Obama
President Obama's just-completed European trip yielded the by-now customary exasperation from conservatives, but the most interesting line of attack was that a U.S. president's warm reception abroad would foster suspicion and derision.
In a strange bit of political jujitsu, Obama's popularity beyond U.S.' borders has been seized on as a negative by his critics -- "pandering to the worst instincts of those who hate this country," said Fox News' Sean Hannity -- capitalizing on general mistrust of the world. And while there are various explanations for this reaction, the reason it has taken hold in selected quarters appears partly attributable to American television's insular nature in news and entertainment.
According to the State Dept., 30% of U.S. citizens have a passport -- an improvement compared with the recent past, but still markedly lower than other major democracies. As a consequence, most Americans glean their perception of the globe through TV's prism.
Yet despite increased international sharing of TV programming and formats, the ongoing Iraq war and the Sept. 11 attacks -- initially dubbed a "wake-up call for foreign news" -- U.S. TV news coverage has retrenched. Based on the Project for Excellence in Journalism's 2008 survey, last year, "every story other than the election and the economic crisis was essentially a distraction." At the same time, the level of international reporting plummeted -- a trend exacerbated by escalating cost pressures that have prompted print and TV outlets to significantly slash foreign bureaus.
In addition, having basked in higher ratings during the 2008 election, cable networks have sought to extend the campaign indefinitely with even more talking-head programs -- a far cheaper way to fill time than with journalism produced overseas, which is expensive and believed to yield marginal returns. As the Guardian reported, even BBC America recently dropped a BBC morning-news simulcast in the U.S., which was launched with considerable fanfare in 2007.
So what do American viewers see when they bother to share a moment with the world? In TV news, the rare international story that garners airtime invariably skews heavily toward disasters, either manmade (genocide in Darfur) or natural (the Indonesian tsunami, the earthquake in Italy); and weird, exotic threats (bizarre diseases, Somali pirates). As for reporting on international relations, the prevailing image from abroad the last six years has been President Bush being burned in effigy.
Entertainment, notably, has expanded its horizons, albeit more out of programmers' financial necessity than any commitment to global harmony. U.S. networks have begun acquiring programs originally produced for Canada and Europe such as CBS' "Flashpoint" or SOAPnet's "Being Erica" -- introducing a two-way element to a relationship that for decades flowed almost exclusively in one direction.
Although hardly a deluge, this represents a departure from the day when TV execs feared that foreign-sounding accents would send Americans scurrying elsewhere, except maybe on "Masterpiece Theater." Now, millions consume a steady diet of snotty Brit Simon Cowell on "American Idol" -- the standout personality on the nation's most-watched program.
Resentment toward Europe can be traced to a variety of sources, but assailing Democrats as being too enamored with earning approval from "European elites," as Hannity puts it, amounts to rehashing unfinished battles from the 1960s -- when the "My country, right or wrong" crowd clashed with Vietnam War protesters. Indeed, branding Obama a socialist evokes images of that era's radical student movements, while conservatives flaunt the boast of American greatness and exceptionalism as a cudgel (effectively wielded against 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry) to not-so-subtly question Democrats' patriotism.
A CNN/Opinion Research poll found that nearly 80% of respondents felt Obama's trip made people abroad feel more positively toward the United States. Yet that esteem was recast as a terrible thing in certain circles, inspiring former U.N. ambassador John Bolton to refer to Obama as "post-American" -- on Fox News, naturally.
Ever in tune with this mentality, Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert wryly summed up this indignation in his right-wing anchor persona, joking during a segment labeled "Un-American News" that Obama "went to the most anti-American place in the world: the
rest of the world."
One might think -- or at least hope -- that TV's British invasion and other accents gradually creeping into U.S. television would soften hostility toward those across the Pond, making Europeans seem no less haughty, perhaps, but a little less scary. But the truth is that xenophobes have no shortage of TV channels and websites to reinforce their convictions, weaving an electronic blanket that allows them to stay safely wrapped in their inward-looking cocoons.
Contact Brian Lowry at
brian.lowry@variety.com