Salon.com Sucks

I write this on election day unknown to me who will take this election. Already I'm speciously anticipating the results of this election. Already I've written Ralph Nader's name upon my Texas ballot.

I considered, for a while at least, voting for Michael Badnarick, the Libertarian candidate since he was the only third-party on the ballot, or writing in David Cobb the Green Party candidate but ultimately I thought Nader was the best candidate and anyways I was surprised at how many people I knew in Dallas were going to be writing him in on the ballot.

But full disclosure: I'm a registered elector for Ralph Nader and I volunteered many hours and dollars working to get him on the ballot here in Texas (which was unsuccessful in the end). So why wasn't I unequivocal in my choice for third party candidate? Salon.com, along with the whiny self-righteous reader base it nourishes played a big part. But far be it from me to lay blame squarely on them- I have to fault my own culpability for falling prey to the relentless spin and yellow journalism that became characteristic of a once-good publication.

For an idea of what I'm talking about you need only delve into Salon's archives where a lackadaisical attitude towards Kerry is evident. During the primaries you can see where Salon correspondent Joan Walsh's support for Kerry stems from:“I've leaned towards Kerry because I think his war record protects him from the GOP smear that Democrats are weak on defense” . Kerry's own waffling on the Iraq war was reported on with honesty- the fact that he seemed to be intentionally vague addressing the question on whether he supported the war or not and what his strategy for handling the war would be if he became President were addressed as weaknesses of the campaign. Essentially, a melancholy feeling of mandatory acceptance was put forth by this Internet journal that matched the lackluster energy of the entire Kerry camp.

All that changed in Kerry's surprise victory for the nomination- a hesitant attitude towards Kerry by Salon.com was immediately contrasted by it's blanket acceptance of the candidate whole-heartedly with all temerity to the point where it even seemed to be embracing his more right-leaning attitudes for the sole reason of glamorizing this mediocre candidate and convincing the world that he was thoroughly electable and desirable because of his centrist positions. Kerry was king- he was the ultimate candidate to run for President. There was no need to criticize Kerry or point out his short-comings because there were none- he was the ideal candidate to represent this country and we needed to accept that and support him whole-heartedly.

Having an agenda in journalism is not so much of a problem with me- in fact I prefer news sources that outwardly state their biases so I know what I'm getting, as opposed to so-called objective journalism that attempts to disguise its biases and presents two sides of an already skewed debate taking the sort of centrist stance that results in no change occurring at all. What I have a problem with, though, is the sort of objective journalism that resorts to sheer spin, illuminating the most trivial red herrings to prove a point rather than presenting a careful analysis of the facts.

Salon.com, of which I am a regular reader and admire for its otherwise great coverage of media, technology, and usually politics, sucks particularly for this reason- its relentless criticism of Ralph Nader for committing the crime of running for office in an open democracy, ignoring decades of dedicated activism from an American Hero, has done nothing to win me over to a mediocre candidate like John Kerry. It's not fair to single them out, non-profit organizations like MoveOn and activists like Michael Moore, who created a petition saying that he would not vote for any candidates who voted to authorize the war, did a complete one-eighty here. Were you to read any of the soupy arguments from any of these parties against Mr. Nader for very long you would be convinced that Ralph was evil incarnate- the personification of a selfish ego-turned-candidate, a totalitarian demon, the most hated man in America and a destructive force in this country.

But Ralph Nader is a man who forsook the normal luxuries most enjoy in life and dedicated himself to the political process without becoming a politician- working on the outside to influence change within. The fact that our society has let the media brand him with the badge of infamy, I believe, shows that we have become the very sort of politicians we once despised ourselves- laying the blame on him for all of our woes (when in reality he wasn't even responsible for costing the jelly-spined Al Gore the election). For the people of Palestine that will go ignored, for the thousands of civilians that have been incinerated by our bombs in Iraq, for the hundreds of thousands that languish in our prisons because they are ravaged by the disease of drug addiction, for the farmers outside of the borders that let themselves be absorbed into the machinery of multinational corporate agriculture feeding the appetites of the First world while their own neighbors starve, for the squandered tax dollars that make up half of our entire budget to go to a military industrial complex riddled with inefficiency and notorious for propping up the regimes it will attack in the future, I say I voted for neither of the two parties with a clear conscience- Salon.com, MoveOn.org, and all the others that succumbed for nothing and everything they sold out for be damned.