I get lots of email. Most of it is stuff I want, and since switching to Gmail a few years ago, the spam issues I’d encountered with Hotmail and Yahoo! are a a thing of the past.
This is a welcome development.
However, with my desire to help elect Kenyan Prime Minister Barack Hussein Obama I signed up for all sorts of political action committees. Sure, most of them just want money, but most of the time I get their emails and feel better informed about the political landscape. And since I subscribe to lists for both parties, I think I get a pretty good idea of what’s really going on in American politics.
Here’s my takeaway: Everyone is really, really mad and outraged. Like, all of the time.
In a study of political discourse, researchers at Tufts University in FACKIN BAWSTON! found the following:
- “Outrage discourse” was found in 100% of cable TV episodes, 98.8% of talk radio programs, and 82.8% of blog posts. On average, examples occurred once during every 90 to 100 seconds of political programming on TV and even more often on radio.
- The form of outrage discourse used most often was mockery, followed by misrepresentative exaggeration, insulting language, and name calling.
- While the tactics used by liberal and conservative commentators are largely the same, incidents of outrage were 50% more common in right-leaning media than in left-leaning media.
- Direct confrontation (“sparring”) was rare, most likely due to the lack of opposing voices within individual programs.
- Syndicated newspaper columnists used outrage discourse much less frequently than other media analyzed, but more frequently compared to columns from 1955 and 1975.
Not that any of this is a surprise, but when I get it in my inbox, it’s a bit much. Frankly, I can’t drum up that much outrage on a regular basis.
So why don’t we dial it back a little bit, political world. Let’s take a step back and realize that at the end of the day, not everything is the end of the world.
Unless I don’t get my taxes done today, in which case it really will be the end of the world.
