Talking points with mouths

The other night I was watching a segment on The O’Reilly Factor where bill O’Reilly was discussing the fence that Mexico is building along its border with Guatemala. The guest was an immigration activist who would not even respond to the issue of whether or not it was hypocritical of Mexico to complain about the US-Mexico border fence while building a fence along the southern border of Mexico for the same purpose as that which was being built by the USA. Instead, he kept talking about what a great job the Mexican president was doing with regard to immigration problems. After about four minutes, I switched off the discussion because there was no reality in what was being said. The exchange was not unusual for cable news, or for any news show for that matter. More and more, I tune in to see and exchange of ideas and only find a recitation of talking points. Often there are two people billed as republican or Democrat “strategists”. These people could be replaced by tape recorders that simply played back prerecorded messages. Rarely do any of these folks admit that anything is a problem unless it concerns the other side.
The truth is that this phenomenon is not helping to educate the public. It is not leading to greater support for either side. It is only turning folks off as they watch the nonsensical back and forth.
A good example of the phenomenon is the segment that O’Reilly runs with Alan Colmes and Monica Crowley. No matter what Obama does, Colmes thinks it is great and Crowley thinks it is terrible. If Obama started killing children, Colmes would tell us how he was reducing world hunger by limiting those who need to eat. If Obama came up with a cure for cancer, Crowley would lament that he did nothing with regard to heart disease.
On some networks, the host of the program is also guilty of being a talking point with a mouth. Almost any show on MSNBC is interchangeable with any other. Sure, Chris Matthews speaks louder and Keith Olbermann is more annoying, but their point of view and statements are basically the same. The left wing of the Democrats is clearly in control of both shows. On Fox, Sean Hannity is also afflicted with talking point disease. He has a bad case of listitis as well – that is a condition where no matter the subject, the afflicted person feels compelled to repeat the same list of things over and over again.
CNN has also succumbed to this as have the main stream media.
One of the few rays of reason comes through on Special Report on Fox when the panel discussion takes place. These are reasonable people who will admit when there is a problem for their side. Another place where reason prevails is the Glenn Beck show. Sure, Beck is out there in his views. But Beck does not employ rhetoric rather than reason. He actually attempts to prove his points rather than to cram them down the throats of his viewers.
It seems strange that with all the news that is now on the air, there is less quality in the midst of all that quantity.