“Yes, he’s a liberal, except when he’s not. He’s antiwar, except for the one he’s escalating. He’s for bailouts, but wants to rein in the banks. He’s concentrating ever-more power in the West Wing, except when he’s being overly deferential to Congress. He’s cool, except when he’s fighting-hot. In a world that presents so many fast-moving and intractable problems, nuance, flexibility, pragmatism — even a full range of human emotions — are no doubt good things….Is it possible to embrace complexity in a political and media culture that demands simple themes and promotes conflict?”

For this author, the problem resides in Obama as storyteller. I wonder if the problem doesn’t reside elsewhere. Surely all publics desire mythical story lines for their leaders (Kennedy, Reagan, Stalin), but does the entirety of our citizenry have to have narratives equivalent to Julia, Marcus Welby, M.D., or The Rockford Files? I guess I expect more in the post-network era.

Of course, you are correct in noting that real life is complex and haphazard and much more difficult to control than can be done by the writers of Lost. But as all students of media know, these writers also have to deal with lots of issues thrown at them that they, as storytellers, might not wish would interfere with the reality they desire to create.

But back to the central point: I think we would do well to pay attention to the guiding hands of political narratives in the realm of news and public affairs. There is nothing neutral about Fox, Comedy Central, or even CNN in how they go about the business of crafting their stories as branded networks. And just as the realities of real life Baltimore (Sheila Dixon, Baltimore Sun, et al.) got planted right in the middle of The Wire’s complex narrative, we would be foolish not to see that the realities of the nation are the central ingredients for the construction of simple or complext news narratives.