yaallam

Another rare reread for me. The companion piece to Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 (Thompson and Crouse were both covering the '72 race for Rolling Stone), Crouse provides an insight into the sociology of journalism more than thirty years ago that's still eerily relevant today. Part of it might be that Nixon-McGovern and McCain-Obama contain similar undertones of establishmentarian conservatism versus youthfully energetic reformism; although I gleefully admit that McCain isn't Nixon and Obama isn't McGovern. But more to the point, Crouse goes after the odd and surprisngly repressed atmosphere that surrounds journalism that keeps the news coverage so homogeneous and so bland, and which allows politicians to get away with murder as long as they know HOW to present it into the news cycle. The journalists don't really come off as heroes or villians in the story, just a bunch of people who can't or won't buck the system, either because they don't want to, don't know how, or truly can't because they aren't individually strong enough (there are examples of all three in the book). But every once in a while, one of them does still score a little victory and manage to navigate some real news through the editorial process, and you can almost feel the high and the yearning to do it more often that that must create.

2023-06-24 16:26