Apparently, political advertising is going full steam insanity these days. I don’t tune into any commercial media as a rule, so I haven’t been assaulted with the election campaigns. Many of my friends, however, have been commenting on the nonstop onslaught of angry and dire-sounding ads. It matters not which “side” is being promoted or pulled down -the messaging is all eerily similar.
But I don’t know anyone who enjoys these commercials, who finds them informative or useful, or who changes a vote based on any political advertising. It’s all fear mongering and confirmation bias exercises.
So what exactly are they for? Who do they serve, beyond the marketers and capitalists squeezing pennies from every bankable moment? These ads paint a distorted picture of any politician’s views, and they tell a story of what matters to the electorate that no one who votes would recognize.
When I was in my 20s, I took a series of courses around the urban condition. Urban Anthropology, Urban Sociology, Theories of Criminal Justice -eventually I segued into getting a Master’s in City & Regional Planning. But it was in those undergrad classes that my head first exploded with the possibilities of policy, how one choice could cascade to change the lives of everyone.
The thing I honed in on, the thing I still believe would be a magic fix to many of our issues in the policy sphere, was to ban profit from political advertising. All of it should be free, with a timed period before the elections for all advertising. This was decades before the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, and the idea that advertising money was speech and therefore COULDN’T be regulated, was laughable.
Time, manner, and place -these are the things that jurisdictions can constrain regarding commerce and speech. When something happens. How it happens. Where it happens. And no, not all speech is protected. The relevant case law is actually around a fraudulent fire alarm, hence the adage “You can’t yell fire in a crowded theatre” when discussing the constraints of speech.
There used to be actual laws in this country about what could and couldn’t be put on television and other media, regulations around accuracy and sensationalism. But it has been many years since this was true. We have exchanged the ability to trust the news for access to any fool who wants to say anything without consequence. We have purchased a pretend liberty and paid a very high price for it.
It seems to be, however, that political advertising is an ideal place to challenge this. In its current form, political advertising serves no one but those who profit from media buys.
It’s a small enough area of media to tackle, to examine, to isolate and control. Here in Denver, we are about to embark this Spring on our first municipal elections with a high level of constraint on political donations and expenditures. We’ve required full donor disclosure, which you too can look up on the web, and will support the work of smaller campaigns that are without the huge resources usually required to run for any office these days.
I’ll let you all know how it goes in about 6 months, maybe some along the way as well. And we are seeing some interesting things unfold even now at the Federal level that give me hope. Take the Senate race in Pennsylvania, for example. The DNC hadn’t been supportive of former Mayor Fetterman’s campaign but the people have certainly responded. In the hours after his televised debate with Dr. Oz, Mayor Fetterman raised over $1 million.
Debates are a good venue, actually, for combatting the problems with political advertising. Debates, townhalls, community meetings, subject panels -all of these political actions ARE informative, DO give candidates a chance to flesh out a thought, and CREATE a community of those present or witnessing simply by the merit of any one of these events being a unique happening, a time in a place wherein the method of exchange is more organic and dynamic.
Anything that brings us into conversation and dialogue with each other has to be a better use of resources than the barrage of anger, fear, and vitriol we now receive as political speech. Who would want to wade into that voluntarily? What kind of masochist thinks it must be this painful to secure the commons, to work for a better world, to increase choice and options -actual liberty- for more people?
It doesn’t have to be… and I am working on ways to build tables and gather people together to craft real solutions. But it is also the work of each of us. Last week, I got into a conversation with a man at a park that really should have gone horribly. He’d swallowed some local misinformation hook, line, and sinker and didn’t appreciate having that revealed. People *do* tend to get defensive and angry when they realize they’ve been lied to or deceived.
But we stuck with it. I repeated some of his phrases but in new contexts. I had websites to send him to, and was familiar with all of his sources. I was persistent and compassionate but what I didn’t do was allow him to continue believing a lot of hooey. There is little virtue in letting something go to just not rock whatever boat we’re in.
Sometimes that boat needs to go down. Sometimes, it’s only in the rocking that reality is seen. It’s really about what happens next…
I know it’s hard, and in the 2020 cycle, I wrote a family guide for young evangelicals to discuss the hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of Trump with their parents and other elders. If these young people can have those conversations over family dinner, we can do hard things too.
I promise.