Word: making
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...part, we in the media were made to look stupid by the same mechanisms we use to make ourselves seem smarter than we are. By midafternoon on Election Day, journalists receive exit-poll data, diced into a zillion demographic categories on whom people voted for and why. Networks use those figures to call states seconds after the polls close (and hint not so subtly at outcomes earlier in the day); print journalists use it to plan election coverage; we all use it to lord our insiderdom over less-well-connected pals. The monopolistic source of the data is the Voter...
...meantime, Bush worked like a dog, putting on a tableau of transition. He may not be President, but he played one on TV, using the Governor's mansion in Austin like the set of The West Wing, ushering his make-believe Cabinet through iron gates into meetings. He gave up his usual afternoon video games and naps for lunches with his maybe Vice President on a table set with linens and silver, evoking those famous weekly Clinton-Gore meals adjacent to the Oval Office. He jauntily shooed away photographers, claiming that his soup was getting cold, which wasn't much...
...general humiliation, there was some good news for the TV networks: They did accurately award Florida to the winner. The bad news: They also awarded it to the loser. Dan Rather assured viewers they could take CBS's election-night projections "to the bank"; then the networks had to make two costly withdrawals. It was, in the words of CBS and CNN election consultant Warren Mitofsky, "embarrassing as hell." Yet it also underscored TV's tremendous power, as the networks' blunders led to Al Gore's concession takeback. And as that wild night set up an acrimonious Florida soap opera...
...Where we're going there are no maps and no guardrails. These two men have choices to make. Both talked about the will of the people and the rule of law, of bringing the country together, but as the hours and then days passed, the temperature began to rise, and so did the stakes...
...nothing else, future voters should recall Florida 2000 as a caution that no prediction from a blow-dried anchor or Internet gossip is reason not to vote. As long as the media keep playing that game, the least they can do is make clear that their word isn't always gospel. Early Wednesday morning, they did exactly that. As George and Al continue playing for the cameras on "Survivor II: the Florida Swamp," there is no better lesson to remember...