MEDIA UNFILTERED

The favored few in many industries had more control than they ever should have and now we get to see and hear and experience what we were missing by having to run everything by small groups of the elite.

Now if a individual of group believes they have enough music talent to produce viable commercial music, the blessed few can still turn them down, but what use to be a roadblock can now be treated as a detour. People are producing their own records and the popularity of the internet has bypassed all of the self proclaimed music geniuses and given artists the ability to go straight to to the listening public. What a great time to be alive if you are in the music industry!

The same can be said about writing. The days of mailing rough drafts to different publishers and waiting in hopes of a positive word coming back some day is no longer the beginning and end to every writing career. Thanks to advances in technology an individual can write and go to print without any help from the big time publishers. What  a great time to be alive and be a writer!

The same is true in politics. The days of one sided reporting by the media making it impossible for a candidate to be beat are over. The arrival of the internet and blogs that not only include commentary by non-celebrities has changed things. Some blogs even invite opinions and information from the entire public and that in itself has revolutionized politics.

The well connected that could control the media in the old political world may promote the idea that blogs have given birth to “dirty politics”, but any student of history knows politcs is no rougher now that it was back in the day. If one is familiar with the tactics Thomas Jefferson used to defeat his old friend John Adams in their second contest for the highest office in the land, there is not likely to be a complaint that politics is more cut throat now than ever. And John Adams’son, John Quincy set the bar as low as anything done today in politics the way he won in his first contest against Andrew Jackson.

No the internet has not ruined politics, it has just made it more democratic. Now when a well connected candidate or powerful officeholder chooses to point out the spec in their opponent’s eye, the impossibility of hearing about the log in their own eye has changed to an expectation of a public airing of their log. That is why we think it is a great time to be alive and be a voter! Voters that have grown weary of the chosen few winning elective office regardless of their behavior and their past can celebrate. Those who like to cast their vote without knowing anything can simply tune out. And those who are self righteous about the whole thing can face the fact that running for office is like a job interview. And they are not the only one interviewing…