The Sugar-High Story

by Susan J. Demas
April 1, 2010

It was, perhaps, the stupidest story I have ever had to write.

Now keep in mind, I’ve done years on the community beat in rural Iowa and Michigan. I’ve covered feuding senior citizen quilters, a chubby lawmaker’s quest to shed some extra pounds and the butter cow at the state fair.

None of them compares to the circus that ensued when Jennifer Granholm declared March 20 “Michigan Meatout Day.”

It was similar to what 30 other governors had done, including Republican huntress-goddess Sarah Palin. There was barely a peep of protest in other states. But Michigan lawmakers who have long contended the governor never got agriculture (“Maybe it’s just not cool enough,” Sen. Michelle McManus, a Lake Leelanau Republican has offered) relished the chance to whack her like a piñata.

If the debate were about the value of agriculture to Michigan, that would be one thing.

But it wasn’t. It was all about scoring cheap political points off an unpopular lame-duck governor.

House Speaker Andy Dillon (D-Redford Township) perfectly illustrated the conventional wisdom that you have to shed half your IQ to run for governor. The normally erudite Dillon fired off a press release that he’d be grilling hamburgers in Pontiac to celebrate. One can only hope he was rolling his eyes as he did it.

GOP senators quickly popped a resolution condemning the guv’s declaration, and it passed easily, with three Democrats hopping on board. (Surprise, surprise, the resolution’s chief sponsor, Sen. Wayne Kuipers (R-Holland), is running for Congress in the most conservative district in the state).

The Senate ground to a halt for more than an hour as politician after politician railed against the governor. There’s something infuriating about blasting Jennifer Granholm for a non-issue when there are many legitimate areas of complaint, from her management style to her economic development strategy.

Keep in mind that the state is facing a $1.7-billion budget deficit for the next fiscal year. We still have a 14-percent unemployment rate. Our state government is still structured for the 1950s, as is our tax code. One in five young children lives in poverty.

There is no shortage of problems for lawmakers to tackle. So naturally, normally intelligent legislators decided instead to spend their time unloading god-awful farm puns.

“Can you really be so clueless to believe meat is bad for you or not to know how your bread is buttered?” asked Sen. Ron Jelinek (R-Three Oaks), before urging Granholm to “have a steak or pork chop on Saturday.”

Jelinek also implored, “Let’s not starve the horse that feeds us” — a cliché with which I am, alas, unfamiliar. Mr. Ed has never been the other red meat, so far as I know.

Sen. Alan Sanborn (R-Richmond) did him one better, sniggering, “Let’s just all go over to the governor’s mansion and have tofu and seaweed.”

He ended his statement with a patriotic declaration: “Great Americans eat red meat. Great Michiganders eat meat grown in Michigan.”

Amen, brother. Let them eat steak.

So why did I cover the story, anyway? Well, I was assigned to. Actually, I don’t have a problem with my editors at MIRS making that judgment call, because unlike newspapers and TV and radio stations, we cover everything — and I mean everything — that happens in the legislature. If there’s a House committee meeting about milk inspection fees or a press conference on toxic toys (replete with a giant rubber duck, oh joy), we’re there.

To ignore a more than hour-long debate on the Senate floor would do our readers counting on wall-to-wall coverage a disservice. Which reminds me — anyone complaining that the Capitol press corps only covers politics like a horse race and ignores policy obviously isn’t familiar with MIRS or Gongwer.

Now if I were still an editor at a daily newspaper, I wouldn’t have played the story high because, let’s face it, it’s fundamentally a non-story. Sure, controversy is fun and there are juicy quotes galore. But there is such a thing as news judgment, especially when space is tighter than ever in light of the industry’s dismal fiscal outlook.

How much are we really informing the public with stories like that? I’d say their educational value is comparable to the nutritional content of Pop Rocks. Of course, there are a lot of people who crave that sugar high.

Consider how many stories there have been about President Obama’s fondness for his teleprompter or Sarah Palin scrawling notes on her hand. They’re astonishingly easy to write, just like the meatout fallout.

But the responsibility for the rise of these surface stories doesn’t just lie with the media. Readers gobble them up. If you’re a partisan, they reinforce your worldview. The president is a smooth-talking simpleton who can’t think without a script in front of him. Or the former Alaska governor is so slow that she can’t remember a concept like “lift(ing) the American spirit” if it’s not literally on the hand in front of her.

A third of Americans are independents. Many have no clear ideological leaning, so personality goes a long way. True, some are issue-driven, but many are low-information voters. That means that they’ll probably be far more interested in a story on a candidate goofing up an NFL team’s name than a piece on his position on offshore drilling.

In an era of shrinking profit margins, media executives cater to what draws the most eyeballs. How else do you explain the rise of car-chase coverage or alleged news shows like To Catch a Predator?

To some degree, we get the media we deserve. If you crave something more satisfying than crass sensationalism and puff pieces, demand it.

That’s another secret of how the media function. Cliché as it is, squeaky wheels do get the grease.

Susan J. Demas is a 2006 Knight Foundation Fellow in nonprofits journalism and a political analyst for Michigan Information & Research Service.