Take a look at the short video that comes with the tweet below. It's from Axios which is the winner of today's award for interesting twists on how to deliver the news. My first impression was that this is overkill. Who wants to hear a reporter reflecting on a story whose broad outlines are pretty clear? My second impression was -- hey, this gets at the heart of the GOP's dilemma after promising for eight years to kill Obamacare. You be the judge.
Axios Sourced: Why the Senate GOP is struggling on the health care bill https://t.co/FjowiblUeh
— Axios (@axios) July 14, 2017
Caitlin Owens is the star of this particular video and she actually overcame my octogenarian impatience with contemporary speech modes and I listened with some care.
As I say, by the end I was hooked. This is a good format. It is an advance. It will be imitated. Score one for Mike Allen and the whole Axios crew.
Humanizing journalism
Years ago, led by such worthies as Hunter Thompson, journalists began to opine in their stories. This was seen as the beginning of the end. When would writers step back and let the subject rule? The line grew muddier and now we are at a moment when the blur is the message. In other words, Pilate's question about what truth is is no closer to an answer now than then.
The right direction
Why did I find truth in the clip above? It came at the end when it was obvious that Caitlin understood and could even empathize with the problem faced by every GOP legislator.
We have said much the same thing all along. They are damned if they do and damned if they don't. But when you can see it register in what is in effect a sort of soliloquy, you resonate. This is what Harold Bloom has called self-overhearing.
Self-overhearing is when a person becomes aware of what she understands by hearing herself saying what it is.
Experimenting forward
So Axios, which has the problems all communicators now have, is not hesitating to experiment. Our minds are the most remarkable unexplored reality of all. How they work, what they are made of and whether what is real about us has substance or is merely in a sort of "there state" that cannot be measured, we are not sure.
But people like Harold Bloom who are not scientists but literary critics and philosophers have things to say that we should listen to.
Scientific method is nothing if it is not responsive to the realities of truth, beauty, and justice.
Caitlin understands
Caitlin sees that the GOP problem is existential. Those of us who tend toward binary judgments may scoff at such empathy. But maybe by following Caitlin through the corridors of Congress and having her soliloquy on healthcare, we will all advance a bit toward at least a smidgeon of charity in this uncertain time.
