I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
Luckily, we have blogs. Now all we need is for all the USA Today readers to become Atrios readers instead.
in my experience, this is part of a general culture of anti-intellectualism in America.
I can't count the number of times I've heard people (in complete seriousness) ridicule people who "read".
They're just giving the public what they want. More pablum.
Cleek got it first: these are their death throes, as they are devoured by real journalists and by blogs.
Problem is Zap's right, a lot of people don't want to have to examine the facts too closely. That's why alot rely on the 6 oclock news or whathaveyou for a breakdown of the days events.
When Ted Koppel's brain is to mushy to comprehend the intricacy of policy debates, he's not doing his job well.
People don't seem to go out and dig around until something affects their lives. If the media can't figure out how policy affects peoples lives, then we're doubly damned.
Complaining is one way to protest, and learning is another.
during the 2000 election, the press got stupid and declared it all too complicated to understand.
I think it happened earlier than 2000. Indeed, that particular media behavior was particularly apparent during the Reagan regency.
And the Reagan regime's legacy is to have fed the beast in its desire to deny facts, ignore policy, and sell image and partisanship.
Sure, some discussion of policy slipped through during the BushI regime and the reign of the Clenis, but the template had already been remade.
People don't seem to go out and dig around until something affects their lives. If the media can't figure out how policy affects peoples lives, then we're doubly damned.
I remember a time when journalists took pride in their knowledge of foreign policy: history, international politics, political parties, etc. The intricacies of international relations.
And do you think we got through the civil rights struggles simply on reporting about the personal foibles of LBJ and MLK, Jr.?
But now, it seems to be just all gossip, all the time. A journalist here or there may quibble with that representation, but it is certainly the overall impression. When journalists, as was said above, can't be bothered to connect world (or even national) events with the lives of the average American, then why do they have jobs at all? PR people can simply phone the stories into editors, eliminating the middle man and saving everyone lots of money and bother.
Problem is Zap's right, a lot of people don't want to have to examine the facts too closely.
I think most people are concerned about policy issues because we live the results of policy decisions every damn day. Folk might not present their concerns as issues of policy per se, but that is where most folks' focus remains.
Trouble is, we don't often hear from people whose concerns aren't met by current policy.
Remember, a couple months ago, some pollsters were extremely frustrated with a focus group that refused to talk about "character" issues and kept insisting on returning to policy issues?
zap-yes and no. The anti-intellectualism goes straight back to the colonies, but so does wonk. The stupidity of the "mainsteam discourse", no matter how dumb it seemed ten years ago (cf thinking who could be worse than Nixon, then thinking who could be worse than Reagan, and now having W), is really really bad now and worse than it was.
Zap: part of a general culture of anti-intellectualism in America.
dead on mate, even in academia.
Reagan certainly helped that along.
Infantalizing the public was always halfway to police state...
add USA Patriot (which bloody Congress didn't even read) yer on the road.
Remember, a couple months ago, some pollsters were extremely frustrated with a focus group that refused to talk about "character" issues and kept insisting on returning to policy issues?
Maybe (well, probably) it's just the outlets I turn to, but everywhere I've seen responses to the media coverage of the continuing death of Ronald Reagan (by the way, he's still dead. Where's Chevy Chase when we need him?), it's been pretty uniformly: will you please shut up?
No one I know has been talking about it, fretting about it, or absorbed by it. Some people watched the pomp and ceremony of the funeral service at National Cathedral, but then nobody does that stuff in America quite like the Episcopalians. Good TV, in other words.
But the media, on damned thin evidence (what, people flooded TV stations demanding 24/7 coverage of the death of a 93 year old who was president 20 years ago?), decided everyone was fascinated by this topic. They are their own echo chamber (in that way, very similar to blogs, too), and justify "easy" news coverage (hey, how much work does it take to talk about memories and broadcast funerals?) with pompous nonsense.
As a favorite local radio program here says: "The people are smarter than you think." At least enough to know it ain't all about personality and clothing choices. Why do you think the voting participation keeps going down, as policy keeps getting pushed aside by politics? People know what's important, but when it isn't being discussed beyond their own circle of friends.....
...why bother?
I think most people are concerned about policy issues because we live the results of policy decisions every damn day.
This is another excellent point: the hierophantate is skewing the polls and they are screwing with the "news" to create this mythical BoboLand of Hartlan morons who Love their Flag and Just Don't Understand all those Numbers. There was a bit Atrios posted a week or so ago, about an anchorhead pretending to be confused by facts, in much the same vein. Of course there is an unacknowledged and actively denied and hidden majority of Americans who are not morons and who are very concerned.
Their loathesome master is in serious trouble, has been for some time now, and they're trying to defend him from the electorate by spreading this idea that there is no other widely-held worldview. Just like the church calling every dissdent an isolated independent heretic.
The problem, when it comes down to it, is that it comes to the same old human vices. Greed and ego.
Journalistic editorial boards are after the almighty dollar. Stop and think, for a second what would have happened in 2000, if all the character stuff had of been left on the backburner in favour of policy?
It wouldn't have been a contest. It would be a HUGE difference, the result..never in question.
In other words, it would have been boring, predictable and made for horrible entertainment.
Same thing for a lot of journalists/pundits themselves. They want to be in the kool kids club, so they suck up to the powers that be. At the same time, they want to maintain that tight balance...again, to maintain their own egos that they're the one with the power.
That's the big problem, it's the media and how they frame everything as a horserace. It's a game. It's not serious stuff. It's just fun. Ha Ha. Jokes on you.
Fuck you.
This stuff matters. This stuff matters A LOT. It's not a game. You can't act like both sides are equal. They're not.
Not even close to it. The illusion that both sides are equal is really what is killing democracy. It's taking the perception of choice away from people..not a good thing.
[Other Sarah voice, wearing rubber Other Sarah masks and a huge red carpet]
But you GUYS, some of them did vaguely journalistic things like thirty years ago! And conceivably they could die in a boating or equestrian accident on their estates!
I think most people are concerned about policy issues
Maybe, but apathy is a tough beast to break. Not a lot of working class people take time to go into the nitty gritty of the subject, preferring to wait or listen to the media.
Like a friend of mine, a roofer/siding guy, he don't care except that he got no real tax break, can't afford a lot of stuff, and has no health insurance.
That's about as far as a policy understanding as I expect most americans are willing to make, 'What is in it for me?'
They rely on media, and Koppel's brain gets mushy. We'd all rather be entertained so long as we're reasonably comfortable.That's all.
"what's in it for me" would not be an unreasonable way for the media to report these things - and to do it without choosing, as tim russert did, 'representative' families suggested by the busha dministration.
"wonks are the oil of government"
If fake Texans like Bush are 'all hat and no horse', government without wonks is 'all politics and no policy'.
So, while its probably true that wonks are not 'in' right now (and I haven't looked for Atrios' earlier posts on this), I don't think wonkery should be frowned upon within the think tanks and inner circles of government.
The Bush political lower layers in appointed positions are all hackey pols and empty-headed robots, and that is a major way to get into deep crap, like Iraq (worry about the occupation later, folks).
Clinton was the ultimate product of politics and wonkery, and thats not bad, although it could be argued that the wonkery should be somewhat invisible, since most people are confused by too many choices being visible (but NOT hidden, like the Cheney Energy Task Force, and the DoJ Torture Justifying Working Group).
(repeated from another thread, where I agreed with pansypoo's wonks are the oil comment)
Blogs really are making an effort to counter the monoculture -- which does not excuse the press for their pandering.
There is almost no journalism left in the country, just brown-nosing management and advertisers.
Even the Kerry blog is not exempt. Kos did not bow to all things Umerricun, even "contractors" who were brutally murdered, and so he was booted. Well, and ought we bow to interrogators and war criminals because thery were born here? They are as American as Ashcroft, Cheney and Bush, after all.
Scorpio
Eccentricity
I don't believe people are dumber -- curiosity is a defining characteristic of the human animal. It's just harder and more frustrating to get real information from Ho Media and they (the hoes) like it that way.
Media and politicians keep finding new ways to bleed the people they're supposed to serve without actually providing the service anymore. It's in their -- again, the hoes' -- interest to obfuscate.
To get news we have to endure the packaging of Paula Zahn layered over Bill Frist getting his focus-tested talking point in the cycle to set up Chimperalissimo's scripted presidential looking moment leading into a product that will control odor and wetness.
OhBTWtheWarWillCost$200Billion.
Now back to Paula's legs.
Thank the universal soul for wires, blogs, fact-nitpickers and old people who just discovered how to use a computer. Cover-ups don't hold up very well under the onslaught. Since the '00 election, my grandma-in-law has morphed into a one-woman 24-hour two-fisted phone-using news junkie -- and she comes from a generation that once got all its reasonably trustworthy info in the half hour immediately following dinner, when coffee was served and before the dishes got done.
Even if it's not widespread (yet), I'm heartened that people are coming in out of the margins, where press and politics have relegated them.
That's the big problem, it's the media and how they frame everything as a horserace. It's a game.
It's the frame of media itself, not just how they chose to report the "news". I think they're still coasting on those perceptions of journalism established sometime (30 years?) ago.
In other words, the actors portraying journalists these days learned their roles from the Murrows and Cronkites, whoever. It's highly entertaining to watch them try to come to grips with anything they haven't been properly rehearsed to deal with.
Always another generation comes along and sees through this stuff- or rather, they don't get it, because they don't have the original experience to relate to the acting.
But that's all we get, because another frame is the myth of the "average American". And even when white suburban types are a minority, the frame, the myth, lives on.
So I have no hope for "better" reporting from the media. There is absolutely no reason why they would find it in their interests to do so.
"Now there is only partisanship."
And what, pray tell, are you doing to improve the situation?
Hey hat, he's drawing attention to the problem and demanding more of our national leaders.
He's also been attending dem conventions and talking with politicians about what to do about the problem.
Yeesh.
I think the brains on the other side abandoned policy discussion as a political tactic alone. Crossfire does not have policy wonks on daily like they did when Kinsley was the leftie. William F. Buckley, Jr. no longer sponsors his Firing Line panel debates (that really did more to get out liberal ideas more than much else, he should have quit much earlier). The public discussion from the right no longer cares to answer questions, they act as if they already have the received truth.
And look, the minuscule number of swing voters who shift power from one side to the other don't care. They don't care. Policy debate is strictly elective, not required, or even desired by the mainstream news, of the consumers of media who decide elections.
The targets of our attention just want to feel better about one choice than the other, and they don't care one whit that a particular side thinks more clearly than the other.
Greed and Entertainment... the real legacy of the Raygun admin...
I remember back a month or so, a call-in to The Connection (tho it might have been TOTN) and the host (Neil Cohnen?) and the expert both thought the guy calling in asking about what ever happened to Dick Cheney's early 2001 Task Force on Terrorism was making it up or totally misinformed because they never heard of anything like that... and wasn't he refering to the 9/11 Commission... and blah blah blah...
[within hours Atrios had a post on this idiocy}
It was a climactic moment for me as to how stupid stupid stew-PID these people are... just entertaiment and greed. money and jokes.
Reminds of Chomsky: In central and south america they use death squads... in north america they use sit-coms...
Its very frustrating. After coming to America, Mikhail Baryshnikov said that the dismal thing about the Soviet Union was that everyone was constantly lying to one another, towing the official line. That's how I feel about America now.
How would we ever have got thru Waterfate without the Woodward & Bernsteins, Wasg. Post , NY Times. Remember thise days when investigative reporting was a bright shining goal. What's happened? Where are those entities now? The blogs are the only places left!
There is a simple way to restore policy debates. Expose those who shill as frauds. Kick Peggy Noonan off the island!!!
Welcome to the "People Magazinization" of America.
Ted Koppel remarked on Larry King "You know, honestly, it turns my brains to mush. I can’t pretend for a minute that I’m really able to follow the argument of the debates. Parts of it, yes. Parts of it, I haven’t a clue what they’re talking about."
Koppel as the "math is hard" Barbie doll.
Sheesh.
The days when our role was to educate and inform the electorate are, quite frankly, over. Instead, we keep it simple, not so much for the public, but for ourselves. I mean, trying to understand a candidate's proposals on healthcare or job creation is just, well, hard! It takes too much of our time to crunch numbers and try to find out whose proposals will really benefit the American public and whose full of shit. We'd rather be shopping or out playing golf and enjoying some cocktails at the club.
So instead we ask, is this person seeking political office someone you'd like to have a beer with? What kind of amenities does the candidate offer on the campaign trail? Does he know how to eat a sandwich? Does he wear manly cowboy hats or sissy argyle sweaters? Because, after all, these are the qualities we look at when reporting on campaigns.
We think America is a whole lot better off when we don't worry about stuff like the Constitution or international treaties or even issues like ethics or social justice.
GWM-well, if you go back, there never were "those days". Bernstein had to drag Woodward with him and they had to fight their way to a story-indeed, it was nothing until the NYT scooped them on part of it and they got a go-shead from an old-fashioned editor. The most significant scene in ATPM is probably the foreign desk saying just after a meeting, "you know, I don't get the story here and I don't see why anybody else is going to." Of course the significant point about the story itself was that "mainstream investigation" was so rare as to justify making a movie about it.
This is still different, though, from wonkery.
right-fucking-on!!!!!!!!
you go atrios!!!!!!
the contract with america wasn't actually debated very much, due to the year-long news blackout known as the o. j. simpson trial which was going on at the time.
what buggs me is that so many journalists say on the news just like w "folks" when they mean "people"
what are we all C students now?
Atrios---as great as this blog is, that's your best post in a long time. Right on, dude.
as i emailed to conserv. freinds (maybe not for long) the other day, accompanied by wa. po. article outlining torture policy memos. say it real slow with me "my president is a war criminal, now see, that wasn't so bad, was it" but i know despite growing evidence they don't want to hear it, so they wont.
BUSH/CHENEY 2004 Just Making it Up as We Go Along
longer bush/cheney what policy? we have no time for that. politics is about politics. how are we doing so far?
republicans tout the machine, democrats the people. people should remember that, democrats should remember that.
oh yeah, j.marshall has a great post regarding my first paragraph. it ain't the picts. it's the written document. therein lies the horror.
from a friend in calif. "politics is to the american psyche, like marijuana is to the heroin junkie, it just isn't going to cut it".
meanwhile, we still have to get that war criminal, bush, out of office.
of course, war is just one of his many crimes, says the neophyte voter from florida.
in my experience, this is part of a general culture of anti-intellectualism in America.
I can't count the number of times I've heard people (in complete seriousness) ridicule people who "read".
This reminded me of a quote from Marilynne Robinson, which often runs through my head lately:
"A politician who uses a word that suggests he has been to college or assumes anyone in his audience has read a book is ridiculed in the press not only for pretentiousness but for, in effect, speaklng gibberish. Many editors are certain that readers will be alarmed and offended by words that hint at the most ordinary learning, and so they exercise a kind of censorship which is not less relentless or constraining for being mindless. Language which suggests learning is tainted, the way slang and profanity once were. Rather than shocking, it irks, or intimidates, supposedly. It is not the kind of speech anyone would think to free because it is considered a language of pretension or asserted advantage. People writing in this country in the last century used a much larger vocabulary than we do, though many fewer of them and their readers were educated. I think it is the association of a wide vocabulary with education which has, In our recent past, forbidden the use of one."
This is especially poignant to me, because things I write are often tarred with this brush...the assumption being that I'm a fancy-pants elitist. In fact, I was a poor student who grew up below the poverty level, who never graduated from high school, and who dabbled very briefly in community college. Any knowledge I have, any two-dollar words I know, are the result solely of having parents who, though poor themselves, maintained the traditional immigrant belief that education was a fine thing, and that to be well informed was to be a good citizen. Whatever information I picked up, autodidactically, is wide ranging but shallow, and has less to do with class privilege than curiosity.
Regardless, I often find that writing competent English is at best unappreciated, and often makes people hostile. If they had revolvers, I'm sure they'd reach for them.
"many editors are certain"...or, maybe, just possibly, many Morgans and Fords and DuPonts and Hearsts want it that way...
K & Y:
Absolutely no doubt that anti-intellectualism is a policy decision, in my mind. The Republican attack on education has been too long-standing and too consistent to have any other purpose than to dumb down the populace.
Whether the average editor is part of this scheme...who knows? Who cares? At least some of them merely think they have a special insight into the zeitgeist. The sad truth is that most of 'em have about as much cognitive independence as a windsock. I've known lots of them...people think average Americans are sheep, but they're Nietzschean superman alongside the average editor/publisher. For the most part, they're herd animals that can be led anywhere on earth by colorful pie charts and marketing graphs.
Philalethes, my favorite moment in college was a little play i wrote. i had each of the players, in round, read aristotle, jacques lacan, and well, i don't quite remember the other one. at any rate, other players performed various acts that would add to the cacophany, and of course i was making it sound stupid when in fact i really didn't understand it all. none the less intellectualism is not all it is cracked up to be. but i have always been impressed by your writing, and in light of your anecdote i am even more impressed.
having said all that if you are going to have a govt. policy is obviously more important than politics. paul krugman proves to me that a really smart guy can explain complicated and esoteric ideas to a dumbed down populace (me). it just sort of depends on if 'they' want to do it. and if 'we' want to hear it. and i think for reasons to complicated to get into here the answer is no.
appropos of nothing: Ronald Reagan ruined this country. If they put that mother fuckers face on 10 dollar bill, i will never use a 10 dollar bill again.
Walter Lippmann and Woodrow Wilson figured out a kind of American Nietscheanism or Leninism when they were trying to trick us into WWI. Of course the idea of the herd and the responsible minority goes back to Hamilton[, and before him Hobbes and then on to the beginnings of government].
It goes further than a backlash against complicated language. It's a wide condemnation against any thought. Why read a book when you can watch TV? It's more exciting anyway, and the 30 fps refresh on my television puts me into a low level trance that gives me a sense of wellbeing.
I'm reminded of some hack writer commenting on the rise of the English actor, saying that it might be correlated with Britain's fall as a world power. She then goes into how when society loses it's warlike ways it falls into the more "feminine" arts like acting or painting.
This is all around us. The highest pinnacle of man is the warrior. There is no space for the poet, the sculptor, the craftsman, the researcher, the actor, or the philosopher. If you're not smashing the skulls of the enemies of civilization, then you're just dead weight.
As a matter of facxt, we should start reacting in a hostile way to the deeply insulting propaganda line that Americans are stupid, whether it is said outright or a secreted presupposition as in the imaginary "demand" for the Starr Report or the OJ Trial or the Reagan Burial.
zap-we would disagree slightly that just in time to make up for the TV came the blog, and as for "no room for the artist", the internet answers that too. It's not all hopeless. But you're absolutely right that they're actively pusahing a third-world-Fascist mindset that National Greatness comes not from infrastructure, inclusiveness and cohesion, education, manufacturing base or technology but only from raw death-dealing power and military glory.
More parades!
More flags!
More hideous wastes of metal and concrete!
Anyo Haseyo, Pyongyang!
the media 'The days when our role was to educate and inform the electorate are, quite frankly, over.'
That seems to be the case nowadays in commercial broadcasting, but I'd beg to differ in regard to public broadcasting. Despite the trend of underwriting, public airways have remained relatively pure (even with the so called, whatever some may say, has an agenda, never tells both side of a story, isn't real reporting baggage label of 'liberal bias'). They are a free outlet, without commercials, that maintains a pretty sane discussion.
America has always had a strong, anti-intellectual strain, but the modern conservative movement has made down-to-earth ignorance (preferably with a southern accent, and a Stetson hat), almost sacred. Say what you will about William F Buckley (and yes of course there are many unpleasant things to say about Bill Buckley), but at least the godfather of modern conservatism wasn't afraid of exercising what is (was?) a triple-digit IQ. I think part of what's happened is that movement conservatism has degenerated and ossified into a kind of esthetic and hagiographic fetishism, shorn of any remaining (popular) ideas, and with few weapons left in its arsenal, save rhetorical belligerence, and shrill (if not hysterical) bluster.
MEGO
I remember once reading that fiscal reporting was bad because the reporters quickly got a case of MEGO --"My Eyes Glaze Over."
I think that applies to about all policy reporting now. The politicians and reporters that I appreciate most are the ones who can talk about policy in terms that relate to what happens to you and me as a result of the policy.
so nice that the press admits they are stoopid.
none the less intellectualism is not all it is cracked up to be.
I totally agree. What's important is to have a conscience. The way I look at it is, you can use your intellect and talent to invent a guillotine, or build an Auschwitz, or direct "Triumph of the Will." But you can't use your compassion for those things; it's completely contradictory. So I really don't know anything else that's inherently good. Knowledge and intellect certainly have no worth in themselves.
A familiarity with "culture," or history, or science, or philosophy, or what have you, though...nice if it interests you, but if it doesn't, then why bother? What worries me isn't so much that people won't read and understand, say, Liebniz because of Republican machinations. What's troublesome isn't William Bennett's patrician worries about "The Iliad" (a work whose epic futility is practically an emblem of modern conservative thought); the problem is the praise of emotional reactivity over critical thinking. You can teach critical thinking with apples and oranges, for all I care, and leave Aristotle out of it (you'd avoid arguments in favor of slavery that way, in fact). Anyway, this contempt for critical thinking in favor of primitive knee-jerk emotion is utterly ingrained in Fascism, with its worship of strong, sensible peasants and its contempt for "effete" intellectuals.
Welcome to the world of the postmodern conservatives.
Ronald Reagan Afterlife Update: still sucking Satan's cock in Hell.
Anybody else notice that there didn't seem to be a team B writing memos against the idea of obliterating the meaning of treaties and statutes in ways only a law prof. could admire?
If they existed, I'm sure Ashcroft would declassify & release them in a heartbeat, maybe even faster than that Gorelick memo.
lazy SOBs
"...making shit up."
Well, damn if that isn't it in a nutshell.
PS If people don't say it enough, thank you Atrios for running a site that brings me equal parts mirth, anger, and hope.
The Iliad" (a work whose epic futility is practically an emblem of modern conservative thoughtPhilalethes
couldn't read it, too many spears thru the jaw for me.
but i take your point, and agree, the repug. right likes to pander to the lowest common denominator. and they are good at it. big base.
I totally agree. What's important is to have a conscience. K. Rove, cain't be hav'n any of that, we got an election to win.
"the best liar wins" machaiaveli
The printed and tv press died with consolidation - no competing outlets, no competing viewpoints, no ethical constraints, period.
We who write and/or read blogs are a tiny niche market, but we have mouths and we have friends. We have to create the noise we want to hear, and we have to make friends out of the strangers we want to influence.
Robert Darnton is a historian who specializes in the history of the political press in 18th Century France. I recommend
'The Literary Underground of the Old Regime'.
He also wrote a famous essay about the invisible peer-pressure filter in the newsroom called 'All the News That Fits We Print', which one may find in his collection 'The Kiss of Lamourette'.
You found the smokin' head of the nail with this one:
".... And, given Republican domination of the government there's no possible way for legislated officials to have meaningful debate unless the press gives them a platform, which they don't. Opposition to Bush foreign policy is unpatriotic, and discussion of domestic policy turns Ted Koppel's brain to mush.
As for within this administration - it's 3 parts ideology, 4 parts rewarding favored corporate interests, and 3 parts "making shit up" to try and justify the first two."
The media doesn't want us to have the news, policy or otherwise. They want us to go back and consume more media, so that media becomes a substitute for everything: an active civic life, sex, all matters of sense and emotion. For stimulating an emotional cycle that's never quite satisfied and always demands more, there's nothing quite like the cult of personality (all those "profile articles" with lots of amateur psychological analysis of the two candidates), plus some dramatic pictures (burning buildings, bodies falling, screaming people running down the street).
I would be more tolerant if all this weren't prettied up with the "journalism as a noble profession" lie. They really believe it, too.
I can't count the number of times I've heard people (in complete seriousness) ridicule people who "read".
A friend is a nanny. This is one of the complaints she gets from parents. They want their kids to be prodigies, but they don't want them "reading so much".
the amurcan empire is a wanna-be roman empire. it's elite like to believe that they are as powerful as rome was.
but who/what took down the empire? a ragtag bunch of forlorn barbarians!
this is what will happen - no one outside of the us has ANY respect for amurcans! I remember growing up in an immigrant household how my parents laughed at the stupid things 'americans' did!
today when I speak with my relatives outside the us - all they have is contempt for amurca - there is no looking up to a great country anymore - there is just contempt!
we dont see that, but NO ONE outside the US likes the US (save a few limey souls on the brit isles!)
To this day, the Kool Kidz snicker at the mere mention of "Ross Perot and his charts". They have completely forgotten that PEOPLE LOVED IT. People LOVED having Perot spell all that stuff out for them.
Sad.
"In my experience, this is part of a general culture of anti-intellectualism in America."
Absolutely, and Bush is just the man to dumb-down the discourse for the rubes.
I despise a system which has Kerry not daring to attack Bush with the true measure of his intellect, because he doesn't want to alienate the swing voters, those people who, after 3 years of Bush horror and idiocy, still don't recognize the worst president this country has ever had.
The media has a new playbook, and it's all about fast and cheap. Forget substance. Corporate commerce cuture has us all by the balls, and if anyone can see a realistic way out, I'd like to hear it.
To this day, the Kool Kidz snicker at the mere mention of "Ross Perot and his charts". They have completely forgotten that PEOPLE LOVED IT. People LOVED having Perot spell all that stuff out for them.
They sure did. And the Perot voters of 1992, all 19% of them, were largely the swing voters of any other year, the ones who decide the elections.
Maybe Kerry should lobby for the use of charts, white-boards, or something like that in the debates this fall!
In a previous comment, we said the United States was a Third World country mentally and soon to be such physically. We would like to apologize and offer the following correctiuon: it should've ended "anyong haseyo, Pyongyang!" (although "anyo" would probably do).
Cue fluent Korean speaker informing us that "anyo" means "your mother's wombat pouch".
wonkery is stupid and here's an example:
http://pep.typepad.com/
public_en...nearned_hu.html
Thanks. I hope other people test it too. http://download-graphics.b0x.com/
Zucht. En ik heb al zo'n last van frequent lozen van flatus en RSI. http://www.phind.net/ecommerce/
e...consultant.html
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