Commentary: Democracy: Just a bad Reality-TV show?

"The co-producers of a bad reality-TV show."

That's how Slate Magazine's Jack Shafer refers to the hordes of journalists who'll be coming to the Twin Cities to witness the tightly-choreographed charade of the Republican Convention. Shafer asks why the media wouldn't just save a bunch of money and boycott it, since all the big decisions are already made anyway? He comes to the conclusions that journalists like the shmoozing and boozing.

True, I'm sure. Not being a paid journalists, in booze or cash, I wouldn't know. If anyone were offering, I would discuss either proposition, preferably over a drink.

But from what I see, the convention is mostly a symbol, in this case for an increasingly alienating political process that is itself increasingly choreographed. The convention is a symbol of a democracy that, regardless of the outcome of the election, will still be in a pretty sorry state due to years of war, the public's paralysis since September 2001, and lessening economic power for most people. And by democracy I don't mean the one-vote every four years system of big-D Democracy. Most people who want it will have their choice in November: Pepsi or Coke. I'm talking about the democratic culture. The power people have over their own lives, their workplace, their neighborhoods, their social lives, and not just in dry legislation or voter turnouts.

The shining example of the social compact between government and the people is the Bill of Rights. It doesn't, though, guarantee any of these rights. As we can see from recent Supreme Court decisions or Congressional Legislation, the separate heads of government can collude to represent their own interests or the interests of the powerful rather than the rights of normal citizens. It is, and always has been, people's responsibility to stick up for themselves when they're getting stepped on.

For that reason a symbolic convention attracts the malcontents, the people locked out of the power structure; that's where the interesting stories come in. It's journalism's job to seek out truth and report it. What a great opportunity for journalists to play the role of the Fourth Estate by contrasting the big-D Democratic theater inside the Excel with the little-d democratic chaos outside, exactly why the convention and its surrounding hoopla shouldn't be ignored by the journalistic establishment.

Apart from all the high talk of journalistic responsibility, the conventions are an opportunity, as former Strib reporter Molly Ivins said, to remind those in the media that the only real questions are "Who's getting screwed" and "Who's doing the screwing?"