Americans prefer star-spangled news

Somewhere in past dreams I recall reading some commentator saying that the United States of today has the best informed electorate in its history. Then my reverie broke and reality struck home.

Not only are Americans uninformed, but they haven’t the least desire to be informed. Given a choice between learning the details of their government’s shenanigans and having their heads cut off, they would cheerfully lay their noggins on the block.

For the average American, ignorance is a drug that guarantees sweet sleep and no side effects. How else to explain the recent finding that two-thirds of the citizenry believe that the press should be muzzled in wartime, reduced to a mouthpiece for the pabulum funneled to them by government spokesmen?

Even in peacetime, 28 percent said the government should control what information the media reports. In Iraq, the Pentagon has taken this sentiment to heart, paying newspapers to print “positive” news about U.S. military operations there.

At one level, none of this is remarkable, for Americans, despite their lip service to the contrary, have always been suspicious of education beyond basic reading and ciphering. And when it comes to history, they prefer the pleasant poetry of Honest Abe and Washington’s cherry tree. To look further and closer is to risk finding flaws; and in the present political climate this amounts to sedition, which automatically incurs the wrath of the Republican abattoir.

Stop an American on the street and ask him about President George I’s invasion of Panama, and he will recall the event (if he remembers it at all) as a diverting interlude. Ask him about Operation Desert Storm, and the cockles of his heart will warm with something resembling nostalgia. Mention Reagan and he will grow teary, but Iran-Contra will never enter his mind.

Against this backdrop, is it any wonder that such folks would view a prying, insistent press as an enemy of the state? The major newspapers have, more or less, held their own against those who would just as soon do without them; but the broadcast media are little better than their Soviet brethren of yore. At the inception of the Iraq “war,” the big three broadcast stations immediately concocted running themes, complete with graphics, which reflected some sort of noble purpose about a First World superpower launching an unprovoked attack upon a Third World backwater.

“Target: Iraq” was my favorite, because it put all of us behind the gun sight, fostering a kind of anti-Saddam camaraderie as we bore down on Baghdad, arm-in-arm, thinking of the flag, apple pie and a triumphant return home to cheering crowds.

Can anyone doubt that the present administration has thrilled to the news that the public would prefer Bush’s truth to anything that might be excavated by a dogged investigative reporter? The electorate expects only good news – strained, sterilized and pre-approved by White House quality- control agents. Consider the poor woman who, trembling in the presence of her commander in chief, took the floor at a recent “town meeting” to make a plea for stories about “all the good things being done in Iraq.” It is as if the end purpose of blowing 30,000 Iraqis (at least) to kingdom come were to afford Americans an opportunity to rebuild their schools.

I was reading Thomas Jefferson the other night and was amused at the frequency with which he assailed the newspapers of his day. He accused them of the “prostitution of falsehood,” and said that “nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.” There has certainly been some improvement in the news since then, but has there been a lot?

Perhaps the idea of the press affording a check on the government’s version of events was never meant to be taken seriously. Perhaps the natural state of affairs is as so many among the hoi polloi now tell us: not to live by the bread of truth alone (or at all), but by every word that spills from the house of Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, et al.

Ignorance, in other words, is bliss. This by itself will make us the happiest warriors in the world.

Robert Klose frequently writes essays for the Christian Science Monitor and teaches at University College of Bangor. His upcoming book is titled “Small Worlds: Adopted Sons, Pet Piranhas, and Other Mortal Concerns.”