Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Emotional
When I went to TPM election central yesterday and saw that there was a posted video titled something like "Hillary Responds to Media's Reaction to Her Emotional Moment," I thought it was a joke--that perhaps I had landed on the Onion website.
Later, on Facebook, my "news feed" or whateverthefuckitscalled alerted me that a Friend had very recently participated in some sort of Polling Application and responded to the question:
One thing that strikes me is that this season's "campaign" "coverage" has been more wantonly cruel and aggressively vacuous than ever. I guess that's not a surprise. Hillary has been abjectly abused, Obama has been celebrated via empty sensationalism, and Edwards has been irrationally and even obscenely ignored.
I'm probably being totally anachronistic by claiming anything superlative or even different about this coverage compared to '00 or '04. It's true I've taken a lengthy hiatus from following "politics" at all. But it also strikes me that I've been doing this blog for over 4 years now and I still have absolutely no insight into why what comes out of the mouths of Chris Matthews and Andrea Mitchell comes out of their mouths, or why the headlines appear in the newspapers in the manner they do.
Anyway, I noticed that a commenter on TPM who was complaining about the lack of Edwards coverage received a response (apparently from a TPM employee) to the effect that TPM had "covered" everything about Edwards that there was to cover.
Which says a lot. It doesn't mean that blogs like TPM don't spend most of their time covering "issues" or whatever. Perhaps it's understandable that in the primaries, the blogs can't really do anything but follow the horse-race and react directly to the media's exact, um, talking points. But it's still depressing.
And reading the frenzied, often irrational and even demented comments to posts on other sites (like Firedoglake) is just depressing. "Obama is a Republican in sheep's clothing" and so forth. Come on.
posted by Blicero : 1/08/2008 01:23:00 PM
Later, on Facebook, my "news feed" or whateverthefuckitscalled alerted me that a Friend had very recently participated in some sort of Polling Application and responded to the question:
Will Hillary's emotional moment
a) hurt her
b) help her
c) have no effect one way or the other
One thing that strikes me is that this season's "campaign" "coverage" has been more wantonly cruel and aggressively vacuous than ever. I guess that's not a surprise. Hillary has been abjectly abused, Obama has been celebrated via empty sensationalism, and Edwards has been irrationally and even obscenely ignored.
I'm probably being totally anachronistic by claiming anything superlative or even different about this coverage compared to '00 or '04. It's true I've taken a lengthy hiatus from following "politics" at all. But it also strikes me that I've been doing this blog for over 4 years now and I still have absolutely no insight into why what comes out of the mouths of Chris Matthews and Andrea Mitchell comes out of their mouths, or why the headlines appear in the newspapers in the manner they do.
Anyway, I noticed that a commenter on TPM who was complaining about the lack of Edwards coverage received a response (apparently from a TPM employee) to the effect that TPM had "covered" everything about Edwards that there was to cover.
Which says a lot. It doesn't mean that blogs like TPM don't spend most of their time covering "issues" or whatever. Perhaps it's understandable that in the primaries, the blogs can't really do anything but follow the horse-race and react directly to the media's exact, um, talking points. But it's still depressing.
And reading the frenzied, often irrational and even demented comments to posts on other sites (like Firedoglake) is just depressing. "Obama is a Republican in sheep's clothing" and so forth. Come on.
posted by Blicero : 1/08/2008 01:23:00 PM
