Declining quip quality shows shifting news balance
Five 2024 GOP primary debates suggest that if a picture is worth a thousand words, a sound-bite must be priceless.
A historic sampling: “I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience" (Ronald Reagan). “I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.” (Reagan again; he was good at this).
Don’t underestimate women: “I have a brain and a uterus and I use both.“ (Former U.S. Rep Patricia Schroeder). And the granddaddy of all knockout lines, “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy” (delivered by 1988 Democratic VP candidate Lloyd Bentsen).
Reagan derailed Walter Mondale’s 1984 presidential bid with his “youth and experience” line, Schroeder’s dart was a much-needed reminder to male colleagues that women can walk and chew gum at the same time and Bentsen’s fatherly scolding of 1988 Republican VP candidate Dan Quayle still haunts the former vice president.
Today’s verbal jabs have worse intentions. Plus, everyone with a computer is a potential “influencer”
(i.e., someone happy to share insight no one asked for).
When the aforementioned one-liners were loosed, they enhanced an existing base of reportage we call “news.” Our pre-internet/pre-24-hour-news-cycle world provided the news we needed, not as incessantly as today, but with general efficiency and less contentiousness.
Before quip-mania took over, there was a suitable balance between news and opinion, including wannabe punditry. That balance has shifted toward the latter. Will the 2024 presidential election spur a much-needed reset? It didn’t in 2016 or 2020.
Jim Newton
Itasca