Keller @ Large: It's All About Partisanship
BOSTON (CBS) - If you missed it, let me sum up the final U.S. Senate debate between Gabriel Gomez and Ed Markey as succinctly as possible: it's all about partisanship.
Gomez claims ideological cocooning and partisan gridlock are strangling the Congress and the nation. Markey claims the Republicans are up to no good, and it is more important than ever to send Democrats like him down there to fight them off.
If all that sounds familiar, it should. Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren spent more than a year having the same argument, and you know how that one turned out.
Listen to Jon's commentary:
Keller at Large June 19 2013
But whatever the result in next Tuesday's election, we'll still be living in a political climate that to me is the ultimate by-product of the "me" generation's obsession with self.
In it's youth, the baby boom generation defined itself with a cascade of nostrums; remember "never trust anyone over 30," which has long since been updated to account for generational decrepitude.
But the slogan that still resonates is "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." No shades of gray there, or, really, much room for compromise.
Anyway, I get back to my desk from the debate, and find a new Gallup poll that shows public confidence in newspapers and TV news is at a low ebb, driven there in large part by the rabid nature of internet discourse and the media's drift into partisanship.
Bottom line – in our politics, and in our news consumption, a critical mass of us seem to want our itches scratched, at the expense of true understanding and thought.
As we used to say back in the baby-boomer day – bummer.
You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.
