Synthesis

The common themes this December have been Christmas under assault and the press as agent provocateur. Whether its wanting to cast Rumsfeld as the bad guy or the AP wanting to cast terrorists in a sympathetic light, the media is agenda driven. On the one hand, you can pick your media based on its agenda, but Neal Gabler is right to make the point that all media likes a soap opera. Consider his concluding idea: "The media love conflict, which is one of the staples of a good story, so much that they will do almost anything to get it, even or especially if it means jettisoning those messy and complicated elements that might spoil the tale." All of which leads me to wonder, how much of the "Christmas under assault" story is just that, a story told to create a drama. Consider the "crime wave" of the 90's. Real crimes occured, but the news reported them more, and while crime statistics fell, perceptions of crime rose. Suppose in a country of three hundred million, the media made every case of grinchery or humbug a story brought home to your TV. Under such conditions people might well belive that Christmas is being rolled back, even while its on the advance. The very story of Scrooge suggests there has always been some small number who humbug Christmas, so my suspicion is that it is as it ever was. The media just puts a camera in Scrooges face when he spits out another Bah! Humbug! In Dickens' tale, everyone regards the old man as an eccentric, not as a genuine threat to Christmas. Neither the struggling Cratchits nor the middling Fred seem to feel the miser's humbugs threaten their Christmas, rather they seem to regard Scrooge as the one who is the one harmed. I say we take up the part of nephew Fred and Bob Cratchit. Fred invites the old man to dinner every Christmas and Bob asks a blessing for his employer. Whether you want to extend that charitable spirit to the media is another question.