Without torturing the point, just about anything outside of the various forms of torture banned by Article III of the Geneva Convention can be endured for four weeks.
Give or take.
Same for most all of the additional forms of cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment defined and banned by international humanitarian law going back to the mid-20th century.
Nowhere in the relevant documents, however, could I find the exact or even approximate specifications of our current predicament — four more weeks of political advertising on local TV.
No campaign promise made by any candidate for any party for any office in any state can approach the sacred manifest blessing of the Nov. 8 midterm election itself – a merciful if temporary respite from people on my TV saying horrid things about each other morning, noon, and night.
Right now, I can no longer separate the puppy killers from the real killers one candidate is said to want back on the streets immediately, and make no mistake those ads say, we’re talking “dangerous murderers.”
And here you thought he wanted to free only the non-dangerous murderers.
For that plausible misunderstanding I’ve got nothing but strained empathy. It’s very hard, having absorbed Pennsylvania’s outsized portion of nearly $9 billion in political advertising in this cycle, to have the remaining mental bandwidth necessary to distinguish between the fraudulent murderer-hugging abortionists and the too extreme, too dangerous, too dumb, too smart (he’s a professor!), too radical, too far left, too far right, too much of an insider, too much of an outsider, too risky, too frisky, too Trumpy, too frumpy, too spungy, and too grungy among the esteemed candidates to steer the Commonwealth in a period of severe social turbulence.
While the ads themselves are deeply depressing, the impetus for them is far worse. Do the people who are in a position to spend an estimated $8.8 billion ad dollars on these midterms think we are this dumb?
Do they think we are this ignorant?
Do they think we’ll respond the same reflexive way to the same cynical dog whistles and the same lies and oversimplifications time after time after time?
Yes, yes, and yes, and the worst part of all is that they are generally right. Most of this money is spent on attack ads, money that wouldn’t be spent if it didn’t work.
It’s all a regularly scheduled financial windfall for local TV, which would be absolutely wonderful if it got funneled into investigative journalism or salaries to expand the news gathering operation. I posit that it is not. Most of it goes into the pockets of the people who own local TV stations, the better to finance their own political initiatives, which I doubt involves the expansion of the sunshine laws so much as their personal portfolios.
“On the one hand, I lament that we’re in the political climate that we are,” Sinclair Broadcasting Group CEO Chris Ripley told a research conference in May, according to a story in the Hollywood Reporter. “On the other hand, it’s very good for our business.”
Is it good for anyone else?
What are people supposed to conclude about the media when its most conspicuous branch, television, decries our political polarization and stuffs its pockets with polarization profits at the same time? Unavoidably, the media is in this way complicit with the forces who would destabilize American institutions for their own craven interests.
I mean, if we’re not careful, people are going to become cynical (snort!).
Almost twice what got spent by candidates and political action committees in the 2018 midterms will be generated for this round, where the abject national cynicism is the only thing outpacing the cash.
With four weeks left before Georgians choose between the incumbent Rev. Raphael Warnock and former University of Georgia football star Herschel Walker for the United States Senate, an expected $100 million in additional ad revenue will flow.
Republicans in that race seem content to test the notion that abortion is murder unless it was financed by a former Heisman Trophy winner, although Walker has denied he ever paid for one while at the same time allowing that paying for an abortion is “nothing to be ashamed of.”
Herschel’s not sure of a lot of things, but he’s fairly certain he’s right about that last part, except Republicans say he’s wrong, but you should vote for him anyway, because, because . . .
I’ll let conservative radio host Dana Loesch explain that one to you: “I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles — I want control of the Senate.”
Four more weeks. Good luck to ya.
Gene Collier: gcollier@post-gazette.com and Twitter: @genecollier.
First Published: October 11, 2022, 8:13 p.m.
Updated: October 12, 2022, 11:05 a.m.
