In Defense of the Odd Man (or Woman) Out in News: Juan Williams, Rick Santorum, Meghan McCain

Up until not long ago, for instance, motorists in the Texas panhandle were treated to a large billboard that read "Liberals please continue on I-40 until you have left our GREAT STATE OF TEXAS." And, in Seattle, Kshama Sawant, a member of the city council there, made headlines in 2017 for objecting to one of her colleagues' use of the phrase "our Republican friends" by proudly assuring those gathered that she had no Republican friends. She was greeted with cheers. At the time, Seattle Timescolumnist Danny Westneat, who devoted a piece to the Sawant incident, asked -- à la Rodney King -- "Can we just get along?" More than three years on, one still wonders.

The news media, as nearly anyone in the United States of America will be quick to tell you, has surely contributed significantly to political fragmentation in the United States. Today, it is not even immediately apparent if a shared national identity that transcends partisan politics actually exists. To make matters worse, Republicans have their news sources, and Democrats have theirs. With that said, there is still one rather quaint practice still widely in place in the news industry that might be doing just a bit to offset this scorched earth approach one political side tends to take towards the other. Unfortunately, though, it appears to be in danger of being labeled either anachronistic or worthy of discontinuation altogether.

This tradition of sorts, of course, refers to the practice of including the proverbial odd man (or woman) out on various television news panels or in the op-ed pages of various newspapers. There is, for example, Juan Williams on Fox News' The Five, Rick Santorum on CNN, Meghan McCain on ABC's The View, etc. Although it might seem almost flippant to argue that there is something substantive to be gained from their respective presence seated upon ideological rivals on programs watched largely by viewers from only one portion of the political spectrum, one Twitter commenter speaks for many of us when writing of McCain, "Hopefully it helps to know that many of us only watch because you do provide an opposing viewpoint. There'd be no reason to watch everyone agree with each other."

The inclusion of these outvoted voices seems all the more pressing today when Americans predominately only consume commentary with which they already agree and when evidence continues to mount that as people continue to distance themselves from those they disagree with politically, partisan antipathy is further fueled. Before long, it is no surprise to hear the sort of rhetoric that seems to suggest that those who happen to vote differently are something akin to irredeemable or are characterized almost as a pox upon the body politic. This is, of course, the opposite of what some critics mean when they argue that knowing how someone voted in a recent election ought to be the 100th most important fact about who they are -- not the first.

Next, there is the reality that those who regularly consume a certain brand of news (all brands of news today, more or less, have a partisan glint) might not even be familiar with the arguments of their opponents. This is roughly what Glenn Greenwald frequently alludes to when responding to those who criticize his frequent appearances on Tucker Carlson Tonight: Were it not for his presence on the show, many viewers might not even be familiar with the Left's most central commitments. This is not unlike what Jonathan Haidt described to me when I interviewed him in early 2019. Although he initially began studying political psychology to help Democrats win more elections after then-Senator John Kerry's 2004 electoral defeat, he relays stumbling upon a book, by chance, at the Strand Book Store about conservatism and realizing that he actually agreed with many of the things he was reading. He has since become a self-described centrist.

Although applied at the domestic level rather than in foreign policy, this is roughly the premise of the organization then-President Dwight Eisenhower founded in 1956, People to People International: It's more difficult to despise people if you understand where they're coming from.

So, amid the proliferation of political rhetoric that is truly anti-social in its contempt for those who see the world differently -- and reeks with the unyielding hubris of "I'm right, and you're wrong" -- one wonders if there are possible ways to mitigate this mindset. Although some commentators such as Andrew Yang have expressed nostalgia for the FCC's fairness doctrine and, thus, a regulatory solution, it would be more prudent for the news media to make it incumbent upon itself to exercise a degree of intellectual humility in its cumulative coverage. Continuing to resist, for instance, the relatively frequent Twitter hashtags calling for the firing of panelists in the ideological minority is one place to start. Continuing to feature the perspectives of guests of various political persuasions -- even amid criticism -- must, similarly, continue. And when it comes specifically to the likes of Juan Williams, Meghan McCain, and company, though the more cynical among us may continue to dismiss their presence as "controlled opposition" or contrived, when cross-ideological dialogue is increasingly unheard of, we have to be grateful when it presents itself, even if it does so imperfectly.

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