Sophisticating up the corruption

In a below comments discussion about whether or not we should go out and locate the outrage over city entertaining expenses, Carmen asks:

Jeffrey, when you play chess, do you only look at the opponent's queen? Structures most often topple from the cracks which seem insignificant to all but the engineer.

Suffice to say I'm not playing an adversarial "chess" game with anyone here. And I'm not looking to "topple any structures" either. Like most folks, I'm just reading the news and deciding which stories are worth taking seriously and which ones are just good for a laugh.

Douchey pols kissing one another's asses at Morton's is pretty funny but hardly surprising... and not very interesting after a fashion.

On the other hand, creating whole new venues of public policy which are themselves of questionable (in the case of the 311 system) or even nefarious (in the case of the crime cameras) utility for the benefit of a select coterie of political cronies is much more disturbing because it is indicative of a more thoroughly broken and corrupted government.

Pols being buffoons at lobbying events is just standard stuff and an immutable pattern of human behavior. Declaiming demagoguing and sensationalizing such behavior in order to get elected or sell newspapers is the very definition of what I've come call "Dragonslaying" It's a waste of time and energy that primarily benefits those in the audience looking for evidence of their own moral superiority.

But systemic, institutional co-opting of governmental functions for the primary purpose of enriching one's political benefactors is actual news. It's that magic moment where (to lean once again on Robert Cerasoli's phrasing) the corruption becomes sophisticated enough to be termed relevant.

Varg disagrees saying essentially that my attempt to draw a distinction between these two types of stories is playing a "zero sum game" with space in the news cycle. Well... space there is limited. And editors are paid to make decisions about which bits are apportioned resources and emphasis. Subsequent talk radio hosts and editorialists will also make decisions about which story to give space to. So determining which story has legs is, if not a perfectly zero sum game, then something very close.