As America sets out to craft the world in its own image and according to its self-interests, we non-Americans often scramble to find out whats really going on.
What are Americans thinking? Who said what? What is happening over there? We try to find out not only what issue (or what country) will be next on the agenda of the Bush administration, but also about those significant others that influence our lives in so many ways, be it with bombs or movies.
To do so, we turn to the Internet, which enables us to read what Americans read, see what they see, and hopefully understand more of their understanding. Dutifully, we read parts of the New York Times and Washington Post. The more adventurous of us will look into magazines like the New Yorker, New Criterion, Salon or Atlantic Monthly. Interesting, without a doubt: but there is one problem.
The circulation of these publications is relatively small. What the proverbial Average American reads at the breakfast table in his regional newspaper is something very different, and comes from an entirely different source. And what an interesting source that is.
Syndicates and the Average American
See the Top 100 Newspapers from the Audit Bureau of Circulation
Anyone who ever travelled across the USA, picking up different newspapers en route, will have encountered an interesting phenomenon. While the regional newspapers do retain a section carrying local news, they often also carry the same cartoons, advice columns and even the same political commentators as the others. This content is sold by agencies that first hire individual cartoonists or commentators; then offer their products to newspapers all over the country.
Creators is one of the major syndicates, selling cartoons and Ann Landers to around 1500 newspapers across America, including some college papers and weeklies. According to Creators, this means that every single newspaper that buys syndicated content in America is a customer.
Currently, Creators employ forty-six political commentators deemed profitable enough to warrant syndication. Past columnists include former First Lady Hillary Clinton. The company receives about 4000 submissions from prospective writers a year. An Editorial Review Board, which consists of nine individuals, evaluates each submission and votes on them.
In the end, though, the final decision is made by Rick Newcombe, the company's founder. He is known as a genius for discovering talent, says Creators National Sales Director, Margo Sugrue.
Before starting Creators Syndicate in 1987, Newcombe ran Rupert Murdochs News America Syndicate.
A closer look at the columnists tells us a lot about American society, the American media and the machinations of American politics. Their insights have been hand-picked by news media owners to explain to a benighted populace what is going on, where, and why. They offer the key to those puzzling stories about faraway places, and explain why everything is rather good the way it is.
From time to time, reading them can be interesting, or even funny. But more often, it is likely to frighten the hell out of your Average Foreign Reader. All the more reason to have a closer look.
Class, race, gender and the average pundit
On opening the opinion section of the Creators website, the reader is greeted by forty-six faces. Five are male African-Americans, mirroring almost perfectly the 12.3% of African-Americans in the US. Asian-Americans are fairly represented by one female columnist. But there is also only one woman for the 12.6% Hispanics, which suggests that Latinos still have a long way to go towards equal representation in American society.
Our main focus is on great columnists we are pretty colour-blind, and yet we have got some terrific minority columnists, says Sugrue, dismissing the idea that Creators makes any conscious attempt to take a certain number of ethnic minority writers on board.
What is interesting to me about these seven minority pundits is that six of them are either conservative, very conservative or very conservative. Since African-Americans as a group overwhelmingly vote Democrat, this selection looks strange indeed. Even stranger is the representation of women: only eight out of forty-six commentators are female. White males make up a towering majority: thirty-three out of forty-six columnists.
At the best of times, it is not easy to assess political sympathies correctly, but it would be hard to argue that less than 80% of those who write opinion columns for Creators are conservative. People like Pat Buchanan, whose failed bid for the presidency, thanks to the infamous butterfly ballot, doomed Al Gore in Florida; David Limbaugh, brother of the influential hate-radio host Rush Limbaugh; Oliver North (yes, that Oliver North); not to forget Fox TV anchor Bill 0Reilly these are only the most famous of the very conservative commentators.
Given these proportions, constant complaints against the so-called liberal media by conservatives must be dismissed either as hallucinatory or a very useful lie. Otherwise, since Creators is out to make a profit, such a conservative line-up would hardly ensure success.
Recurring topics: Immigration and race
In the world of Creators columnists, one of the most recurring topics is illegal immigration. Many pundits write about it regularly. One of them, Samuel Francis, devotes almost every other column to the perceived decline of the great white race and the treachery of George W. Bush who tried to strike a deal with Mexican President Vicente Fox over the more than four million illegal immigrants from the south. This week the title reads: Mass Immigration Wrecks American Hospitals.
Another writer that likes to take on the defunct INS, now the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Service is Asian-American Michelle Malkin. Compared to her more famous brethren on the far right, what she lacks in name recognition she makes up with ferocity and syndication to more than 300 papers. Writing of her latest target, the Canadian prime minister:
Chretien has undermined Americas national security efforts every step of the way. Why do we continue to serve as caddies for his terror-friendly agenda?
Last week it was the Brainwashing Preschool Peaceniks, who might convert three-year olds in kindergarten to the evils of pacifism. While she was severely criticized for branding famous TV-anchor Peter Jennings a traitor, she nonetheless continues her crusade against illegal immigration. Can you spell overcompensation?
The issue of race is usually handled by the African-American columnists. Not surprisingly, all of them come out against reparation and the two academics amongst them, Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams, an economist and a lawyer, moreover argue against affirmative action and quotas. Also in more than 300 different newspapers, Williams argues that these things are immoral:
Now we can ask the moral question. Is it right to take, through threats, intimidation and coercion, what one American has earned and give it to another American who has not earned it? Or put another way: Is it right for one person to be forcibly compelled to serve the purposes of another person?
Sowell points out that affirmative action hurts the chances of African-Americans, reasoning that students encouraged to apply to universities cannot match the expectations and then drop out. For failing schools he advocates stricter discipline. His column is syndicated to more than 400 papers.
Since 89% of the African-American population is in favour of affirmative action, Williams and Sowells positions on Creators as the only African-American voices on the issue are troubling. By choosing pundits that argue a position shared by a majority of white Americans but not even by 10% of African-Americans, these extremely important issues are represented to the masses in a very one-sided fashion.
The insistence that equality in America has already been achieved and that nothing more needs to be done that it is everyones own fault if s/he doesnt succeed, is very much in line with the government stance. But it is very much at odds with the reality of household incomes, incarceration rates and recurrent hate crimes.
The mutual fear and mistrust detected by Michael Moore in his movie Bowling for Columbine seems to indicate that most Americans are well aware of the fact that their society is far removed from racial harmony and peaceful coexistence. Seeing is not believing, when what you experience in your own life contradicts what you read in newspapers. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for wars in faraway places.
War and peace
In accordance with the political stance that got them their jobs, most of the creators at Creators have contributed to creating the unproven connection between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein; vilified the UN for their attempts to solve the crisis by peaceful means; and supported the troops by cheering from behind their desks. The most outspoken war opponent was Alexander Cockburn, also editor of Counterpunch, a liberal magazine, but few of his colleagues followed his path.
Fury with France, Germany and Russia was all over the opinion pages, and all of the desk-warriors demanded a clear decision: for the US or for them.
Patrick Buchanan, whose comments are often at odds with the official stance and who (surprisingly) writes one of the most interesting, well-informed and thoughtful columns of them all, now extends this choice to Britain. In his opinion, an important decision needs to be taken:
If Britain marries Europe, the special relationship with America is over. As the Bible teaches: A man cannot serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or love the one and hate the other.
Buchanan describes here what you usually will not find in papers and magazines attracting attention from abroad; that he and his many readers really do think that the special relationship between the US and Britain is one of master and slave. Isnt it a little bit frightening that Buchanan writes something like that, that Creators distributes it, and that readers of more than 200 US newspapers read it? If Britain, Americas trusted ally is perceived as little more than a servant, one has to ask oneself how they perceive the rest of the world.
After all, Buchanan cannot be dismissed as a fringe lunatic. In 1992 he ran against George Bush Senior in the presidential primaries, beating him in New Hampshire. He is on CNNs Crossfire show and receives regular invitations to guest on other influential political magazines and on TV sofa debates.
Intriguingly, most pundits claim to be against, or at least very critical of the media they are a part of. This made for some interesting confidences in connection with the shelling of the Palestine Hotel, where most of the foreign journalists stayed in Baghdad.
Thomas Sowell relished the thought of blowing up Iraqi Information Minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf:
One bomb blowing up Baghdad Bob while he is talking on TV could refute his propaganda in a way that would be understood by everyone, everywhere, and save many lives. It would probably also take out some journalists from around the world, leading to an orgy of media denunciation on all continents. But more American troops could come home alive.
Claiming to be the public he then proceeded to suggest banning newscasts from the war zone altogether:
The phrase the publics right to know has been used to cover a multitude of media sins. The public also has a right not to know, when they dont want information at the expense of young American soldiers lives.
Concluding with a declaration of contempt for his own (part-time) profession, he wrote:
The time is long overdue to stop taking the media, as well as the UN, so seriously.
Journalism devoid of information is pointless. His diatribe insists that the media should only report what the military deems fit to print or show. In other words: he demands censorship. And his paroxysm of rage at any attempt of the other side to also use propaganda does not bode too well for the future of free speech.
But the most telling point of this text lies in its conclusion. Such contempt for the UN, served up with breakfast for millions of American readers, makes it difficult to envisage any kind of international cooperation ever including the USA. While the Bush administration may stoop to praise the UN if they want something, the message for Joe Smith in Tacoma sounds just a little different.
Whats next?
Anyone reading these commentators will soon find his favourite topic and his favourite right-winger (mine is Patrick Buchanan). But after six months or so, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Average American is being prepared to ditch free speech, nix affirmative action and give up on racial diversity, permanently.
Meanwhile, the warrior cries show no sign of abating. Whatever the official rhetoric may be, we would be wise to anticipate further wars from an American society that is breeding many new internal conflicts out of its attempt to ignore some old ones.
And for the future of punditry: the next generation is already starting to make its presence felt. Nineteen-year old Ben Shapiro, a typically snotty, uninformed and very pro-Israel junior at UCLA is already capable of sending chills up my spine with the best of them. His recent column concerning civilian deaths in Iraq concludes:
The United States has achieved an important step in the war against terror: overcoming our own aversion to civilian casualties in order to achieve victory.
So, the next war is waiting in the wings. The pundits are writing.
Stay tuned, and be scared.
Be very scared.
