Culture: Polarized Opinions Not Just in Politics

TORONTO, ONTARIO - The recent David Letterman controversy over his inappropriate work relationships and victimhood at the hands of a blackmailer was not something I planned to comment about here. However, WBZ analyst Jon Keller put his finger on what really bothered me about the episode in his Tuesday commentary--the audience reaction. Why in the world was his studio audience laughing about something that was fundamentally despicable on several levels and was not at all funny--as Letterman himself pointed out at one point?

In my opinion, Keller rightly blamed the laughter as Letterman partisans "circling the wagons" around their favorite entertainer. However, rather than considering it "idiocy" as Keller passed it off, I think it is symbolic of a broader cultural phenomenon. Much as North Americans now choose their news and other media sources and only believe what those sources say, whether true or not, the same thing is starting to happen in the cultural realm. We are choosing the music, comedy, and other entertainment figures that we believe in, and then defending whatever they do--or deciding we don't like a certain figure and pile on every potentially negative story about them.

The phenomenon isn't surprising. As politics has become polarized, and the line between politics and entertainment has become blurred, it naturally follows that entertainment would become polarized. From the left, Michael Moore has led the way, making highly politicized movies that often played fast and loose with the truth in the name of story-telling. From the right, Glenn Beck may be the epitome of the trend. Five years ago, Beck used to promote his radio show as being the "fusion of entertainment and information." That information was always somewhat political, but has turned much more so in recent years, and the promotion of the show as "entertainment" has disappeared while the entertainment element has actually become more prominent.

The parallels between sports and entertainment also make the phenomenon quite understandable. We are used to rooting for teams or individual players, and against all of their rivals. As the language of sports is used more and more in entertainment--I doubt Beyoncé and Taylor Swift considered themselves "rivals" until the media chose to portray them that way at this year's MTV Video Music Award--it becomes natural to choose "sides" amongst entertainment shows and personalities.

Thus, in late night television, there are Letterman people, Leno people, Ferguson people, and O'Brien people, amongst others. The Letterman people are a subset of those that go to the tapings of his shows, and they are the ones that would defend whatever he would do and will laugh even at what the rest of the world considers to be creepy statements.

Keller also rightly drew parallels with the Roman Polanski case--defenders don't seem to care about the details and implications of what he did thirty years ago, and his detractors also don't care about the details of the rape and furthermore don't care about what the victim now thinks. Everyone I've heard or talked to who has an opinion about the case seems to base it entirely on their view of Polanski independent of the case, or of their view of statutory rape, independent of the case.

This polarization in culture is just as dangerous as polarization in politics. North Americans are losing their critical thinking skills, unable to see nuances in a situation and come to conclusions on a case-by-case basis. We've seen what it has done to politics in the United States in the complete inability of the two parties to come to any agreeable compromises in the Senate. Before long, politics and religion won't be the only topics that people can't talk about in polite conversation--and that will make life much less fulfilling, and much harder for anything to get done.