Blowing It: How Media’s Handling Of America’s Healthcare Crisis Has Led The Public Astray

I wanted to feel elated about this week’s defeat of Obamacare repeal, but something kept nagging at me. The tally of Thursday’s late-night Senate health care vote was too close for comfort, and I wondered if the media was partly to blame.
I say that because health care didn’t dominate this week’s news coverage, though it needed to. After all, Americans (like most humans) require some kind of fire-under-the-ass in order to get stuff done (e.g., make calls to senators). But, throughout the week, the only outlet willing to consistently broadcast the lighting of healthcare-repeal “emergency flares” was the office of Kamala Harris.
She’s not a person who can be played by 45 and his cronies, but the mainstream media appears more susceptible. Over the past five days, the press fell for every known autocratic distraction.* The oddest of them was new White House press secretary Anthony Scaramucci — a wannabe Joe Pesci who practices sycophancy with the dedication of an Olympian.
As many of you know, Scaramucci called a New Yorker magazine writer on Wednesday night to air his grievances about his first week at the White House. Scaramucci couldn’t help but drop f-bombs, threaten to kill people and suggest that Steve Bannon sucked his own cock. These insane talking points were revealed by the The New Yorker just hours before the garbage GOP health care bill came to a vote in the senate on Thursday night.
This reminded me — uncomfortably — of November 2016, when last-minute media coverage of the (false) association between Hilary’s Clinton’s emails and Anthony Weiner(‘s penis) eroded Hilary’s chances of winning, and soiled the staid worthiness of her campaign.
I thought the media wouldn’t pull that kind of stunt again, but I was wrong. And, in the moments before Thursday’s (near) repeal vote, I realized that I didn’t care to know about Mr. Bannon’s cock-sucking habits. In fact, I wouldn’t have cared if 45 and Putin were caught engaging in tantric, eye-gazing sex on the Oval Office couches — and I’m speaking, here, as a person with prurient interests! But those interests vaporized during a week in which ~20 million people seemed poised to lose healthcare. In short: I sought gravitas from the media along with more healthcare stories… but neither of those were being delivered.
Why?
I have heard the argument that because most of the Congressional machinations regarding healthcare legislation were “covert” that it was just too hard to write compellingly about potential ACA repeal. This strikes me as ridiculous. Do off-the-beaten-path stuff. Tell me whether reports indicate that Mitch McConnell felt emasculated by the childhood polio that nearly crippled him, find out how his dad responded to his illness, determine whether the optic neuritis that precluded his fighting in the army was a 1) A vestige of his early infirmity; 2) A possible indication of a chronic health condition like MS or; 3) None of the above. Inform me about the death of Paul Ryan’s father, who succumbed prematurely to a heart attack that would appear to be of the sort that modern-day healthcare can now prevent or allow people to survive. Also, explain to me in detail Mr. Ryan’s caretaking, as a young person, of an ailing relative with Alzheimer’s.
Drop knowledge about who’s paying for Anthony Scaramucci’s mother’s leukemia treatment. Do a profile on Lisa Murkowski and the Alaskans who love her. Report on why no Democrats planned on defecting. Let me know why Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) felt strongly enough about blocking ACA repeal that she was willing to show up for a senate vote while battling stage 4 cancer. Get some leakage about the behind-the-scenes bipartisan work going on in Congress to stabilize insurance markets. Please publish these kinds of stories.
Because all that I can really discover from the current, limited coverage of our healthcare crisis is that the whole thing revolves about money. While it’s a good idea to follow the money, it’s a better idea to trace beyond it. Political maneuvers have as much to do with the egos of the people behind the money as with the money, itself.
Which begs the question regarding healthcare: Are we watching the private shame spirals of a handful of men who are deeply acquainted with illness play out in public? Are those men taking their feelings of frailty out on the world in a way that manifests as legislative strong-arming? Or do GOP officials simply represent a destructive, peculiarly American unwillingness to accept the truth of the body? Anthropologist Margaret Mead once said that we need to be aware that we live in a culture that shields us from reality: many of us have not seen somebody being born, nor seen somebody die. It makes sense, then, that this country incubates droves of people who are willing to punish others just for being sick — this follows the (twisted) logic of reality-denial.
Which is to suggest that, next time, the Senate’s repeal effort could succeed. And I’m growing increasingly concerned that the media is not only reporting on this effed up nightmare, but also perpetuating it. Before the next healthcare vote, will the media be talking about male genitalia? Relatedly: how about the next time a woman runs for president? Are we going to be reading mini-dissertations about boners a week before heading to the voting booths?
The press needs to reevaluate. I say this as a person who feels warmly towards journalists, and the entire journalistic enterprise. But I’m just so disappointed. I wish the brilliant minds who call the shots — from TV to radio to web to print — would consider how they can assist us, as a culture, in becoming more attuned to the inherent vulnerability of the body, and more accepting of the notion of sickness and, also, of wellness that does not rely on pumping pharmaceuticals into veins.
Does that request seem super female-oriented and woo-woo? If it does, that’s part of the problem, because what I’m speaking of is relevant to every single one of us, regardless of gender.
That said, I’m not even sure what addressing my request might look like. And so what? I still believe that mainstream journalism can work towards getting more comfortable with trying to address it. To quote T.S. Eliot, “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” If we’re going to learn, grow and, ultimately, survive as a species, we need to stop dicking around.
_________________________________________________________________
*When I say this, I realize that I’m treading in dangerous territory because one of those so-called “distractions” was the FakePresident’s tweet about banning trans people from serving in the military. It is never ok to view the violation of trans rights as distractions. Trans rights are human rights. On the other hand, I believe that 45’s issuing of an inflammatory statement without it being an actual policy directive (and perhaps his lacking the intent of its even becoming a policy directive) can legitimately be viewed as baiting.
