No, this post isn't actually about the Dramatic Prairie Dog. Sorry to disappoint you. He is a cute fella though.
I used that title for a reason: just to see if I could grab your attention with an Internet meme. Because when I was going over my Afghanistan feeds and saw the title "Zombies*", I wanted to read it. Halloween is coming up, after all.
And it turned out to be about zombies after all, in a way. Zombies with notepads and pens and overly friendly microphones. Even better, it was relevant to my project about public opinion in Afghanistan. Or lack of.
Recent articles on Afghanistan have been primarily about how the electorate frankly doesn't give much of a damn about it at the moment. The New York Times alone has "For Midterm Voters, War is Off the Radar", "The Wars That America Forgot About", and from dear readers, "Letters-Why the Wars Aren't a Campaign Issue." Bit weird when you remember that the U.S. is still helping the Afghan government engage in one of the biggest and possibly most precarious set of talks with the Taliban.
Who's fault is it? The public, for just getting jaded and preoccupied with domestic issues? Or the shoddy, same-old-same-old reporting that comes out of that region, as Joshua Foust argues?
Bit of both, really.
I can attest to domestic issues being a higher priority for many Americans. Living in California, I have been bombarded with sundry TV commercials to vote for/against Jerry Brown, vote for/against Meg Whitman, vote for Prop 19, vote against Prop 26, etc. which can take the fun out of watching a 30 minute Simpsons episode. I'm not even eligible to vote, but I feel like I have to, just so something can get done, even if it's just so the green stuff can be smoked legally. And for a while, I definitely forgot that there were other, literal matters of life and death happening beyond the Atlantic and the Pacific.
If this is being played out in every state, of course people will be worrying about whether they're checking the right box on November 2. And that's not counting the constant head-banging over the economy and unemployment.
So what's the media got to do with it?
Foust makes a good point when he says "it’s rare to find a reporter for a major paper or TV channel that routinely quotes actual Afghans in their stories about Afghanistan." Everything in the news is about what America is doing in Afghanistan, and almost no space is given to what Afghans are doing in Afghanistan.
I won't crucify the media just yet because it makes sense if you consider that newspapers will choose to print what Americans will think is relevant, because there's only so much space available. Furthermore, many of the journalists stationed there don't go beyond Kabul much due to security concerns. What are they supposed to print then?
This brings me back to my project. If the general public is pretty apathetic to foreign issues, who knows what college students are going to think. Maybe they'll be the same, if not even more numb due to the proverbial anvil of midterms (political and academic) hovering over their heads. Or they could be more aware, more inquisitive, because they are in college and there are opportunities to explore. Who knows?
You know what, I feel kind of bad. And it was my birthday yesterday. So here you are, as a metaphor for my friend's reaction when I told her I'd only just become legal (I'm a little young for the class):
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