he Tyranny of Media ‘Firstism’

By Christian Schneider

Thursday, July 13, 2023

 

Non-news now being the lifeblood of news, the online world lit up last week with a curious “breaking news” story. It seems as though singer/songwriter Tracy Chapman had just become the first black female to write a No. 1 country song when a cover version of her 1988 hit “Fast Car” topped the country charts.

 

The news was everywhere. Rolling Stone covered it, as did Billboard, Al Jazeera, and numerous other music sites.

 

Of course, with the number of news outlets exceeding the supply of actual news, anytime anyone does something for the “first” time, it is splayed across an internet page as if Richard Nixon had just resigned the presidency.

 

But the Chapman example isn’t exactly one for the history books. Her song reached No. 1 only in the form of a note-for-note cover by a white guy. Country singer Luke Combs effectively stole her song, added nothing to it, and in the process simply reminded people how good the Tracy Chapman version was. (On Twitter, I deemed the larceny “awful but lawful.”)

 

So we are cheering a big minority milestone because a white guy took a piece of art from a black woman, called it his own, and turned it into a big hit? Are we going to fête Jerry Seinfeld for doing Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman” speech  next? Hooray, progress!

 

Further, does anyone think that Tracy Chapman cares about being the author of a country hit? Her original “Fast Car,” which commandeers the tear ducts of any sentient listener, is one of the most revered songs of the past half century. In 2021, Rolling Stone put it at 71 on the list of the 500 best songs of all time. For Chapman, having a country hit with one of the best songs ever written is like Michael Jordan winning MVP of his local YMCA over-50 league.

 

All this is to say: Exactly what are we celebrating here?

 

Given that media outlets have grown so addicted to reporting on meaningless “firsts,” the Chapman story must have seemed revolutionary. When someone is the first to achieve something, editors’ ears perk up. It’s an immediate story, it probably has some sort of racial or gender angle, and it doesn’t require calling anyone to verify facts.

 

But addiction to “firsts” can often be awkward. Remember when Michelle Yeoh was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress? Media outlets couldn’t identify her as the first Asian actress to be nominated, because the late actress Merle Oberon, who hid her partial Asian heritage, was nominated in 1935. So in order to ramp up the drama, news outlets put the English language in a choke hold and called Yeoh the “first person who identifies as Asian” to be nominated or the “first Asian-presenting” woman to win an Oscar.

 

Keep in mind, Yeoh’s win came two years after Korean actress Youn Yuh-jung won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her wonderful role in the delightful small-budget film Minari. So are we to believe that 2021 was the dark ages of minority representation in Hollywood because Asian women were winning only Best Supporting Actress awards, and Yeoh’s win somehow signaled a whole new glorious era of representation?

 

That isn’t to suggest that Yeoh and Youn didn’t deserved their Oscars — both their performances were worthy. And, of course, cultural representation is an all-around good thing.

 

But the rush for newsrooms to congratulate themselves by being the first to notice is obnoxious. They have to signal that every tiny bit of progress is like Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball. Newsrooms have to pretend it is perpetually 1947 to convince you that the stories they’re bringing you are significant.

 

Think back to 2019, when Saturday Night Live star Bowen Yang joined the cast of the show. Media outlets rushed to declare him the show’s first Asian cast member, but — uh-oh — it turned out former cast member Rob Schneider had a Filipino mother, Fred Armisen has Korean heritage, and recent cast member Nasim Pedrad was born in Iran (which raises the whole other issue of how to define “Asian”).

 

Media outlets then had to revert to the backup plan, noting that Yang was the “first Chinese-American regular performer,” which is clearly code for “the first one that actually looks like an Asian.” (Yang is also gay, but the show had already featured “out” cast members like Terry Sweeney and Kate MacKinnon — making Yang the first gay Asian on the cast, which I guess is something.)

 

There is one way to mitigate the tyranny of “firstism” in newsrooms. If you’re an editor, ask yourself: “Is there something extraordinary about what this person has done? Do they have some sort of characteristic that would have previously made it impossible to do what they are now doing? Does their ‘first’ truly break down a door, overcome an obstacle?”

 

For instance, is the person the first one-legged player in the NBA? The first Catholic to head up the Mormon Church? The first white president of the national NAACP? These seem pretty newsworthy.

 

But instead, a rapturous media predictably flock to stories of people doing jobs we already knew they could do. Earlier this year, the national media fell in love with the story of an Oklahoma woman being the first female to deliver a National Weather Service thunderstorm watch for the local weather station.

 

Was there anyone alive who didn’t believe that women were capable of delivering weather news? This seemed more of a by-product of how many women get into weather forecasting than any oppression they have actually felt. This story primarily seemed like a harsh rebuke to gold prospectors in 1850 who didn’t want to hear news about the weather from a lady mouth.

 

Or remember earlier this year when the press breathlessly reported that Democrat Donna Deegan “made history” when she became Jacksonville’s first female mayor? Who knew women could be mayors? Except maybe . . . everyone in America?

 

And then, of course, in 2021, the nation was blanketed by stories about Massachusetts attorney general Maura Healey becoming the first elected lesbian governor in America.

 

But just a year before, a gay mid-size-city mayor named Pete Buttigieg ran a plausible presidential campaign. Back in 2012, Tammy Baldwin, who is lesbian, won a U.S. Senate seat in heavily Catholic Wisconsin, beating former governor Tommy Thompson, the most popular politician in the state’s history. The House of Representatives has had out gay members for four decades. In 1983, Massachusetts congressman Gerry Studds came out of the closet and promptly won reelection in a conservative district that, three years earlier, Ronald Reagan had won with 55 percent of the vote. Studds retired in 1997.

 

So the newsworthy aspect of the fact that Healey can contemporaneously be a lesbian and a governor is . . . what?

 

Of course, “historic firsts” even follow you out the door. When Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot got the boot from voters earlier this year, NBC led her obituary by noting she “lost her bid for re-election Tuesday, ending her historic run as the city’s first Black woman and first openly gay person to serve in the position.”

 

In the seventh paragraph, the story notes that crime had spiked during Lightfoot’s tenure, probably the reason she lost her job. Evidently, insensitive Chicago residents failed to recognize her historic role as they were dodging bullets in the streets.

 

Naturally, these fainting-couch levels of adoration don’t cross the ideological lines. During the 2016 presidential election, two of the most serious contenders were the sons of Cuban immigrants, yet there was barely a story about the historic nature of Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz being the first Latinos to win presidential primaries. As I wrote at the time, had Rubio or Cruz been Democrats, “George Stephanopoulos would begin his political talk show every Sunday wearing a sombrero and shaking maracas.”

 

Or consider that when he took office, Tim Scott — a black man who became a U.S. senator in the former Confederate state of South Carolina — was ridiculed as a “ventriloquist’s dummy” by a notable NAACP leader.

 

The curse of “firstism” in newsrooms also changes actual policy. While running for president, Joe Biden knew he would make headlines by promising to pick a female running mate (which wouldn’t be a first, as Walter Mondale tapped Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate in 1984).

 

Democratic-primary voters weren’t impressed by the list of “firsts” that Kamala Harris brought to the presidential mix (first woman, first black woman, first Asian woman), and she pulled out of the race with about 3 percent of the vote. But Biden, knowing her selection would get him glowing coverage, forged ahead. This embodiment of not-quite-firsts has had a less than spectacular tenure as vice president, to the point that it seems like Biden is trying to pin the discovery of a bag of cocaine in the White House on her. (Side note: This is a joke.)

 

In the year 2023, it should be clear that virtually anyone can do anything. African Americans can win presidential elections. Gay people can participate in team and individual sports and be celebrated for doing so. Former presidents who hoped to overturn elections can still lead major American political parties. Members of Congress who warned the nation of Jewish space-lasers can win their elections in a rout. The sky’s the limit.

 

But it appears that the only ones continually surprised at the progress America has made are sitting in newsrooms across the country. News outlets continue to pretend that the nation is run by a white, male, Christian oligarchy, and they express shock any time someone disproves that theory.

 

But “firsts” are made every day, some far more important than others. And they don’t need virtue-signaling news outlets to make them real; the people to whom it is most important already know.

 

 So let it be known that the first media outlet to resist trying to make every small achievement into a cultural monument will itself be a notable first. Your contribution will be historic.