At the events, the rhetoric is incendiary. And that's okay. The speakers at such events seek to whip up the passions of attendees. A candidate needs these people to lick envelopes, put up signs, make calls, and give EVEN MORE MONEY.
In the last few years, this rhetoric has spilled out of the fund-raisers and into every corner of the media. News and talk show hosts, as well as their guests, have realized that extreme comments equal ratings.
When I hear the latest complaints about "who said what," I'll often shrug. People often mistake media figures as movement leaders--they are not. Their goal is to snag high ratings and the healthy advertising revenue associated with such ratings.
Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post attempts to call a "time out" and provides some even-handed analysis of the situation. On Twitter, he calls this era a period of "self-immolation" of the media:
All the incentives these days -- for ratings and circulation and Web hits and just getting noticed -- lie in the direction of running and gunning. Many news consumers are sending a message that they simply want their own views echoed and amplified. But if journalists devote much of their energy to savaging one another, can they really be surprised that we look so horribly scarred?
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