Americans these days are busy. Most Americans spend more time at work than they do at home, not counting time spent sleeping. Most Americans don't have nearly enough time on their hands to look into their political options and make well-informed decisions, and media bias takes advantage of that fact. It's too time-consuming and too much of a hassle to look past what's presented to you directly, and the easiest way to get news on current events is to sit in front of the television and simply watch.
It's easy to get home from a busy day of work, grab some dinner from the kitchen in one form or another, and plop onto the couch to eat, flipping on a news station as you do so, in order to stay current and politically aware. And campaign offices know this; they know how many of their voting citizens do this at the end of every day. That's why there are so many television ads promoting political candidates that show up between news programs and even regular shows. They want to take advantage of your undivided attention while they have it, and they're pretty successful. Here are a couple campaign promotion ads that have been airing recently:
Pro Obama: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bZxs09eV-Vc
Pro Romney: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3rJO4JuYd8
They're short and to the point, if a little bit silly, matching the standard length of the average business or product advertisement. And I think that it's largely because American society has become so consumer-based that people accept these ads without questioning them and don't place any more import upon them than they do upon an ad for a new car or a different restaurant.
The Presidential elections become a spectacle to behold every four years when they take place. It seems more like a spectator sport than anything else; the media treats it like they would treat two rival teams trying to win a championship of some sort. And to everyone else it seems like some sort of game, rigged like professional wrestling. It's not portrayed as maturely as it should be, because most of the media coverage goes to publicizing the drama of it all instead of the direct truth of events. If you watched the debates last weekend, you saw everything each of the candidates said in response to the questions given by the moderator. If you missed the airing and don't have the time to watch a replay of it, most of the articles you'll find on the internet are about how much time Obama spend snoozing, or the number of times Romney interrupted the moderator. The information presented at the forefront of the news coverage isn't very helpful if you want to choose a candidate for reasons with actual substance.
Because of this, picking a President doesn't seem like much more than a game to most. It feels more like choosing between two warring brands of toilet paper or rooting for your football team to win and grind the other guys into the dust. It's more about who wins than the consequences of a particular party controlling the position of President. This mentality has become pretty second-nature to many modern Americans because of how rooted our society is in consumerism. There's a strong "Keep Up With the Jones's" instinct in most middle-to-higher class people. If a neighbor has a nicer car than you, you feel the need or desire to outdo them and get a newer, sleeker, more-powerful car. If your kid comes home from school complaining that every other kid but him or her has an iPhone, you feel it necessary that your kid have an iPhone, too. Not all people feel this way, but it's a fairly common mentality. They don't really care whether they need a new car, or whether their child will get any practical use out of an iPhone, but they'd fall behind in the race if they didn't purchase them. This is what the Presidential campaign feels like to me. The Democrats express how important it is for them to win because if they don't win, Romney will be President and that's bad. The Republicans insist that they should win because if they don't, Obama will be President and THAT'S bad. Neither side talks nearly enough about what they actually plan to do as President, and most Americans will still vote for one of the two of them.
The common convenience store chain, 7-Eleven has recently implemented a sales promotion to sell lattes. When you buy coffee at any participating 7-Eleven, you get your choice of two cups. You can pick a red cup with Romney's name all over it or you can pick a blue cup with Obama's name all over it. On their site, they're keeping count of who's in the lead as far as their coffee ticker goes: http://www.7-eleven.com/7-Election/ It's very reminiscent of how it feels to cast a vote for American Idol. All of the advertisements involved with the Presidential Elections are giving it an insubstantial, routine feel when it should be one of the most seriously considered choices a citizen has to make. It's definitely the biggest choice in American politics. American consumerism is causing it to feel like just another consumer's decision, like which take-out to get on your drive down the turnpike, and I find this fact fairly discomforting.
Additional Sources:
Fabos, Bettina, Christopher R. Martin, and Richard Campbell. Media & Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication, 8th Edition. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2012. Print.
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