Can you spell, " M-O-N-E-Y ?"

I had that kind of bitter sense of amusement today reading, A New Silent Majority, by Marc Buchanan in the Times. It's part of a regular opinion column he writes, apparently, applying the principles of physical science to the social/political sphere.

The Times calls him a theoretical physicist.

OK. So what?

He makes a great case that the "mainstream" (hereinafter, "commercial") media are out of synch with the public--reporting prevailing opinions that are actually unpopular, minority positions and focusing on stories and scandals that the public finds irrelevant.

Buchanan offers some different explanantions for this discrepancy.

A common explanation of this tendency toward distortion is that the beltway media has attended a few too many White House Correspondents’ Dinners and so cannot possibly cover the administration with anything approaching objectivity. No doubt the Republicans’ notoriously well-organized efforts in casting the media as having a “liberal bias” also have their intended effect in suppressing criticism.

Then he proffers his pet explanation--the scientific theory.

But I wonder whether this media distortion also persists because it doesn’t meet with enough criticism, and if that’s partially because many Americans think that what they see in the major political media reflects what most other Americans really think – when actually it often doesn’t.
Psychologists coined the term “pluralistic ignorance” in the 1930s to refer to this type of misperception — more a social than an individual phenomenon — to which even smart people might fall victim.

So, he goes on to commit the very misinformation he's claiming to demystify.

He never mentions that the reason commercial news media try to tell the public to think in terms contrary to the public's own conscience is that the media sponsors want to promulgate those opinions, and the media companies do, too.

Buchanan plays the role of masker, suggesting this misrepresentation of public opinion is a mistake, or a matter of shyness.

Yet in the classroom of our democracy, at least for many in the media, it still seems impolitic – or at least a little too risky – to raise one’s hand.

He actually has the arrogance to liken it to the shyness of students in a classroom, afraid to raise their hand for fear of being the only one to think something.

Whatever your broadcast network, whatever your cable station, whatever your talk radio, you are hearing what the media companies and their sponsors want you to hear. They lie about everything, why shouldn't they tell you that their opinion is really YOUR opinion, too?

If they say it enough, you'll believe it.

But that is Buchanan's saving grace. He is onto the symptoms. He is just wrong about the illness. Still, he's the only one out there saying this.

At least he's honest, which is more than we can say about our Representatives in Washington, or the commercial media "reporting" on their governance.