “The Congress that people see on their televisions is not the same one, ideologically, that exists in the Capitol Building,” they write. (The study is behind a firewall for the Journal of Communication, but many libraries have access to it via the Oxford University Press Journals database. The headline? “As Seen on TV? How Gatekeeping Makes the U.S. House Seem More Extreme.” A public-facing summary is here.)

The argument for a return to American centrism helped Joe Biden win the Democratic nomination over more progressive firebrands like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Democrats, wanting more than anything to defeat Donald Trump, went with the most middle-of-the-road white guy they could find. (Later, the party’s left wing was pleasantly surprised as Biden fleshed out his agenda with the most progressive posture ever put forward by a major-party nominee.) In the end, his persona as Middle Class Joe helped him calm skittish voters who just wanted Trump to be gone. But had Biden not been the Democratic nominee, he probably wouldn’t have gotten much airtime. Reasonable isn’t the same as juicy.

There’s zero reason to think journalists will abandon the sensational for the mundane. This newsletter has spent its own fair share of time considering polarizing figures Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Larry Summers, Rand Paul, Josh Hawley and Bernie Sanders since the new year began. And it’s been at the expense of vehement chasers of compromise like Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Cory Gardner and Rob Portman, who are routinely and statistically the most bipartisan members of the Senate.

But it’s a good reminder to us all to look for the headlines not being written. In fact, there’s a pretty good chance your member of Congress is working on something in your own backyard. It probably isn’t sexy. But it’ll be front-and-center when he or she runs for re-election and is asked the sure-to-be-asked question, What have you done for the district? That’s a question any winning politician needs to have an answer for.

Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the daily D.C. Brief newsletter.

Comments

New top story from Time: DOJ Reportedly Investigating Whether New York Gov. Cuomo Manipulated Data on COVID-19 Nursing Home Deaths

https://ift.tt/3u8AJab (ALBANY, N.Y.) — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo faced mounting challenges to his leadership on the coronavirus pandemic Wednesday as state lawmakers threatened to strip him of the power to issue emergency orders and federal investigators scrutinized his administration’s handling of nursing home data. The U.S. Justice Department has been examining the governor’s coronavirus task force and trying to determine whether the state intentionally manipulated data regarding deaths in nursing homes, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. The people, who weren’t authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Cuomo administration had not been cooperative with prosecutors, especially in the early stages of the probe, and for months had not produced documents and other data the Justice Department had requested. The inquiry began months ago in the Justice Department’s civil division, and parts of it have ...

New top story from Time: Environmental Crises Are Forcing Millions Into Cities. Can Countries Turn Climate Migrants Into an Asset?

https://ift.tt/3sEUWCv When he was a child, James Owuor loved hearing the elders talk about the way life used to be. So it comes as something of a surprise that at 38, he is now the one tasked with the job of describing the Before Times in Kenya’s Rift Valley. Before Lake Baringo started to rise, before it flooded and stole everything he knew. “At the beginning, we just thought it was a bad rainy season, that the water would recede when the dry season came. It didn’t,” he says ruefully, peering over the edge of his motorized canoe at what used to be houses below the milky brown waters. Over the past decade, an unprecedented increase in annual rainfall—widely attributed to climate change —has raised the lake by 40 ft. (12 m), inundating nearly 22,000 acres and destroying homes, businesses and Roberts Camp, the lakeside resort where Owuor has worked for most of his adult life. In 2014, he watched the waters overtake the two-story-tall shorefront lodge. The restaurant went next...

New top story from Time: What Women Owe One Another on Black Women’s Equal Pay Day

https://ift.tt/2Vlj9D9 Given the durability of the so-called “ glass ceiling ,” it is apt that, when the U.S. government brought its first gender pay discrimination lawsuit, in the late 1960s, the company at the center of the case was a large New Jersy glassmaking facility . The company had been founded in the late 1880s , but by 1956 ran headlong into what it described in court documents as a shortage of male workers . The situation prompted the company, in an agreement with a union representing its workers, to hire women as “selector-packers,” forbidden from lifting items over 35 lbs. Beyond that one limitation, many men and women inside the company did the same work and were responsible for almost all the same tasks. And yet, they did not take home the same salaries—until the government’s lawyers ultimately prevailed at the U.S. Supreme Court in January 1970 , winning wage equality (and back pay) for the women. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The case established a cor...

New top story from Time: China Calls U.S. Policy ‘Misguided’ in High-Level Talks

https://ift.tt/3iPgwS0 TIANJIN, China — China came out swinging at high-level face-to-face talks with the United States on Monday, blaming the U.S. for a “stalemate” in bilateral relations and calling on America to change “its highly misguided mindset and dangerous policy.” Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng accused the administration of President Joe Biden of trying to contain and suppress China’s development, according to an official summary of his remarks in talks with visiting U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. The fundamental reason why relations between the two face serious difficulties is because some Americans portray China as an “imagined enemy,” the Foreign Ministry quoted Xie as saying. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Sherman, America’s No. 2 diplomat, is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit China since Biden took office six months ago. She was having separate meetings with Xie, who is in charge of U.S.-China relations, and Foreign Minister Wang Y...

New top story from Time: To Vaccinate U.S. Veterans, Health Care Workers Must Cross Mountains, Plains and Tundra

https://ift.tt/3uavmaw A Learjet 31 took off before daybreak from Helena Regional Airport in Montana in late January, carrying six Veterans Affairs medical providers and 250 doses of historic cargo cradled in a plug-in cooler designed to minimize breakage. Even in a state where 80-mph speed limits are normal, ground transportation across long distances is risky for the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine, which must be used within 12 hours of thawing. The group’s destination was Havre, Mont., 30 miles from the Canadian border. About 500 military veterans live in and around this small town of roughly 9,800, and millions more reside in similarly rural, hard-to-reach areas across the United States. About 2.7 million veterans who use the VA health system are classified as “rural” or “highly rural” patients, residing in communities or on land with fewer services and less access to health care than those in densely populated towns and cities. An additional 2 million veterans live in remote ...

New top story from Time: Many U.S. At-Home COVID-19 Test Results Could Be Going Unreported

https://ift.tt/3jdyI9f Popular at-home COVID-19 tests from Abbott Laboratories and Quidel Corp., available without a prescription, were launched without a mechanism for reporting results to health officials, potentially leaving many cases uncounted by authorities as the delta variant spreads around the U.S. How many of the products have been sold in pharmacies and online and used isn’t clear. When Abbott’s BinaxNOW Self Test became available through retail stores in late April, the company said it planned to make at least tens of millions each month. The company last month said a group of COVID tests including BinaxNOW brought in $1 billion in global sales. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] While COVID testing sites and labs are required to report their findings, the Food and Drug Administration relaxed requirements for some at-home tests to speed their path to market. Abbott said customers are encouraged to report results of its tests, while Quidel didn’t respond to a req...

Coronavirus Vaccine in China Shows Promising Results on People, Immune Cells Developed in 2 Weeks “This is promising data, but it’s early data,” said Dr. Daniel Barouch, director of vaccine research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who was not involved in the work. “Overall, I would say this is good news.” “This is promising data, but it’s early data,” said Dr. Daniel Barouch, director of vaccine research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who was not involved in the work. “Overall, I would say this is good news.”

“This is promising data, but it’s early data,” said Dr. Daniel Barouch, director of vaccine research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who was not involved in the work. “Overall, I would say this is good news.” from Top World News- News18.com https://ift.tt/2LRebpt https://ift.tt/3aYjmyk “This is promising data, but it’s early data,” said Dr. Daniel Barouch, director of vaccine research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who was not involved in the work. “Overall, I would say this is good news.”

New top story from Time: The Green Knight Is an Extravagant Unicorn Tapestry of a Movie

https://ift.tt/2UHqxst In a guttural growl, as if possessed by a demon, a medieval queen reads aloud a threatening letter that has just been delivered by a gargantuan bark-covered warrior on an equally imposing steed. She faints as she reaches the letter’s final line; the paper drops to the floor and bursts into flames. Cinema! There’s nothing more ridiculous, or more awesome. There is no lettre flambée, specifically, in the late 14th century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. But it’s part of the embroidery writer-director David Lowery uses to fill out his extravagant unicorn tapestry of a movie, The Green Knight, a detail that makes this ambitious adaptation feel both lived-in and magickal, with all the self-aware grandiosity that superfluous ancient k implies. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Dev Patel stars as the aimless yet mildly arrogant young knight-to-be Gawain, who, as the movie opens, still lives with his mother (Sarita Choudhury) and isn’t quite sure h...

New top story from Time: Why Lorde’s Solar Power Is a Pop Oddity

https://ift.tt/3DdBK5t As a pop star, Lorde stands out for many reasons: her reclusiveness on social media , her emotional acuity , her idiosyncratic dancing . But one of the key elements that makes her so distinctive from her peers is more theoretical: her use of the mixolydian mode. Without getting too technical, the mixolydian is a type of major scale in which the leading tone—used relentlessly in pop music to build tension and yearning—is replaced by a flat seven. The mixolydian is a primary part of blues music as well as much of early rock: think the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” or the Doors’ “L.A. Woman.” But it’s much less common in modern pop music, to the point that it was nearly nonexistent in charting songs when Lorde brought it back to the top with the foreboding “Royals” in 2013. (You can read a more granular, precise definition of mixolydian on Stereogum .) [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Four years after “Royals,” Lorde achieved similarly huge success with the ...

New top story from Time: Sunisa Lee Is Representing America in the Tokyo Olympics—and a Community America Left Behind

https://ift.tt/3zIdc1R In March 2019, a day before her 16th birthday and just over a year before the Olympic Trials were supposed to begin, Sunisa “Suni” Lee appeared on 3 Hmong TV , one of the most popular Hmong-language news shows in the Twin Cities. Cushioned between her parents, John Lee and Yee Thoj, wearing her Team USA jacket, the newscaster asked, “Do you feel you have high potential to go to the Olympics?” “Um, I think. I’m not really sure,” Lee says. Her father interrupts, “The important thing is that she has as much potential as anyone on the team.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Now, two years later, Suni Lee is a singular talent in the world of gymnastics—poised to carry both the hopes of the United States and a community that has not always felt a part of it. Lee is the youngest of six gymnasts representing the U.S. in Tokyo and the first Hmong-American to compete for Team USA. She has advanced to the finals in the all-around, beam and uneven bars events...

My precise view

Search This Blog