Point-Counterpoint

A friend recently suggested I get together with someone with whom I have clashed on occasion. He thought we might collaborate on some project or other, providing differing points of view. I am sure he means well. And it has been useful to pair people with opposite points of view for CNN, Foxnews, and the lesser news and commentary alphabet channels. Useful for their ratings, I suppose. But for the rest of us? I think we gain very little, if anything.

CBS started it on TV with "Point/Counterpoint" in 1971 (it ran until 1979). And it was quite popular. It even spawned a spoof on SNL's Saturday Night Live Weekend Update. Who can forget Dan Akroyd's opening words in most every counterpoint to Jane Curtin?

"Jane, you ignorant slut!"

The spoof managed to skewer both Left and Right equally (though the show was decidedly liberal leaning). Unlike the original version which tried to elevate both to mainstream status. And failed. What CBS did is discover that viewers like to watch people argue. And, eventually, that spawned countless cable channel commentary programs where guests argue constantly, rudely talk over their opponents, then smile and thank the host at the end of the segment. But what did we, the viewers, actually get out of the exchange?

Nothing more than entertainment. The political equivalent to a boxing match that ends in a draw. The Left-leaners hear only the points made in their favor, the Right-leaners come away with the points made in theirs.

This bit of entertainment is often tried in newspapers and news magazines. Dueling columnists. Op-Ed pages with a balanced mix of opinion pieces from each side. An attempt to publish equal numbers of letters to the editor from each side.

All this seems to do is raise the noise level to intolerable. Well, for me anyway. I stay away from the debate shows. I don't watch Anderson Cooper, O'Reilly, and the rest. But that also means I tend to stay away from the rest of the shows because even they have these pseudo-debates now. And I do not think I am alone.

You see, the shrill factor has been raised to the level where opponents must be vilified. The points being made (or not) have been lost, it's all about the name-calling. This is what happens when opinions, offered reasonably, no longer entertain and no longer draw attention. Instead of reasoned argument, we get ad hominem attacks. Instead of a true counterpoint, we get charges of racism or fascism or socialism or elitism. The proponents of a point of view are labeled in order to diminish the chance of that side's position being examined objectively.

Even the so-called moderates are getting shrill while complaining about both sides.

Whenever I find myself watching one of these "debates", I am reminded of the closing lines of George Orwell's Animal Farm...

The animals, watching through the window, realize with a start that, as they look around the room of the farmhouse, they can no longer distinguish which of the cardplayers are pigs and which are human beings.


...and I change the channel.

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