One reason the Media Research Center works so hard to call the media into account is because the media culture has such a substantial impact on daily American life. With that in mind, it's worth reading Scott McKay's piece in today's online American Spectator, "The Wrong Fight: Rick Santorum has more important work to do than run for president." The "more important work" McKay suggests is for Santorum to fight for the culture from within the media/entertainment world, via the movie studio Santorum heads, called Echo Light.
Forget Santorum for a moment, and put aside the question of whether he should run for president. What's important here isn't McKay's take on Santorum, but his take on the importance of culture:
Politics is downstream from culture....The loss of academia puts many if not most Millennial voters out of Republican reach. The inability to penetrate the TV, movie, and record industry outside of a few redoubts like country music makes low-information voters almost monolithically Democrat. The ghettoization of conservative media into talk radio, Fox News, and the conservative blogosphere insures that conservative politicians will be hounded by loud accusations of bigotry and worse
While conservatives can't give up on politics, this fight for the media culture is a fight we must wage. Indeed, if conservatives want a level playing field in politics, they must first start winning battles in the media-culture wars. The Left has long understood this, and acted on it. More on the right should join the MRC and its allies in doing likewise.
About the Author
NewsBusters contributor Quin Hillyer is a Contributing Editor for National Review. He has won significant mainstream awards for journalistic excellence at the local, state, regional, and national levels.
