Media can't figure out Ron Paul's support
Sean Scallon
November 08, 2007
Joel Stein you blew it.
You had in your hands a story that could have been the defining piece on the 2008 presidential election.
Your editors at Time magazine gave you the assignment to delve into the Ron Paul campaign and find out what made it tick, find out what motivates his supporters and find out who they’re made of and why.
You had a chance to look at this campaign and the movement that spawned it and place it in a larger context of not just the U.S political scene, but the whole zeitgeist as well.
And you blew it.
Instead of writing something on par with the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, you wrote an article on Ron Paul’s supporters that tries outdo the King of Snark himself Roger Simon.
Sorry, no one can dethrone the king when comes to being a smart ass but, oh boy, you sure did try.
Then again you don’t write for Rolling Stone, you write for Time.
And no doubt you decided that what your bosses wanted was not something revealing, informative or even introspective about those who are trying to get Rep. Paul to the White House, as long a shot as it may be.
Nope, you decided that they wanted a hit piece that would make sure Time’s “mainstream” readers wouldn’t become too interested in Paul’s campaign. We wouldn’t want to make any converts against the status quo now would we?
I don’t know how many times you used the word “nerd” or “nerdy” in your article to describe Paul’s supporters, but no writer would use that term unless they were trying to single out a group of people for a clear and specific designation.
And in so doing the message is quite clear: Anyone who supports Paul is either an alumnus of the Lambda, Lambda, Lambda fraternity from Revenge of the Nerds or part of the Trench Coat Mafia from the Columbine shootings. That’s a good way to keep support from growing. You support Paul and you’re a nerd. You don’t want to be a nerd do you?
And yet Paul’s support keeps growing regardless what Stein or his string pullers at Time wish for.
Over 21,000 new donors were recruited into the ranks of the Ron Paul Revolution on Nov. 5, the same day Paul’s campaign raised $4.5 million online, shattering many fundraising records and putting the campaign closer to its goal of raising $12 million before the end of the year.
Mainstream media writers like Stein may seem incredulous at Paul’s support but a skilled political reporter would have understood it and potential ramifications.
Sadly there aren’t too many such political reporters anymore. If I were teaching a journalism class on how to cover a campaign, I certainly wouldn’t direct my students to read a lot of what passes for political writing these days.
Instead, I would have them read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail or Better than Sex from the aforementioned Dr. Thompson and the very good American Nomad by Steve Erickson. These were writers who understood political reporting was more than regurgitating the candidate’s stump speeches, commiserating with the “boys on the bus” or writing puff pieces on a candidate so you can land “exclusive” interviews. You have to talk with voters, find out what they’re thinking, find out what the trends are, find out what’s going on around them culturally then figure out how it sets the campaign and how the candidates fit into it.
Every reporter knows a campaign is a narrative, a story. The problem has been for many years is that reporters and other media people have been trying to create the narrative themselves, making it fit their own prejudices and prerogatives. It sure beats talking to voters in some Iowa café.
This is exactly what Stein is doing with Paul supporters. A Thompson or an Erickson would have grasped their significance immediately and seen them as classic American outsiders, rebels, eccentrics, you name it. Stein, for whatever reason, can’t understand them so of course that makes them weird. And because he says so, that must be the way it is, the reader presumably thinks. Or at least Time’s editors hope the readers think that way.
After several presidential campaigns that have dealt exclusively with “base voters” and “microtargeting”, focus groups and polling for a message, one would have thought the media would appreciate a candidate and a campaign that basically says “Here’s my message. If you like it, great. If not, vote for somebody else.” Instead they act bewildered by Paul’s broad support and then call such supporters kooks because many of them might not agree with the Texas Congressman on every issue but they agree with him enough to be his supporters. Funny, but that’s how politics used to work in this country, building broad coalitions of likeminded voters until one got over 50 percent.
Stein may have blown his chance for greatness but a poster on Ron Paul Forums.com (www.ronpaulforums.com) under the nom de plume of “BillyDKdd” hits the bulls-eye with this post I’d like to share:
After watching {Carson} Tucker last night it dawned on me what has been obvious all along - nobody in the media understands the Ron Paul movement at all - not even Tucker whom I would have thought would know better. In Tucker's mind the only people who could possibly support Ron Paul are the relative handful of people in this country like him who "really understand" what Ron Paul is about, leftists who hate the war and tin foil hat wearing, ex-hippie conspiracy theorists. Well yes, we are all of those things, but we are also doctors and lawyers and soldiers and scientists.
And we are civil libertarians and conservatives and liberals and democrats and republicans and libertarians and constitutionalists. We are shelf stockers at Walmart and high powered executives and self employed small business owners and internet gurus. We are policemen and firemen and ditch diggers and even people on public assistance. We are black and white and asian and hispanic and some mixture of all of these things. We are people whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower and whose ancestors met those people when they arrived. We are people who became Americans six months ago.
We are young, pot smoking college freshmen and guys who fought in Vietnam. We are people of virtually every possible stripe and persuasion who all have one single thing in common - we love this country and want to see the promise of what America was intended to be fulfilled, so that we can leave our children the American we grew up believing in - free and prosperous nation with justice and opportunity for all where any person who wants it and is willing to put in the effort has a reasonable chance of being whatever he or she wants to be and can make a better life for their children than they had. We want an America which is the land of liberty and where the idea of the pursuit of happiness means something.
A place where courage and gumption and effort and creativity counts for something - where the deck is not pre-stacked so that those on top can not lose no matter what they do and those on the bottom have little hope of winning no matter how hard they try. And where our leaders are people we can be proud of and who represent the best of what America is and not America at its basest and most venal. As for myself, I am proud to be associated with all of these types of Ron Paul supporters - even the wackiest among us. I happily welcome all the tin foil hat wearers and the hippies as well as the veterans and the old right conservatives and even the lefty liberals. When I start hearing stuff about needing to keep the movement "pure" then I know I'm talking to somebody who doesn't understand the movement at all."
Perhaps this fellow should be a campaign reporter instead of Stein.
Sean Scallon is a freelance writer and journalist living in Arkansaw, Wisconsin
You had in your hands a story that could have been the defining piece on the 2008 presidential election.
Your editors at Time magazine gave you the assignment to delve into the Ron Paul campaign and find out what made it tick, find out what motivates his supporters and find out who they’re made of and why.
You had a chance to look at this campaign and the movement that spawned it and place it in a larger context of not just the U.S political scene, but the whole zeitgeist as well.
And you blew it.
Instead of writing something on par with the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, you wrote an article on Ron Paul’s supporters that tries outdo the King of Snark himself Roger Simon.
Sorry, no one can dethrone the king when comes to being a smart ass but, oh boy, you sure did try.
Then again you don’t write for Rolling Stone, you write for Time.
And no doubt you decided that what your bosses wanted was not something revealing, informative or even introspective about those who are trying to get Rep. Paul to the White House, as long a shot as it may be.
Nope, you decided that they wanted a hit piece that would make sure Time’s “mainstream” readers wouldn’t become too interested in Paul’s campaign. We wouldn’t want to make any converts against the status quo now would we?
I don’t know how many times you used the word “nerd” or “nerdy” in your article to describe Paul’s supporters, but no writer would use that term unless they were trying to single out a group of people for a clear and specific designation.
And in so doing the message is quite clear: Anyone who supports Paul is either an alumnus of the Lambda, Lambda, Lambda fraternity from Revenge of the Nerds or part of the Trench Coat Mafia from the Columbine shootings. That’s a good way to keep support from growing. You support Paul and you’re a nerd. You don’t want to be a nerd do you?
And yet Paul’s support keeps growing regardless what Stein or his string pullers at Time wish for.
Over 21,000 new donors were recruited into the ranks of the Ron Paul Revolution on Nov. 5, the same day Paul’s campaign raised $4.5 million online, shattering many fundraising records and putting the campaign closer to its goal of raising $12 million before the end of the year.
Mainstream media writers like Stein may seem incredulous at Paul’s support but a skilled political reporter would have understood it and potential ramifications.
Sadly there aren’t too many such political reporters anymore. If I were teaching a journalism class on how to cover a campaign, I certainly wouldn’t direct my students to read a lot of what passes for political writing these days.
Instead, I would have them read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail or Better than Sex from the aforementioned Dr. Thompson and the very good American Nomad by Steve Erickson. These were writers who understood political reporting was more than regurgitating the candidate’s stump speeches, commiserating with the “boys on the bus” or writing puff pieces on a candidate so you can land “exclusive” interviews. You have to talk with voters, find out what they’re thinking, find out what the trends are, find out what’s going on around them culturally then figure out how it sets the campaign and how the candidates fit into it.
Every reporter knows a campaign is a narrative, a story. The problem has been for many years is that reporters and other media people have been trying to create the narrative themselves, making it fit their own prejudices and prerogatives. It sure beats talking to voters in some Iowa café.
This is exactly what Stein is doing with Paul supporters. A Thompson or an Erickson would have grasped their significance immediately and seen them as classic American outsiders, rebels, eccentrics, you name it. Stein, for whatever reason, can’t understand them so of course that makes them weird. And because he says so, that must be the way it is, the reader presumably thinks. Or at least Time’s editors hope the readers think that way.
After several presidential campaigns that have dealt exclusively with “base voters” and “microtargeting”, focus groups and polling for a message, one would have thought the media would appreciate a candidate and a campaign that basically says “Here’s my message. If you like it, great. If not, vote for somebody else.” Instead they act bewildered by Paul’s broad support and then call such supporters kooks because many of them might not agree with the Texas Congressman on every issue but they agree with him enough to be his supporters. Funny, but that’s how politics used to work in this country, building broad coalitions of likeminded voters until one got over 50 percent.
Stein may have blown his chance for greatness but a poster on Ron Paul Forums.com (www.ronpaulforums.com) under the nom de plume of “BillyDKdd” hits the bulls-eye with this post I’d like to share:
After watching {Carson} Tucker last night it dawned on me what has been obvious all along - nobody in the media understands the Ron Paul movement at all - not even Tucker whom I would have thought would know better. In Tucker's mind the only people who could possibly support Ron Paul are the relative handful of people in this country like him who "really understand" what Ron Paul is about, leftists who hate the war and tin foil hat wearing, ex-hippie conspiracy theorists. Well yes, we are all of those things, but we are also doctors and lawyers and soldiers and scientists.
And we are civil libertarians and conservatives and liberals and democrats and republicans and libertarians and constitutionalists. We are shelf stockers at Walmart and high powered executives and self employed small business owners and internet gurus. We are policemen and firemen and ditch diggers and even people on public assistance. We are black and white and asian and hispanic and some mixture of all of these things. We are people whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower and whose ancestors met those people when they arrived. We are people who became Americans six months ago.
We are young, pot smoking college freshmen and guys who fought in Vietnam. We are people of virtually every possible stripe and persuasion who all have one single thing in common - we love this country and want to see the promise of what America was intended to be fulfilled, so that we can leave our children the American we grew up believing in - free and prosperous nation with justice and opportunity for all where any person who wants it and is willing to put in the effort has a reasonable chance of being whatever he or she wants to be and can make a better life for their children than they had. We want an America which is the land of liberty and where the idea of the pursuit of happiness means something.
A place where courage and gumption and effort and creativity counts for something - where the deck is not pre-stacked so that those on top can not lose no matter what they do and those on the bottom have little hope of winning no matter how hard they try. And where our leaders are people we can be proud of and who represent the best of what America is and not America at its basest and most venal. As for myself, I am proud to be associated with all of these types of Ron Paul supporters - even the wackiest among us. I happily welcome all the tin foil hat wearers and the hippies as well as the veterans and the old right conservatives and even the lefty liberals. When I start hearing stuff about needing to keep the movement "pure" then I know I'm talking to somebody who doesn't understand the movement at all."
Perhaps this fellow should be a campaign reporter instead of Stein.
Sean Scallon is a freelance writer and journalist living in Arkansaw, Wisconsin