Full Contact Politics

Jul 27, 2009 10:10AM by Blaine Sundrud

I love community dialog, but I have to admit that I am concerned about the direction of public discourse since the advent of free-for-all talkback forums. A brief review of talkback from any site (my personal favorite: www.sltrib.com), will reveal a sad truth... lots of people are talking, few are listening.

This can create an interesting problem (opportunity) for sites looking to build audience and increase time on site, as it seems to draw in people who only want to shout rather than discuss.

Before we can find a solution to this problem, we need to identify the source. What do I think the real problem is?

Football.

Yep, good old American, smashmouth, red-white-black-and-blue football.

Now I say this with all apologies to the National Football League. I have been a devout Steelers fan for my entire life and nothing makes me happier than sitting back with a cold bottle and watching grown men chase each other around on a muddy field all afternoon.

However, Football (and Baseball, Basketball, Hockey, Soccer (the OTHER football), Cricket... well, maybe not cricket) has taught America a funny lesson over the years: There are two sides to every argument... offense and defense. You are either moving the ball forward, or you are trying to stop it.

Sounds logical, right?

Until you think what that means to political discourse...

Sports (and the sports mentality) have become so ingrained in the American psyche, that we have begun to think of Politics in terms of a team sport. Pick your team (the Distraught Donkeys or the Enraged Elephants), Get a Coach, and start playing the game. What is the objective? To win, of course!

To win.

Winning means not losing.

You lose if the other team wins.

Makes sense when you talk elections (look my team won!), but what about Supreme Court nominations. Is there any doubt that Sotomayor will get seated? None. But the EE's are putting up a valiant effort to at least cover the spread. It would not look good for their team to just accept the fact that the DD's are going to score and let them waltz into the endzone. Of course, when the EE's are on offense, the DD's are just as vigorous in trying to keep them from running up the score.

Ideology is important, but can you see what I am seeing here? The entire political process has devolved to US v THEM. If you are not US you must be THEM. If THEM proposes solution A, then US must defend and block solution A. When US proposes option B, US expects THEM to try to hold the line. To not do so is to be a bad team player (turncoat, traitor, Dallas Cowboy lover, etc). And there is one thing that Football has taught us: be true to your school!

Lincoln-Douglas has regressed to Cerrone-Henderson.

Of course, a good cage match is good for encouraging a whole lot of talkback. But is that really the direction we want to go in the news industry? WWE v AP Smackdown? Sure on the Internet, no one knows if you are a dog, but we can sure hear the barking. How did we lose sight of a "win-win" world? Seems America stopped believing that was possible once we graduated from T-Ball.

I don't have a solution here (Ideas? Please use the handy feedback option here on this page), but somehow we have got to turn the dialog of this country back to a dialog. Sports are great, but they will not bring about world peace.

(although the Swedish bobsled team is a good start)