What Explains the fuss over I have a Scream

[gottaB]

I'm leaning towards #4

[KissMyAsscroft]

1. Combination...

of Dean being labeled angry from the start, and than making a huge mistake by falling into the trap.

It's bullshit and it's unfair, but that's politics and it won't change until we get some media outlets of our own to counter the media BS propaganda.

Everytime I turn on CNN there is a fucking Republican covering the primaries! It's Bob Novak 24/7! So for all the people that say the media is not a factor, I say you are dead wrong. Candidates get set up and it becomes very hard not to fall in the trap.

The mediawhores started early to characterize Dean as "angry." It was disgusting and I haven't watched cable news for years because of it.

[pacifictiger]

2. the entertainment factor

means ratings and they're all like lemmings trying to create news when there is none. People are beginning to see how ridiculous the tabloid minded pack really is. Pack mentality devouring their prey. Notice they're mostly trying to backpeddle this week - image control.

[gottaB]

5. the backpedalling

yeah, it is remarkable. They vacillate between the tabloid and the most incredible claims to be priviliged interpreters of our political process--it just doesn't mesh. Perhaps the illusion of legitimacy can only sustained by the ingraining of short attention spans in the populace. Hmm. But there are commonalities between the two poles, the grandiose flavor, the vanity, the pettiness, the sensationalism. That's why I lean towards something like #4, because I think the the infotainment biz as it's currently constituted rewards vindictiveness, which is the flipside to favoritism, and if I really turn it around it's hard to see whether media presentations of the business of power as specatator politics are pure fictions, or a natural reflection of the dominant modalities of distributing power in our culture--and that latter view, if accurate, would go towards explaining the media's particular fascination with the Dean phenomenon, and general hostility towards populist movements--i.e., it's completely alien to what they know about how things really work. Interesting breach, though.

[Mz Pip]

3. Dean's wife

had it right when she said he looked silly. At the time he seemed kind of manic, but sleep deprivation and an over abundance of adrenaline will do that.

I thought the media made too big a deal out of it.

I just wish the media made such a big deal out of Bush's gaffes.

MzPip
:dem:

[NewYorkerfromMass]

7. Dean's wife did say he looked silly

Geez. I wish people would see that Dean gave the media material to run with here.
The man is impulsive to a fault. It does not look 'Presidential'.

[MrSlayer]

4. I must be the only person in the country

who hadn't seen or heard "The Scream" until yesterday. And I fail to see what the big deal is. The guy just seemed enthusiastic to me. Not manic, not insane, not a monster. It's wasn't even that much of a scream. From the way it was described to me I would have at least thought he'd be screaming repeatedly at the top of his lungs in an incoherent fashion. A simple "YEEEAAAAHHHH!" is no big deal. Man, mountains out of molehills.

[Qutzupalotl]

6. Other--"Media Error" (ABC News)

Diane Sawyer noticed during her interview with Dean that on the tape, he was holding a microphone that cancels out background noise. So all you could hear was Dean. They went around and found someone who was in the audience with a camcorder. On that tape, all you can hear is the crowd. You couldn't hear Dean at all.

So the clip they played 700 times seemed to show Dean screaming over nothing, for no reason.

I call a New Hampshire do-over. :mad:

[gottaB]

9. okay , but if the error suggests a pattern...

Why isn't fact-checking more valued? Is there a rush to ridicule? If there's a pattern of this kind of lame journalism, which might be lumped under "force of habit," then is it unreasonable to suppose that savvy operatives or jerks with an axe to grind would exploit that tendency to smear an enemy?

I don't know, but I'm curious as to which first major outlet first cited Drudge, and which if any pointed to the full length video, on c-span for instance, and which were making arguments about context, including the point about the mike. And which weren't.

[diamondsoul]

8. I chose 1, purely because-

I think his advisors should have cautioned him before he went out there to weigh his actions carefully given his physical condition. That ONE act from them could possibly have prevented the whole ridiculous matter.

OTOH, I also consider American mainstream media to be a joke these days. There was nothing unusual, weird, scary, or unstable about the scream except that his voice went wonky. If he'd been healthy at the time, I have serious doubts they'd have had anything to play up at all, so I'd say this is our pathetic media pouncing on one candidates moment of physical weakness. Disgusting behavior.