Nope, sorry, they weren't like horrible or something were they??

You are right to lament the advent of the 24-hour spin cycle in place of real news, as it poses a very real danger to our country. If a candidate/officeholder is constantly on the lookout for the next PR threat or opportunity to score cheap political points, then it's damn-near impossible to formulate any kind of response to the bigger-picture issues like healthcare, social security, climate change, etc. But the toothpaste is out of the tube on that one, and I'm not sure that there is any going back.

As far as unbiased media, I doubt that it ever truly existed. It's a pretty naive construct in the first place - the idea that a person, by virtue merely of being a journalist, can magically set aside the worldview that he carries into every other area of life. A good journalist will do her best, with the result that the bias is mainly in which issues are chosen for focus (rather than the treatment of those issues themselves). A bad journalist...well, we've got enough examples of that. And unfortunately, I think that the current media structure we have will only encourage that trend. I liken it to something I noticed about academics in the social sciences (I was a Poli Sci major) - in an age when the foundations of each discipline have been set and there is an increasing noise pollution of sorts (the constant bombardment of information from the internet and other sources), the best way to get attention is to be controversial. For academics, that means coming up with the magically counterintuitive insight that turns the conventional wisdom on its head; the problem is that for every profound paradigm-changer like this, you get a thousand hypotheses that are just grandly, mind-bogglingly wrong. It's a similar competition for airspace in all forms of media, with its logical end result in Ann Coulter.

When I lived in Scotland, I noticed a far higher level of partisanship in the various newspapers there than was commonplace in the U.S. When I mentioned it, most natives felt that it was a positive thing - from their perspective, at least when they read a given newspaper, they knew exactly which biases they were getting and could filter accordingly. I would like to think that this could be the positive end of what seems like a very negative process. Unfortunately, what I see as more likely is the establishment (already well underway) of two parallel tracks of news, one for each party. And in our case, I get the impression that most people don't have the necessary neurons to realize that they're being fed somebody's biases in some form regardless. It's just a hop, skip and a jump from that point to having two separate mass-marketed versions of any given fact, even those that in a different era would have been subject to such quaint restrictions as "proof." At that point, the thinking people will throw their hands up in the air in disgust, and the Limbaughs of the world will have won their dirty little war.

Oh, I hear you on the counterintuitive bid for attention, sawbones. Case in point: the 9/11 conspiracy theories.

And I'm so lamenting the direction this election year has turned. I applaud Obama for turning down a 22nd debate because it becomes such a circus of pettiness and PR one-upmanship, as you rightly noted. The Clinton's are masters at this, and if anything - this is what has turned me away from Hillary most of all. Obama attempted to set a tone, but this country won't allow him to keep to it. If he doesn't bite back he's accused of being weak, when he does he's accused of abandoning his principles.

Meanwhile, over 4000 soldiers are dead, gas is near $4 a gallon and the economy is tanking. And yet the focus still concentrates on soundbites from Reverend Wright.

So yeah, I'm bitter alright.

And pass me my goddamn gun.

This is the crucial part of this whole process. The part where we can see what the media is doing, and we go about our own business regardless.

I'm voting for Obama.

This whole Rev. Wright thing is stupid.

The judge in the Rezko case felt compelled to stop any rumors that there was involvement.

And Obama's "bitter" comments were not only dead on, but are long standing political theories about why certain groups vote based on a single issue rather than their own economic interest.

There's nothing controversial in that, heck there are books about it.It's being treated as some sort of personal insult, but it's not even a personal statement.

That's what they've got against Obama, all of it pretty much. It's nothing.

I'm really disheartned by what this election has come to. Especially now, reading this.

I blame Hillary for reducing it to this level, and there doesn't seem to be a way out of it anymore.

topazz:

I'm really disheartned by what this election has come to. Especially now, reading this.

I blame Hillary for reducing it to this level, and there doesn't seem to be a way out of it anymore.

<sigh> But getting disheartened is Hillary's point.

Not winning, not running the country. Not being president.

Just getting people disheartened. It's every small-minded power-broker's last ditch - take 'em down if you can.

The way OUT is to not get down... to believe in hope and to believe that Obama is the man to lead us out of the mess!

Go look at those "Obama in 30 seconds" ads at moveon.org - they will give your spirits a lift!

Obama '08

The stuff in Wright's sermons that really gets people the most worked up (the "chickens coming home to roost" bit) is essentially true and should be elementary common sense. You mistreat other countries, and eventually their people find a way to hit you back. The "bitter" comments as well - read in their full context, it's pretty hard to twist them into a shape that looks even remotely insulting. He was just speaking about truths that should be self-evident. But the distance between what should be and what is becomes quite a bit longer when people's cognitive defense mechanisms start kicking in; I have a feeling that this election may be decided more in the reptile brain than in the higher cortex, and if that happens then Obama may pay the price for honesty and forthrightness.

It's funny, isn't it, how often it's not the REAL truth but the tiny bit of truth - the 20 second spot rather than the 10 minute video -- the one word "bitter" rather than the understanding that he has of how and why Americans are worn out and worn down.

I've thought for a while now that his "new politics" is really about self-responsibility and that is much harder than just reaching "across the aisle" and compromising with the other person who also believes in scorched earth politics.

Trying to follow our better (that is, nobler) instincts is always the harder path; it is doubly so when someone else is actively trying to deter you from following that course of action.

deter is a nice euphemism for obliterate-you-and-your-family

that this election will ultimately be determined by the assholes. The ones crying loudest about Wright are the very ones who are most like him, themselves.

Look for the copy of Wright's full sermon. His "chickens coming home to roost" was a quote from a US ambassador.

I may use my mouth to speak the most elegant words I can muster, and to gather a crowd to hear what I have to say. But I find that a brief soliloquy from my asshole can undo all of that effort rather quickly.