Duty to Warn

Early this summer, on the influential "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," a leading pundit sat in front of TV cameras and made the kind of broad pronouncement often favored by media commentators. "American politics is about optimism," Mark Shields declared. "Americans are the most optimistic people on the planet."

Uttered with great assurance, such statements are more than silly. They sound like descriptions but function as prescriptions. Claiming some extraordinary national trait -- in this case, depicting the USA as the global headquarters for hope -- these cheery proclamations end up instructing the public as to proper attitudes.

That's hardly surprising when we consider the sources. Shuttling between newsrooms and TV studios while earning hefty salaries, big-name journalists are fond of rosy windows on the world. Overall, the powerful politicians they cover have similar vantage points. And when large numbers of them gather together, the upbeat -- and facile -- rhetoric is thick.

AUSTIN, Texas -- We need to have a discussion about our culture. It's about the Pizza Hut ad on the space rocket. Does the word "tacky" occur to you?

The commercialization of absolutely everything has gone too far. I realize the Pizza Hut people paid $2.5 million for the ad space and the Russian government is slightly desperate, but -- Pizza Hut? Not that it would have been better if it had been some technology firm, but -- Pizza Hut?

Corporations put ads on fruit, ads all over the schools, ads on cars, ads on clothes. The only place you can't find ads is where they belong: on politicians.

I believe it was former state Ag Commish Jim Hightower who first suggested pols should dress like NASCAR drivers, covered with the patches of their corporate sponsors. G.W. Bush should be wearing an Enron gimme cap and an Exxon breast patch, and have Microsoft embroidered on one side of his shirt and assorted insurance companies on the other. Ditto Gore, with a slight change of sponsors. Very slight.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Ooops. A $610 million deficit in Texas' famously balanced budget just happened to G.W. Bush on his way to the White House.

Of all the things you know you shouldn't say in this world, is there any sweeter satisfaction than, "Told you so"? I'm also telling you this deficit is going to get a lot bigger.

As a Republican legislator remarked sourly several months ago, "I actually hope Bush loses just so he'll he have to be here to face the mess he's made."

Many and complicated are the ways of the Texas budget, and according to the state comptroller, we should get a $1 billion surplus out of state taxes, so the shortfall is covered for now. If the economy remains strong. If the desperately poor in our "soft-landing, slowing economy" so shrewdly planned by Fed chief Alan Greenspan don't decide to apply for the social services that they are entitled to.

The dirty little secret of Texas government is that the way we keep it solvent is by shorting the poor. We go to great pains NOT to let people who are qualified for Medicaid know they are qualified, and then we make it incredibly difficult for them to apply.

Welcome back to "Media Jeopardy!" Rest assured that there's never a shortage of fascinating material.

The rules are unchanged: Consider the answer, and then try to come up with the correct question. Let's get started!

Today's first category is "TV Follies."

• The Alliance for Better Campaigns found that television stations in the country's biggest 75 media markets, reaching about four-fifths of the population, aired 151,267 of these during the first four months of 2000.

What are political ads?

• According to researchers, at least this much money will end up being spent for this year's campaign TV commercials in the United States.

What is $600 million?

• During a single month at the height of the 2000 presidential primary season, the Annenberg Public Policy Center discovered, the evening news broadcasts on the nation's top three TV networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) devoted an average of this much time to "candidate-centered discourse" each night.

What are 36 seconds?

Now we're on to our next category, "Basics of News Media."

Lots of Democrats all over the country are a-twitter over Ralph Nader.

"Nader, Nader, what do we do about Nader? Of course, I agree with him; of course, he's right. But what about the court, what about Roe, what about the environment if Bush wins?"

I have a few modest suggestions that I think may help.

In the short term, support the heck out of Nader -- and I don't just mean progressives, either. Frankly, the Reform Party should nominate him instead of Pat Buchanan. Nader's an economic populist who doesn't much emphasize social issues, which I always thought was the original intent of Ross Perot and that party. Unlike most "liberals," Nader has lunch-bucket appeal. I know for a fact that at least one major union, in addition to the ones that have already endorsed him, is seriously thinking about endorsing Nader.

AUSTIN, Texas -- As Sherlock Holmes once explained to Watson, the dog that did NOT bark in the night is the key to the case. Our current presidential campaign is the sound of no dogs barking.

Here we sit, complacently listening to the finest minds of our generation (?) tell us that all we have to worry about is whether to include drugs in Medicare and how to fix Social Security, and that building this bonkers missile defense system is a dandy idea.

When the lights go out this summer -- now there's a dog barking in the night -- I suggest that you light a few candles and curl up with Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century World by J.R. McNeill (and you can skip the charts and graphs).

AUSTIN, Texas -- We're at an interesting point in our discussions of globalization, since we are just starting to think about how to think about it. And we're also at one of those rare points when you can see the conventional wisdom start to harden into something akin to an ideology. Or we could just think of this as The Tom Friedman Problem.

Thomas Friedman is the foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times and one of the smartest, best-informed and most persuasive people around. His columns are usually irresistibly sensible, and he is in the Golden Rolodex, making frequent appearances on television chat shows. He is also the author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization, a book I believe will be featured in the intellectual histories of our time.

Bad Ralph! Bad Ralph

From coast to coast, some big newspapers have been scolding Ralph Nader lately. Why? Because he's running for president, and a lot of people -- according to a recent national poll, 7 percent of the electorate -- intend to vote for him.

Yikes! The outspoken foe of corporate power is really making a nuisance of himself. So, certain media heavyweights are now flailing at him with tons of rolled-up newspapers.

"Ralph Nader's long history of public service championing the causes of consumers, the environment and economic justice automatically commands respect," the New York Times declared in its lead editorial on the last day of June. "But in running for president as the nominee of the Green Party, he is engaging in a self-indulgent exercise that will distract voters from the clear-cut choice represented by the major party candidates."

Many millions of Americans are repelled by this "clear-cut choice" between Al Gore and George W. Bush. But the Times proclaimed that "the public deserves to see the major party candidates compete on an uncluttered playing field." (What did we do to deserve this?)

George Orwell's birthday passed without notice recently. Born on June 25, 1903, the great English writer has been dead for half a century, but Orwellian language lives on.

These days we have plenty of good reasons to echo poet W.H. Auden: "Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events!"

Today, in the United States, media coverage of political discourse attests to Orwell's observation that language "becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts."

News media frequently make things worse. Instead of scrutinizing the blather, reporters are inclined to solemnly relay it -- while adding some of their own.

The standard jargon of U.S. politics is the type of facile rhetoric that appalled Orwell. This lexicon derives its power from unexamined repetition.

To carry on Orwell's efforts, we should question the media buzzwords that swarm all around us. For instance:

AUSTIN , Texas -- Some who read Sunday's New York Times magazine on "The Education of a Holy Warrior'' -- about a Muslim religious seminary in Pakistan that is deeply influenced by the Taliban of Afghanistan -- found it profoundly disturbing. As well they might. The Taliban itself is one of the most disturbing phenomenon in the world today.

The horrors perpetrated against women there continue. The latest reports from human rights organizations concern a wave a suicides by women deeply depressed over their virtual enslavement.

The article by Jeffrey Goldberg, however, focused more on the ideology of jihad, which means either holy war or struggle, depending on who is doing the defining. Goldberg spent quite a bit of time with the students at the Haqqania madrasa in northwest Pakistan, helpfully armed with a considerable knowledge of the Koran himself. Osama bin Laden, the suspected terrorist, is a great hero to these students, and most of them said they would like to see bin Laden armed with atomic weapons.