Only through thyme is thyme conquered

There are, every day, dozens of things that make me despair of humanity, western civilization, and the American national news media. Far more than anything that happens in politics, the news media in this country makes me despair.

We sink huge quantities of attention into things that don't matter (balloon boy, Levi Johnson, State Dinner Crashers, and the like). We get married to narratives that have no basis in reality (Iraq had WMDs, the February 2009 economic stimulus didn't work, and yes, I do feel comfortable equating the factuality of those two assertions), to the point where anyone who points out the facts is decried as being "fringe" and "not serious." Because shouting louder lends credibility or something.

Then there are the Extremely Important Events that get completely ignored.

The United Arab Emirates has, over the past few days, been teetering on the brink of some major debt default. (Okay, that's an oversimplification and factually incorrect in the nuances, but we're talking about a very real possibility of financial meltdown in the financial center of the Arab world. The implications here are not small.) Basically, a very big government-owned (and therefore implicitly backed) corporation is in danger of defaulting on its debt.

But I only know about this because I read economics blogs. I would also know about it if I were British and read the Financial Times regularly, in fairness to that quality publication. But would I have noticed it as a casual reader of the New York Times and the Washington Post? Not bloody likely. There is nothing about Dubai on the homepage of either publication. There are stories if you click through to the World News pages, but they are wire stories, not features.

The New York Times spent the morning chewing up space with Serena Williams (why on Earth are we rewarding her behavior with more press?), a blacklisted elevator operator, a Nazi trial in Europe, and Obama's Afghanistan strategy. (I grant you that the latter two of those are in fact newsworthy, and the last one does belong on the front page--and maybe the second to last one too, since I keep forgetting about the nutcases who still attempt to deny the Holocaust.) The homepage of the Washington Post is dedicated to Afghanistan, health care reform, and internal Republican Party politics. News, but most of the reporting not particularly informative if you already know something about the subject, and nothing earth-shattering.

Why does this piss me off so much?

The whole point of having news media is that they find out what is important for us and prioritize the news. News media has the function of determining what is news. At least in theory. The press are intended to be gatekeepers. To achieve that end, they have (or had, since it's been almost completely dismantled in pursuit of profit) the news apparatus: fact checkers, beat reporters who know their subjects, and connections that allow journalists access to information, in turn keeping citizens informed.

Except there are many days that I can't for the life of me see how newspapers are fulfilling that function. And the newspapers are saints, compared to TV news.

So how are people in this country getting and staying informed? By and large, it seems to me that they aren't. That is the crux of our problem.

I hope everyone has been following what's been going in Iran the last few days.

This is about more than the fact that innocent people are suffering. They are, and I have no wish to minimize it. But people are suffering in Darfur, too, and in Zimbabwe. In Burma. Cold and hard as it is, oppression does not make news.

It's not because of the global ramifications, either. I mean, those matter, and all of this certainly has implications--implications I cannot yet begin to imagine. And I won't lie and say that my nation and the other nations of the west (or global north, in IPE terms) don't have a vested interest in the outcome. We do. But it is not, fundamentally, the right of any nation to say how another nation should be governed. Unless that nation is making war against other nations, which is generally accepted as the exception. Not that the regime in Iran is saintly. Read Hobbes, Locke, and Machiavelli if you want the philosophical grounding for this. Basically, Your right to do what you want with your body stops when you start touching my body,* as we were all socialized in preschool. (*Er, at least as long as I don't give you permission. But they didn't teach that part in preschool.)

What is at stake in Iran is the fundamental right of self-determination. The right of a nation to say how it wants to be governed. And I will impose my democratic sensibilities on the world enough to say that that right is vested in the people of a nation as a whole, not just in an elite class. (For those countries with religious governments, and therefore the elites decide, I would counter that God is present in all people, and therefore all people deserve a voice.) But again, nations do not interfere with other nations--going around demanding democratic processes everywhere would be highly impractical, whatever your opinions on whether it ever ought to be done.

But when there is an election... when there is an election, the voice of the people damn well ought to be heard. And that's why we should care. Because they have a right to decide, to determine for themselves. Their leaders and customs established that such an opportunity should exist. Self-determination demands that they get it. Their right to elect their President is our right to elect ours. That is why we should hope for them, why we should care. But it is also why we cannot intervene.




And then there's the part I can't get away from. The mathematician in me noticed it. The writer in me is drawn to it. It's the question I haven't heard asked.

What I want to know is, how on earth did they pick 63 percent? There were public polls out beforehand. If you wanted to rig the election and have it go uncontested, that is not, logically, the result you pick. You pick 52 or 53 percent--enough of a margin to avoid calls for a recall, not enough to raise suspicions. Maybe you pick 56, 57, if you want to look strong. But you don't pick something over 60 if you don't want to arouse suspicion.

I'm not suggesting some sort of conspiracy. I'm suggesting that there is some sort of story. Someone cared more about impressing the powerful with their loyalty than about being believable, trying to suck up or to make up for expressing doubt. Someone in the right place who wanted questions raised--maybe not expecting it to go this far, maybe hoping for it--convincing others that the choice was a demonstration of loyalty. Someone who had convinced himself that the President could not possibly receive less support.

There are stories here. Possibly one, possibly many. I doubt they will ever be told. But damn, what stories they must be.