Referendum television

Kel has a short clip of Laura Ingraham informing America that television is the tool by which White House policy ought to be judged. This actually came out a few weeks ago and perhaps Fox News buried it quickly, given how truly asinine both Ingraham and Fox appeared.

Ingraham, the vile soul who told her radio listeners to jam vote help phone lines during the election, tells us that because American people love Jack Bauer and his tough action -- including torture -- against terrorists in the show "24," this must be seen as a "national referendum" to remain on the clearly delineated path of abusive prisoner treatment. Clearly, the popularity of 24 is a sign that the Bush administration's policies of indefinite detention and coercive interrogation have the overwhelming approval of the American public. Yes, watching a teevee show is now a policy position.

Which makes me wonder what the currently top rated show, Dancing with the Stars, can tell us about how to conduct foreign policy. Perhaps the message that we should dance, dance, dance our way toward conflict resolution is not such a bad one.

What we actually have here in the loathsome Dr. Ingraham and her idiot pronouncements is something that is truly a symptom of an increasingly isolated and self-abosorbed media culture at large. Fox News revels in Ingraham's reveling in Fox's television product. People within the media are so bloated with their own sense of self-importance that they now believe that popular fictional television shows really ought to have some or much influence on American governmental policy. This I wouldn't mind if FEMA started acting like some sort of Extreme Makeover and suddenly began fixing people's homes in New Orleans. But I don't think that Ingraham's policy vision goes quite that far.