Short Attention Span Nation: Roy Moore Gets Lucky
As an academic, I rarely write about anything political. With the last presidential campaign, my level of disgust turned out to be a blessing as I broke my time-consuming addiction to politics, even recusing myself from social media as I withdrew into a state of political apathy. I still watched the news in the morning and would sneak in a little MSNBC now and then, but I no longer would let myself get worked up over what was going on in Washington. Like a shy kid peeling back the curtain to peak outside while the others are playing ball, I have kept an eye on the political media, and I have recently concluded that Roy Moore, the Senate candidate from Alabama, just got lucky (maybe a little pun intended). Moore, the now famously accused and likely guilty pedophile, was — when stories of his past sexual exploits first broke — the worst guy ever until all of the rest of the creeps jumped on the bandwagon. If you observe the news cycle, then you are familiar with the concepts of dilution and distraction. Distraction is easy, when news event X is going on, bigger news event Y comes along, and news event X is no longer important — a phenomenon I’ll call media usurption. Dilution is another matter entirely, and it has played out beautifully in the past two weeks as Al Franken, John Conyers, Matt Lauer, and now Garrison Keillor have all been outed as maybe close to but not quite as disgusting as Moore and his penchant for teens. In an instant, Moore’s poll numbers rose, as the latest tallies show him ahead of his competitor. Moore is better off now that more prominent celebrities have stolen his spotlight — apparently when it comes to sexual misconduct, the biggest stars steal the show. In his own thirst for attention, even Trump couldn’t get the attention he wanted in the past weeks, suggesting that the Access Hollywood video was a fake, he was one-upped by Franken et al., and in a desperate plea for the limelight, he posted discriminatory Muslim videos on Twitter to get some attention. Good thing North Korea fired off another missile this week, now we can all talk about that for a few hours. I love the news!
