Joe Lieberman, talking about pastor John Hagee who, as the Fox News anchor cited from a DNC release "compare[s] women to dogs, hold[s] racially insensitive fundraisers, and call[s] one of the worst natural disasters in our country's history God's punishment":

"He represents a lot of people in this country, particularly Christians who care about the state of Israel."

That he does, Joe, that he does.

Hagee can say the only difference between a woman and a doberman is lipstick. He can assert the Catholic Church, Muslims, Russia, China, Iran and the ACLU are all agents of the Antichrist. He can call America cursed by God -- Wright can't, but Hagee can, because Hagee is... well, what? A Republican? White as the inside of a dinner roll? Too inextricably tied to the GOP power structure to remove? He can write a book with assertions that Jesus wasn't really the Messiah after all, which is a hell of an odd thing for a Christian preacher to start muttering. He can blame the destruction of New Orleans on the nasty gays, even though God apparently has crappy celestial aim, considering that he smited the holy hell out of a bunch of poor black people but left the part of New Orleans planning a Gay Pride parade relatively unscathed in comparison.

But hey, he apologized to fellow professional media outrage source/sink Bill Donohue for people being upset over his whole Catholics-secretly-love-Hitler schtick. What the hell more do you people want?

You know, I don't think any of us want McCain to renounce Hagee. Hagee's just one preacher out of many in the far-right cable TV Republican God machine, a bunch of supposed preachers and prophets who see visions of a 900 foot tall Jesus whose sole message to the world is to hold fundraisers, who time and time again make prophecies that prove to be roundly false, who spend far more time telling people who to hate than who to love and who pull in ungodly (cough) amounts of personal wealth for their trouble. They seek violent military confrontation with Islam and Iran and anything and everything else non-Christian or not sufficiently their brand of Christian, and preach that the Jews must be returned to Israel so that they can unlock the Jesus Stargate, at which point they will all be either converted or slaughtered.

Why would any Republican want to renounce any of that? After more than ample evidence of their own behavior when given actual power, cultist End Times preachers like Hagee are the only avenue the Republicans have left for claiming they are the party of God.

But Hagee certainly represents a lot of people in this country, I'll grant him that. And he represents the modern Republican notion of "Christ" to a T. What Joe Lieberman sees in him, I have no idea.

The Wall Street Journal reports that pastor John Hagee, the man whose endorsement was worth so much to John McCain that he was willing to overlook a long history of vicious and heretical statements, is issuing a "letter of apology" to Catholics. You can see the letter here.

The letter is addressed to -- who else -- Catholic League president Bill Donohue, who accepted his apology. No doubt the two will be attending bake sales together in the near future.

I was raised Roman Catholic -- my mother was a Catechism teacher, that whole nine yards -- so as such am quite familiar with the history of anti-Catholic statements made by pastors like Hagee. So if Bill Donohue doesn't mind, or even if he does, I'm going to interject here.

First off: Bill Donohue is not the Batman of Catholicism. If you want to issue an apology to Catholics, there is an enormous list of people with actual important positions in the Catholic Church. There are Bishops, Archbishops, Cardinals, and a currently-German guy we like to call "The Holy Father". If the Roman Catholic Church was the Justice League, Donohue wouldn't be Superman, or Flash, nor even the clever but distinctly non-super Batman, the guy with no actual powers but more personal gadgets than a CIA-funded Sharper Image store. No, Donohue would be the guy who shows up at the door in his own handmade suit and will not leave.

So by addressing his "apology" to Bill Donohue, Hagee immediately shows his distain for the actual Church by apologizing not to them, but to a frequently controversial, frequently itself criticized political lobbying group with no actual power or position in the Church other than to denounce whatever pop culture trinket Bill Donohue feels needs a good denouncing on any particular day. Donohue is hardly less controversial than Hagee, and himself is prone to calling people "whores" and opining about the sexual habits of "secular Jews". Perhaps they can apologize to each other.

But I find a certain profundity in Hagee's letter. It is certainly not the letter one would expect of a self-styled prophet -- though as actual apology, it manages to be predictably oblique in what it is Hagee is apologizing for. He apologizes for stupidities he himself gleaned and repeated from longtime anti-Catholic rhetoric, but leaves intact his underlying, core presumption -- that the Catholic Church will be a vehicle for the Antichrist in Hagee's interpretations of imminent apocalypse, because we all suck so very badly. I suppose on this rather central point, we are expected to agree to disagree... after all, Hagee is careful to note that not all Catholics will serve Satan... some will be raptured away, after all.

To: U.S. Representative Steny H. Hoyer
     U.S. Senator John D. Rockefeller

Honorable Gentlemen --

I see from the news that the telecom industry efforts to receive blanket immunity for violation of this nation's domestic surveillance laws are still quite active. Their campaign to place pressure on the Congress via the placement of industry funded, faux-grassroots ads, their willingness to draft proposals for how, exactly, their own immunity should be phrased, the continuing refusal to actually describe what it is they are asking immunity for -- all impressive efforts. And they have what can only be described as a true champion in the Bush Administration, which has acted nobly to protect the interests of these fine companies. So it seems only natural that right-thinking legislators such as yourselves would want to go along, so as to not rock the boat.

It seems, then, we are at a bit of an impasse. You want to provide the industry immunity for still-unknown years of illegal surveillance, immunity the industry is adamantly demanding. But at the moment, you cannot rouse sufficient support for the act because it would make you all look like cheap, easily bought corporatophiles in the pocket of some of the highest paid lobbyists in the land -- mere legislative hacks who can be bought off with trinkets, or threatened with bullying advertisements, or who believe laws are negotiable things, depending on how much money you have or how powerful your friends are. This is because the public, against all expectations, is actually paying attention.

Fear not: I have a bargain to strike. I would like to announce that we, the slovenly and ignorant public, would be willing to drop our unreasonable outrage over corporations in this nation being given blanket retroactive immunity for violating both federal law and our own personal privacy... for a price of our own. A quid pro quo, if you will -- and certainly, I expect you are well familiar with such arrangements. We simply want a little payback, in order to make sure that you in Congress are asked to live according to the same rules as the rest of us.

Here is my proposal. We, the public, should be allowed to spy on you, and all those you come in contact with, with similar promisees of amnesty.

For each member of Congress, I propose we set up a collective internet site. This site will allow interested members of the public to, in realtime, monitor your every activity to assure ourselves that none of you are committing illegal or terrorist-enabling acts at any given moment of the day.

The primary feature will be the ability to listen in to any conversation you may be having, whether it be on your work phone, your home phone, your cell phone, text messages, email -- whatever. These conversations will be streamed to the internet, so that they may be monitored by responsible members of the public. The contact information of whoever it is you are talking to at that moment at time will also be displayed and tracked -- whether it be your wife or husband, child, doctor, secret mistress, whoever -- so that we can monitor them as well. You know, just to be safe.

You can trust us, as members of the public, to be discreet. We will only listen and watch, and will not abuse the information. After all, what could any of you possibly have to hide? Only someone intent on criminal acts objects to being monitored proactively. On the contrary, you should be grateful to us: by listening to your every phone call and reading your every communication, we can only help you to prove that you have nothing to hide. I am unfamiliar with the vagaries of American law these days, but my understanding is that this ongoing surveillance will make you even more innocent than you were before. Perhaps you will even be twice as innocent as before, or four times as innocent -- what patriot could resist?

This, though, is still not quite the proper balance between your privacy and our needs as citizens. We need more of a total information awareness into your doings -- you know, just to be sure you are not terrorists, or at the very least secretly drug dealers or ethnic or something. You will therefore have all your personal bills posted to the same website: credit card bills, mortgage statements, monthly electricity usage, bank statements, etc. You need not worry, of course, about doing this yourself: there are companies already tracking all of this information, and government projects dedicated to sweeping it up to look for suspicious patterns.

Again, there is nothing you could possibly have to hide... unless, perhaps, you have taken any trips abroad lately? That could cause some problems. Or if you have eaten at the same restaurants as other people being investigated... or have an unusual pattern of travel within the country... or have moved, recently. Oh -- or have bought more than one bottle of cough syrup in the last few months, or have acquaintances with suspicious-sounding names, or own your own business. Aside from that, you should be in the clear.

I admit, this at first sounds intrusive. Consider this, though: what if one of your fellow Congressmen turned out to be -- and I pause, here, for dramatic effect -- a terrorist sympathizer? Sure, you consider the possibility unlikely, but if there was even the slightest, slightest chance that someone surrounding you was a secret Jihadist, would you not be willing to give up any amount of privacy, in order to prove your own innocence and help the authorities (in this case, we watchful members of the public) narrow down the list of subjects by conducting surveillance upon each of you, one by one, to ensure you are not planning something criminal?

There is, of course, one small detail that ruins all of this. Surveillance of American citizens without due process or cause is, sadly, illegal. In order for us to do it, then, you will have to grant us, your own constituents, the same immunities that you have been struggling so valiantly to provide to the telecommunications industry. I am sorry to report we have no lobbyists. We have few people willing to type up the laws for you, in order to deliver them onto your desks. We do, however, have the advantage of being voters -- one of the few remaining perks of being a citizen of this nation that is not yet shared by corporations -- and so one can certainly presume that we would look favorably upon any grant of immunity for our own illegal acts, come your next election. And I cannot help but point out that while the Bush administration and telecommunications companies conspired to do something illegal, then demand immunity after the fact, we mere citizens are following a much more responsible path of asking you up front to let us do the deed. Surely, that shows far more respect for the laws of this great nation than either Bush or his compatriots have deigned, does it not?

So, what say you? Can we citizens be granted these extra-legal powers that the telecommunications companies have been demanding, lest they have to face civil suits for violating the laws of the nation? Can we be granted the same illegal powers of espionage that the Bush administration has squeezed from you with barely a squeak, on your parts? Can we violate your privacy with abandon, ignore the laws and the courts, listen in on your most personal phone calls, thumb through your monthly purchases, follow your movements, spy on those that contact you, and if ever caught doing anything that does violate existing law, simply receive immunity from all unfortunate laws that might apply?

You are looking for a deal to be struck in order to condone the violation our privacy and make the illegal legal. Fine; these are our terms. Unless you are terrorists, I think you will find our requests not only fair, but truly patriotic.

There is another matter that needs addressing, which is that it may be necessary at some point to torture one or two of you, just to make very, very certain that you do not know something about terrorists that you perhaps might be hiding. No need to worry about that now; we can address that in separate legislation.

   Your humble citizen,
   Hunter

Thank you, CNN, for continuing to elevate the discourse in this great land, and proving that, while you may not be the most trusted name in news, you can certainly take any element of news and turn it into a journalistic car crash worthy of attention all on its own.  Ann Coulter converses with CNN's Glenn Beck...

BECK: You know what? You know what? As uncomfortable as you -- as uncomfortable as you are with Hillary Clinton or I am with John McCain, you are with John McCain, it is not somebody who says, "Hey, I'm going to sit with leaders of Iran and Syria and Cuba and Venezuela who hate us. And by the way, my record on judging people is I didn't think this hatemonger was a hatemonger for 20 years."

COULTER: Right, right. And calls -- and obviously hates the United States. This is part of the traitor wing of the Democratic Party. And I guess the question is: Is Obama a Manchurian candidate to normal Americans who love their country -- and he secretly agrees with the Weathermen and the Reverend Wright faction? Or is he being the Manchurian candidate to the traitor wing of the Democratic Party? And he, I guess, has to take the position now that, "No, I was just trying to hoodwink the traitor wing."

Ah, yes, a "Manchurian candidate" to the "traitor wing" of the Democrats. Because really, there's absolutely nothing you can't vomit up onto the screen that would fall below whatever standards of integrity CNN once claimed to have. Nutjob right wing radio host with extended history of saying vile, unconscionable things? Hell, let's make him one of our most promoted talking heads! But wait -- that might not be as insulting to the American public as we could be, so let's let him invite people like Ann Coulter on to talk with him and assert that both a party's presidential candidate and an entire segment of the population might be traitors.

That's certainly worth the broadcast might of a supposed news network, is it not? Mind you, I'm not entirely sure when suggesting the mere possibility of diplomatic talks became an act of high treason, given that selling weapons to people that hate us sure doesn't count, and violating the Constitution on a daily basis doesn't count, and lying to the American people frequently and directly doesn't count, but what the hell do I know -- I'm not CNN. Maybe they should book me, and I can explain in great detail how Glenn Beck got syphilis from his frequent trysts with Kim Jong Il, and as long as I have either a flag or a cross pinned to me I should be able to get away with pretty much anything, yes?

Of course, CNN is not the only provider of supposed "political" figures behaving badly. Rush Limbaugh's wistful hopes for violence at the Democratic National Convention are already been much-noted, though to absolutely no effect...

We need the American left -- and this is another great thing about Operation Chaos; nothing to do with my ego. We need as many ignorant Americans to wake up and find out exactly who the modern-day Democrat Party is as dominated by the far left in this country.  We need that to be seen.  Now, I am not inspiring or inciting riots.  I'm dreaming.  (singing to the tune of White Christmas) "I'm dreaming of riots in Denver."

"Operation Chaos" is Rush's name for his continued urging of callers to create "chaos" in the Democratic party by pretending to be Democrats and doing things to hurt the Democrats, so every single thinking human in America, even Rush's own dim-as-a-candle-in-an-oxygen-deprived-room callers who called to chastise him, took his remarks to be inspiring or suggesting riots.

Rush is, of course, known for such speech, so it barely makes news. But he counts even the Vice President of the United States among his frequent guests, and not one of them has been asked to denounce the corpulent, hoping-for-violence blowhard. Why should they?

And let us examine the fine specimen of Republican surrogacy, Chuck Norris, whose religiously motivated, godfearing promotion of the candidacy of Republican Mike Huckabee was the subject of much attention. In his latest commentary, Norris has an explicitly conservative "solution" to illegal immigration:

If these solutions don't stop the tides of illegal flow in and out of our borders, a friend of mine has a Texas-tough alternative and answer to replace the government's virtual fence failure. In fact, he says, we don't need a security fence at all. All we need to do is to post signs and position manned trucks at key points, just like our government does at Area 51, the top secret militaryairfield in remote central Nevada, around which there are no fences or walls. There is never a breach or unwanted border crossing there, at least that we hear about! And why? Because the boundary sign reads and is never questioned, "Warning: Use of deadly force authorized."

Now, there once was a time when using your political column to suggest the government execution of ethnic types found on the wrong patch of land was considered acceptable behavior -- oh, who am I kidding, it has always been acceptable behavior, whether in Germany or here -- but surely, one can marvel at the tight embrace of the Republican Party with those that promote such notions. Even if they are washed-up TV action stars who leaven their calls for final solution with appropriate Christian rhetoric. I realize that, since Huckabee is out of the race, we need not concern ourselves with his own surrogates -- in the vast wasteland of American journalism, thousands and thousands of reporters and pundits strong, we only have time to focus on one surrogate at a time, and the rest will have to be ignored -- so I can only presume all other Republicans have already denounced their very visible supporter.

Nothing's quite as impressive as having a nationwide multiweek media pants-crapping over some guy's ex-minister saying mean things, then demonstrating vividly to the world that hoping for violence, accusing the other party of treason, or suggesting organized ethnic murder are all firmly in the realm of reasonable Republican discourse. So firmly in the realm of reasonable discourse, in fact, that they hardly bear remarking upon... except by those devious liberals with their possibly treasonous ability to hold multiple things in their minds at one time.

Things I have learned during this campaign season:

In a race that includes a former First Lady of the United States and a multimillionaire Republican senator rumored to share up to eight residences with his wife, the black guy from Chicago is unforgivably elitist.

Racism in America is caused primarily by black Chicago preachers.

The guy who keeps getting confused over the relationship between Iraq, Iran, and al Qaeda is the foreign policy expert.

The guy who goes to campaign stops on his wife's private jet aircraft is the most down-to-earth.

The guy who changed his stance on tax cuts, Roe v. Wade, immigration, gun control, the confederate flag, torture, public financing, and his own anti-earmark rhetoric is the "straight talker".

People in the heartland don't like it when you call them bitter, but they do like it when you explain to them that they're too dumb to understand issues more important than whether or not they like to be called bitter.

Arugula is the measure of a man.

Bowling is the measure of a man.

Orange juice is the measure of a man.

Flag pins are the measure of a man.

Success in Iraq consists of any reduction in violence, except when violence increases that's good too.

A recession is only a recession if you call it one.

Bill Kristol, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Karl Rove, Maureen Dowd, David Brooks, David Broder, Charles Krauthammer and Bob Novak are all intensely interested in giving advice to the Democratic candidates because they just want to be helpful.

There are people in this world dumb enough to believe every one of these things.

Ellen at News Hounds offers a detailed journey through Sean Hannity's long history of "caring deeply" about race... that is, when he imagines some white person somewhere is being put upon. It's well worth a read...

Apparently, Hannity has concluded that whites are the oppressed people in our country. At the drop of an n-word, Hannity will make a cause celebre of any white person accused of bigotry. Yet Hannity is obsessed with "revealing" racism in African Americans. So it was no surprise that during a discussion about the role of race in the presidential campaign, Hannity wasted no time in accusing Barack Obama of racism. With video.

Hannity is so obsessed with race that he once spent three nights discussing some unknown bookstore owner who had advocated the extermination of whites during a panel discussion about Hurricane Katrina a year earlier. A Hannity & Colmes producer even ambushed the man for a special "H&C Investigates" segment about this non-news event. Similarly, Hannity is almost certainly the only broadcaster on a national news network to present the Jena 6 case as a question about reverse racism.

On the other hand, an accusation of bigotry toward a white person will almost surely trigger a Hannity-to-the-rescue response. Don Imus, Mel Gibson, and Duane "Dog" Chapman were all recipients of Hannity rehab.

Pretty much. And this sudden obsession with Rev. Wright is, if you can get through the banging-your-head-against-a-wall part of it, fairly amusing. It's like the American media has just discovered -- OMG! Black people! And with religion!?

Now, none of these pundits gave a flying, candy-coated damn about some of the most influential preachers in America saying vile, despicable things and being continually rewarded for it with political praise and power. Robertson, Falwell, Dobson, Hagee -- there is an entire movement of evangelicals devoted to saying vicious things on national TV under the cloak of religion. Hagee seems to make a special habit of saying loathsome things against others -- blaming Hurricane Katrina on gays, or calling Catholicism "the great whore" and a "cult" -- and there sure haven't been hours and hours of attention devoted to him and his various political connections. No weeklong agonizing on how figures who asininely blamed 9/11 on feminists and abortionists continued to receive the praise and attention of the White House and other prominent politicians -- it was just presumed that they would. It wasn't even a serious question.

Wright, on the other hand, is being treated as zoological specimen. Good gracious -- what is this strange religious creature we have discovered? He talks about religion, and he tells jokes, and speaks angrily about bigotry! Eek! Everybody stand on their chairs!

Wright has said controversial, even ridiculous things -- and glory be, let us all marvel at the notion of a preacher in America saying controversial, even ridiculous things -- but I think it's hard to argue against the notion that he would not be receiving this level of obsessive scrutiny if he were white. I mean, no kidding: as evidence, see the above list of politically entrenched white evangelicals saying worse things to larger audiences with no significant impact whatsoever. Of course, Wright doesn't represent "black" religion any more than Pat Robertson represents "white" religion -- yet another thing I earnestly hope the pundits of America figure out sooner, and not later -- but they're both representative of certain religious movements in the nation, and one wonders what would happen if they received the same amount of scrutiny.

I'm reminded of the comparison by Jon Stewart of the media as preschoolers playing soccer, everyone trundling eagerly after the rolling ball with no gameplan, or goal, or even basic sense of direction. Wright's past link with Obama is I think almost secondary, at this point... certain segments of the media seem absolutely giddy at the idea of being able to hold this guy up and examine him, and the Obama connection has given them an "in" to do it without looking quite as salacious as they would under other circumstances. It's a typical media Shark Attack Week, but with scary black people instead of sharks.

Is it more funny than embarrassing, or more embarrassing than funny? I suppose it's all in how you look at it.

In any event, Obama has now disavowed Wright, and using stronger words than any candidate has ever used against Robertson, Dobson, Hagee, etc. This will likely lead to no public reflection whatsoever about the role of religion in politics, or about the treatment of equally controversial religious figures that get coddled by the press and politicians instead of chastised. So the game continues, and the rules are the same as always.

Well, Obama will be making an appearance on Fox News Sunday. It's already been taped; it will air tomorrow.

Obama has said he would use his Fox appearance to "take Fox on." We'll see: if he gave better than he got, it may have been a useful exercise. But it's unlikely to happen that way, because Fox controls the interviewer, the cameras, the microphones, the questions, the editing process, the edited clips that are shown ad nauseam afterwards, and the "analysts" to probe and misrepresent and be sanctimoniously outraged at those clips for days afterwards. Going on Fox News to criticize the shoddy journalism of Fox News is like jumping into a rattlesnake pit to yell at the snakes: they're snakes, damn it. They don't give a damn what you say. They don't even have ears.

Lemme just quote Chris Wallace's pronouncement, just so you can get the feel for what Fair 'N Balanced looks like:

The "Obama Watch" will finally stop this weekend when Senator Barack Obama sits down with us for an exclusive "FOX News Sunday" interview.

After a double-digit loss in Pennsylvania, how will the Senator gain back momentum in the remaining contests? While he is ahead in pledged delegates, Senator Clinton is counting on the support of the superdelegates. With such a long Democratic primary season, how does Senator Obama feel this is affecting his party and does he see the contest continuing all the way to the Democratic convention? We'll ask this and much more when we sit down with Senator Obama, only on "FOX News Sunday."

Then, the presidential nomination battle turns to Indiana as the next test of who is most electable in November. Joining us to discuss will be Brit Hume, Washington managing editor of FOX News;Mara Liasson of National Public Radio; Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard, and Juan Williams of National Public Radio.

So basically, Chris Wallace really wants to know whether Barack Obama is screwed by losing one state, and is tremendously interested in what injuries to the Democrats may be gleaned from it, and afterwards he will sit down with the TREMENDOUSLY FAIR 'N BALANCED, DAMMIT panel of Brit Hume, Mara Liasson, Bill Kristol and Juan Williams to discuss Obama's performance. I'm sure all that will go off to Obama's advantage, don't you think?

Admirably, Obama has stayed off Wallace's wankfest for two years. A pity it couldn't last another six months or so.

There are obviously a variety of reasons not to do this. Among the top reasons is that Fox News is not serious goddamn news, and Chris Wallace is not a serious goddamn newsman. He is a hack. If you want evidence that he is a hack, you need look no farther than the ridiculous daily "Obama Watch" Wallace and Fox News kept: a very serious, professional schoolyard pout to try to goad Obama into appearing where they wanted him to appear. Not being a Fox viewer, I don't know if the "Obama Watch" graphic was accompanied by Wallace making little buk-buk chicken noises or Wallace flapping his arms; perhaps that was only the behind-the-scenes version.

Now, If I was anywhere near a presidential campaign, I would freeze out a program that did such a juvenile "watch" just out of a sense of good, sensible spite. It quite clearly looks like a presidential candidate is caving to the shoddy network, rather than the network being granted anything special; in any event, though, there's no upside in appearing on a network specifically devoted to the election of Republicans, much less one that lies about it with declarations of their own "balance". The attempt to deny Fox News significant Democratic interviews is not in fact based on spite, but on basic self-interest among non-conservatives: if Fox finds that their access to half of the political spectrum cut off, then they may have to think harder about their particular brand of yellow journalism.

As it is, Fox is currently touting how they think the interview went, and Chris Wallace is as pleased as punch...

[I]t was a very friendly exchange. I think we asked them questions that Fox viewers would want to hear and I think they'll be interested in his answers, but he, he very much clearly wants to reach out to the kind of moderate conservative Democrats and Republicans who watch Fox and I think, as I say, very much wants to get away from any sense that he's a creature or a captive of the left. That was very clear throughout his more than half an hour we sat down and talked to him.

Well, there's a surprise. The interview hasn't even run yet, and Fox has decided how they're going to frame it: as Obama distancing himself from his base, determined not to be "a captive of the left". If Obama ripped them a new orifice, like Clinton once did in an interview, they would make that the story. If he was polite instead, then the story becomes Obama rejecting his crazy base in favor of good, wholesome "moderates", defined as people "who watch Fox".

For Fox News, every interview is about Fox News.

Obama going on Fox is a mistake. Obama going on Fox after they whined like schoolchildren is a bigger mistake. We'll see what the outcome is: if it turns out he does well, then he's a better politician than even his most ardent fans have believed. If he doesn't... well, maybe it will at least help to convince others that there is no upside in Democrats talking to an all-Republican, all-conservative fake "News" channel.

I feel bad for the High Opinionators of the press. One of the few perks of blogging is the ability to shut up when you have nothing to say; Opinionators have no such luxury. The need for column inches far outweighs the need for substance, and your editor will have your head if you cannot squeeze out some words onto the page like pressurized, canisterized cheese onto a cracker. Peggy Noonan, in this state, writes her column as if in a dream...

America is in line at the airport. America has its shoes off, is carrying a rubberized bin, is going through a magnetometer. America is worried there is fungus on the floor after a million stockinged feet have walked on it. But America knows not to ask. America is guilty until proved innocent, and no one wants to draw undue attention. [...]

Now America needs to go to the bathroom. Sweet Jesus, why did America drink an entire Starbucks latte on the way here? What was America thinking? America crosses its legs, hoping to hell the line speeds up. Crap, thinks America, did I leave the toaster plugged in? For some reason, America has always harbored the secret fear that somehow, of all the electrical appliances in the entire house, the toaster is the one that will spontaneously erupt into flames while America is away for a few days. So America always unplugs the toaster before leaving on a long trip, even while leaving all the other appliances and electronics that are, truth be known, probably much more likely to burst into flames for no apparent reason. What can America say? America learned it from its mother.

But we must short-circuit our personification of America as channelled by Peggy Noonan, who like all Opinionaters can channel all of America at the drop of a hat, whenever needed, because after a while Noonan has finally arrived at her destination, belt intact, premise disheveled:

Main thought. Hillary Clinton is not Barack Obama's problem. America is Mr. Obama's problem. He has been tagged as a snooty lefty, as the glamorous, ambivalent candidate from Men's Vogue, the candidate who loves America because of the great progress it has made in terms of racial fairness. Fine, good. But has he ever gotten misty-eyed over . . . the Wright Brothers and what kind of country allowed them to go off on their own and change everything? How about D-Day, or George Washington, or Henry Ford, or the losers and brigands who flocked to Sutter's Mill, who pushed their way west because there was gold in them thar hills? There's gold in that history.

Today [McCain] took a walking tour of the Ninth Ward--perhaps the most visible symbol of the Bush administration's inaction in the wake of Katrina--passing a mix of rebuilt homes and vacant, blighted houses. After the tour, McCain addressed reporters in front of a restored church. "Never again will we allow such a mishandling of a natural disaster," he vowed. "Never again." [...]

Asked earlier this week if he thought the Lower Ninth Ward should be rebuilt, McCain shrugged, considering the question for several seconds. "I really don't know," he finally said. "That's why I am going ... We need to go back to have a conversation about what to do: rebuild it, tear it down, you know, whatever it is."

-- Newsweek, Apr 24th, 2008

John McCain is currently on his tour of "Forgotten Places" in America; small towns and nooks of the nation so ravaged by poverty, unemployment, shrinking populations or just plain forgottenness that they qualify for the term. It is unclear how a community qualifies as sufficiently Forgotten to merit a bus stop on the latest McCain tour -- and even more unclear how we should feel about the towns so forgotten that they will never qualify for such a visit -- but by any standard, the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans qualifies. It is America's most famous forgotten city, a neighborhood that is very publicly rediscovered and reforgotten nearly every week. It is the forgotten town on everyone's mind, and yet it still remains forgotten.

In this way it is very much like the place where McCain started his tour, the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where civil rights marchers in 1965 were attacked by state troopers using whips, clubs, and tear gas. Both are places for politicians to go when they want to prove they have not forgotten important lessons on race, and class, and America. Then the politicians leave, and the quiet breeze returns, and the clouds continue to wander from one horizon to the other, and the town is the same is it was, forgotten by those politicians until the next time someone remembers to forget them again.

John McCain is presenting himself as a Republican Who Cares. This is subtly different from George W. Bush's similar message of Compassionate Conservatism, primarily because McCain has the good sense to stay away from the now openly mocked phrase. Both, though, are premised on the same notion. Visit the towns of America, declaring that You Care. Then do nothing.

Hurricane Katrina flooded the Lower Ninth Ward and much of the rest of New Orleans at the end of August, 2005. It has thus been over two and a half years since the destruction of the city. Rebuilding remains a slow, difficult process, and it is now a given that a sizable subset of the evacuated population will not return. This is not surprising, as we have yet to even declare whether they will, at any arbitrarily far-off date, have anything to return to.

It seems surprising that an American senator and candidate for the presidency of the United States would, two and a half years, not have a ready opinion on whether or not the wounded city should be rebuilt. Having a plan one way or the other would at the least be something worthy of discussion and debate. Do you want the city to be rebuilt? Fine, then how shall it be accomplished? What role does the government have in this, the largest natural disaster to hit an American city in our lifetimes? Should it help actively? Passively? Not at all?

Or, on the other hand, should the Lower Ninth Ward be abandoned, left to the will of future hurricanes? That seems unlikely, given the interest in repaving the area and making it something different -- something classier, something with more malls and different residents -- but it seems a notion that at least requires defending, among those that have it. The Lower Ninth is not necessarily the most vulnerable of New Orleans' many vulnerable parts, and yet discussions of New Orleans (non-)rebuilding efforts always seem to center on it. It has become a symbol of race and class, and an ongoing allegory for America's will, or lack of will, to heal its own wounds.

Both man and nature have carved deep holes into America in these Bush years. In the first case, the event started two wars. The second event was met with a now-institutionalized paralysis. Absent anyone but God to blame, and nothing to strike back against, the government remains frozen in inaction; the relief continues to trickle in but there is no plan for what should happen after the relief is done and gone. It is not that there is a fervent debate being played out before action can be taken -- there is not. There is no plan, there is no urgency to have a plan, and there is little effort to create an urgency to have a plan. We provided trailers for some that did not have homes. We provided paychecks to those that had lost not just their jobs, but their entire communities. And then we left, returning on occasion to shake our heads at how forgotten they remain.

John McCain's off the cuff assertion rings hollow. In his quest to lead the nation, he has determined that there are three courses of action possible, for the still-stricken Lower Ninth Ward. We can "rebuild it", we can "tear it down", or we can "whatever it is." It has been two and a half years -- we are less than forty days away from the third hurricane season since Katrina struck the city -- and the Republican presidential candidate has not thought about the matter enough to have an opinion on it; the best we can hope for, in his promise, is that if he is elected it will finally be time to perhaps discuss the subject. Unless, of course, the Lower Ninth somehow is forgotten again, come January.

Those rebuilding in the Lower Ninth are probably deeply interested in whether or not "tear it down" remains an option being considered. Those waiting to rebuild but unable to, without assistance, probably are interested in knowing whether there will be some year in which that assistance will come. And all parties are probably keen to know what may exist, in the murky waters of "whatever it is", and if any of those unspoken, not-worthy-of-mention plans will offer either neighborhood relief or neighborhood reformation.

If you are going to tour the most forgotten city of Forgotten America, one would think it prudent to at least pretend that you have not forgotten them even during your visit. If you are going to tour Forgotten America on a bus, it seems rational to expect that the tour would consist not just of declaring each town forgotten, but in having a concrete plan to assist those towns beyond your mere momentary presence. It is within a hair's breadth of mockery, to ostentatiously tour towns so injured that they deserve special attention, and yet have given no apparent thought to those towns in advance, or have no more substantive thoughts on the matter more profound than "whatever it is."

Compassionate Conservatism, after all, was the fine art of saying something while doing nothing; apparently the 2008 version has been further streamlined in order to say not a damn thing, either.

On the day Katrina struck New Orleans, John McCain was meeting with President Bush on an Arizona tarmac in order to be presented with a cake; the occasion was his 69th birthday. In the next months, McCain used his position in the Senate to vote against Medicare relief and unemployment benefits for homeless New Orleans residents, and against investigations into what went wrong. But McCain understands the forgotten city, and McCain is alarmed by the inaction of senators such as himself, and McCain vows to investigate what went wrong so that it will not be repeated. You must believe all these things, because if you do not, you are calling into question the sincerity of a four day bus tour.

If I were a community leader in New Orleans, I would launch a drive to rename the Lower Ninth Ward to Forgotten, USA. You could spell it out on the ground in enormous letters, using the rubble of abandoned houses, so that the word would be visible to anyone flying over the city. You could light the letters on fire, so that the glow would light the sky at night and the smoke would darken it during the day.

Perhaps that way it would be easier to remember.

Forget the spin: the race is where it is. Clinton won Pennsylvania. The overall delegate margin has barely budged, however, and it is now even more assured that there is no reasonable scenario where Clinton can pull out a primary win absent intervention by the superdelegates.

I was never a Clinton fan, in this campaign. I have previously stated my deep discomfort with the notion that the person most deserving of the Presidency of the United States just miraculously happens to be the person married to the last Democratic President of the United States; it smacks far too much of the usual intra-Washington narcissism, and carries the strong whiff of American monarchy, something already wafting through the air after the ridiculous rise of the Boy King. At the same time, however, there seems little value in debating whether Clinton should or should not leave the race. That is entirely up to Clinton, and any candidate with a mathematical chance -- even if slim -- of pulling out a win has every right to see the race through until that last fateful day. I don't buy the notion that the campaign is hurting the Democratic party: any election that generates this level of excitement among Democratic voters is hardly a bad thing.

What bothers me, however, is the increasingly insulting quality of the campaign and surrogate spin as each successive campaign day wears on. It is fine to celebrate a Pennsylvania win -- by all means, a victory is a victory, and a significant and hard-fought one at that -- but all I ask in politics is that the spinners of each camp try their best to not make it quite so obvious that they think the rest of us really are a spectacular new species of rubes, able to be led by the nose to whatever ridiculous and improbable conclusion would best benefit a particular camp.

Listening to Clinton campaign surrogates on television, before the PA votes ever started to trickle in, was truly painful. Suddenly one state was the only state that mattered. All those other states were merely prelude: if Clinton could eke out a victory in this state, trailing in the delegate count would no longer be significant, and it would be a brand new race, and Obama would be on the ropes, and Clinton would suddenly win a billion dollars, a pony, and the moon; attention must be paid. It is not enough for Obama to simply be winning the nomination according to the rules laid out in advance: no, he must win the "right" way, according to the Clinton campaign and surrogates, or it doesn't count. He has to win the "right" states. And he has to win primaries, not caucuses. And he has to "close the deal", shutting Clinton out of remaining wins entirely, or it proves something ominous (the fact that Clinton has not been able to "close the deal" against him, and is instead trailing him badly and irreparably, barring superdelegate do-over, somehow does not count against her own merits.) And he not only has to win the "popular vote", but he has to win that, too, the right way, which is to say by counting only certain states and not counting others. And he has to win small towns, not just big population centers, because winning big population centers is elitist. Except that if he wins small towns in the West and Midwest, that doesn't count, because it's more important to win the big population centers. And all of this somehow proves that Clinton is a better candidate against McCain than Obama is, even though the polls to date have consistently shown Obama is a better candidate against McCain than Clinton is.

Now, I'm all for surrogates talking up their candidate, assuming they don't insult my intelligence in the process. But with the ever-changing rules and subrules of Clintonball, my intelligence feels fairly insulted, at this point. There seems to be an ever-expanding list of rationales why the delegate counts in front of our faces don't actually matter, or don't actually exist, or are terribly misleading. There seems to be an ever-expanding list of supposedly devastating Obama faults, such as the supposed elitism of the black guy from Chicago (seriously?), and there is a cynical and mocking dismissal of political eloquence from a campaign that once counted the political eloquence of their former president as one of their greatest assets. People have muttered over the negative tone of the campaign of late: hell, go negative. It's about time the Democrats figured out how to competently go negative, even though so far they have only bothered to practice it against each other. More irritating is that the negative attacks presented are, well, stupid, and seem increasingly to be predicated on the notion that voters, the press, the pundits, and we political hangers-on are all idiots seeking to cling to the most shallow of accusations. The press and the pundits? OK, I'll give you that one. The rest of us, however, weren't born yesterday.

All the spin boils down to a simple truth: Clinton now has almost no chance of winning on the delegate count. Barring Obama getting eaten by a bear, it's not going to happen, so the Clinton campaign wants the superdelegates to overturn the primary and caucus results at the convention and appoint her the rightful winner, even though she is, at this point, clearly losing. That's going to be a tough sell, if all Clinton has to offer is one state's worth of "momentum" or the rather odd logic that, since Obama has supposedly not sufficiently proven his campaign viability by kicking her completely to the curb by now, the superdelegates should instead hitch their wagons to a candidate who has been proven to be less viable than him.

The problem is those arguments simply aren't credible. You can't spin away an insurmountable delegate disadvantage with declarations of mulligans or claims of an "electability" that hasn't been able to actually get you elected. And with the ongoing declarations of which states should and shouldn't count (Pennsylvania yes, North Carolina no, one half of Texas yes, one half of Texas no, etc.), Clinton surrogates are rapidly running out of states and people to dismiss or insult. It has been a very, very nasty habit of her campaign -- seemingly Mark Penn inspired, but expansively used by any number of surrogates.

If Clinton wants the superdelegates to overturn all the voting up until now, fine: she's got every right, according to the rules of the contest, to campaign for that. All I'm asking is for her surrogates to come up with rationales that aren't absurdly premised and/or dismissive of the electorate. Given that I can't think of any such non-absurd arguments, that may pose a problem.

99% precincts reporting.

At popular request, I'm including the decimal pts in this one.

96% precincts reporting.

Here's a contest for the comments: what's the nuttiest spin you've seen from your TV, tonight? Note we're not making this a drinking game, for obvious reasons...

95% precincts reporting.

From a Monday CNN press release:

Former White House press secretary Tony Snow will join CNN as a conservative commentator beginning today, it was announced by Jon Klein, president of CNN/U.S. A well-known and respected observer of politics with a longstanding news background, Snow will contribute to CNN as the network continues to broadcast winning political coverage.

Snow most recently served as press secretary to President George W. Bush from April 2006 to September 2007. For 10 years beginning in 1996, he appeared on Fox News Channel, hosting Fox News Sunday, Weekend Live with Tony Snow and other programs. From 2003 to 2006, The Tony Snow Show aired on Fox News Radio.  Before joining Fox, Snow served as a substitute "From the Right" co-host for CNN's Crossfire.

"In the White House, Tony brought a remarkably human touch to the discussion of public policy, which he will continue to do as part of the Best Political Team on Television," Klein said. "He will contribute a unique breadth of political and journalistic expertise to what is already the most provocative and wide-ranging political analysis on the air."

"I'm delighted to be able to join CNN during the most exciting and unpredictable political year in memory," Snow said. "The big challenge in 2008 is to develop deep, creative and aggressive analysis of both political parties, their candidates and campaigns. I'm eager to get started, since this race is sure to shape American politics for years to come."

Top reasons CNN courted Tony Snow to be a "conservative commentator:"

• Conservative commentator Robert Novak now refuses to appear on network unless served human blood, but the orphanage is on to us.
• Lost conservative Pat Buchanan to MSNBC in poorly planned racist exchange program: screwed when MSNBC couldn't find anyone as racist as Pat Buchanan to send back.
• Conservative commentator Lou Dobbs almost done building anti-immigrant wall around CNN headquarters, but needs tall guy to help string barbed wire.
• McCain's campaign trail flip-flops and misstatements proving increasingly hard for media to ignore; calling in a White House expert to show us how it's done.
• "Human touch" needed to help make conservative commenter Glenn Beck look sane.
• Network falling out of cultural balance and needed another white guy: "Snow" sounds about as white as you can get.
• George W. Bush years soon over; asked White House for keepsake to remember him by. We were thinking signed portrait, got back press secretary.
• Along with Jack Cafferty and Larry King, Snow is human component of ancient mythical power source. Once we sign Brit Hume, Vortex of Eternity will open and we will obtain the Amulet of Supreme Whiteyness, allowing us to rule the world, plus discounts at Applebee's.
• Someone needed to balance out flaming liberal firebrand Wolf Blitzer during 2008 campaign season.
• Because shut up, that's why.

Seriously, though, I'm sure he'll be a perfect person to add, quote, "creative and aggressive" analysis of "both political parties" during this election year. The happiest man in America right now? Jon Stewart.

Here was the headline of Friday's paper in my own small town here in Northern California:

Bomb scare empties Ukiah Wal-Mart

The day before, the top story was about the local salmon season. It's been canceled because of, well, lack of salmon.

But pundits like George Stephanopoulos and David Brooks know better -- we rural, backwater hicks don't want to hear about national security, crime, the economy, or the environment. We're all about the goddamn flag pins and whether people's preachers love America.

Why, just this morning I was sitting on my tractor and I was thinking damn, it sure sucks about bomb threats at Wal-Mart and the fishermen having to sit out the entire salmon season this year, but I sure hope somebody shoves a big 'ol flag in my face to make me feel better about all of it. Sure is lucky we have people like David Brooks to explain these things to us -- people who really understand what America cares about.

And if you don't care about what the pundits care about? Well, it's you that's out of touch.

Here's a thought. Or three thoughts, anyway.

Sean Hannity, one of the pundits most obsessed with the fact that Obama was once on the same 10-person nonprofit board as a 1960's radical-now-turned-college-professor -- scary stuff -- is himself connected with notorious white supremacist Hal Turner, a man who regularly makes terroristic threats -- such as his threat to "liberate" Terri Schiavo from her doctors at gunpoint, until he aborted his supposed plan upon learning that Schiavo was "a Jew". Hannity gave regular airtime to the white supremacist, supported his bid for office... and yet now remains steadfastly silent about his past relationship with Turner.

Bill O'Reilly, one of the pundits most glibly distainful of the supposed moral failings of Democrats, was accused of ongoing sexual harassment by one of his female Fox producers, who complained of, among other things, sexually explicit calls to her home by a drunken, masturbating O'Reilly. O'Reilly settled the case for an undisclosed multimillion dollar sum, but continues to be employed by Fox News, which has never offered explanation or rebuke of O'Reilly's alarming and psychologically bizarre behavior towards a fellow Fox employee.

John McCain, who is so desperate to avoid substantive talk on Iraq, the economy, his own legislative history, and his wholehearted endorsement of all of the nuttiest of ultraconservative and Bush administration policies, himself has a substantial "preacher problem". After initially claiming to distance himself from the far right, McCain now associates with, appears with and seeks the endorsement of religious figures who blamed America for 9/11, and who asserted that the people of New Orleans deserved the destruction of their city by Hurricane Katrina because of their sinful ways. Despite their apparently anti-American statements, McCain continues to this day to seek the approval and endorsement of those religious figures.

Hey, big-time national journalism is fun -- much more fun than talking about dead soldiers or middle class families losing their homes! Hey ABC, got any job openings?

After the first forty minutes of last night's Democratic debate, it was clear we were watching something historic. Not historic in a good way, mind you, but historic in the sense of being something so deeply embarrassing to the nation that it will be pointed to, in future books and documentary works, as a prime example of the collapse of the American media into utter and complete substanceless, into self-celebrated vapidity, and into a now-complete inability or unwillingness to cover the most important affairs of the nation to any but the most shallow of depths.

Congratulations are clearly in order. ABC had two hours of access to two of the three remaining candidates vying to lead the most powerful nation in the world, and spent the decided majority of that time mining what the press considers the true issues facing the republic. Bittergate; Rev. Wright; Bosnia; American flag lapel pins. That's what's important to the future of the country.

What a contrast. Only a few weeks ago, we were presented with what was considered by many to be a historic speech by a presidential candidate on race in America -- historic for its substance, tone, delivery, and stark candor. Last night, we had an opposing, equally historic example -- and I sincerely mean that, I consider it to be every bit as significant as that word implies -- of the collapse of the political press into self-willed incompetence. You might as well pull any half-intelligent person off the street, and they would unquestionably have more difficult and significant questions for the two candidates. It was not merely a momentarily bad performance, by ABC, it was a debate explicitly designed to be what it was, which is far more telling.

It is certainly true that a case could be made that the moderators explicitly set out to frame even the supposedly "substantive" questions according to GOP designs. The implicit presumption of success in Iraq when, nearly an hour into the debate, the moderators finally deigned to mention the defining current event of this campaign. Gibson, as moderator, lied outright about the supposed effects of capital gains tax cuts, and dogged the candidates over it to a greater extent than any other economic issue: does he really believe that of all the economic challenges facing this nation, the most pressing of them is supplication towards a decade-long Republican bugaboo? Gun control? Affirmative action? These are the issues that are most compellingly on the minds of Democratic primary voters, in 2008? Or were the questions taken from a 1992 time capsule, insightful probes gathering dust for a decade and a half until they could find network moderators desperate enough to dig them up again?

But even slanted questions could be forgiven, of the press; what was more inexplicable was the intentional wallowing in substanceless, meaningless "gaffe" politics. It says something truly impressive about the press that a few statements by a presidential candidate's preacher bear far more weight to the future of our nation than the challenges of terrorism or war. It is truly a celebration of our own national collapse into idiocracy that we can furrow our brows and question the patriotism of a candidate, deeply probe their patriotism based on whether or not they regularly don a made-in-China American flag pin, but a substantive discussion of energy policy, or healthcare, or the deficit, or the housing crisis, or global climate change, or the government approval of torture, or trade issues, or the plight of one-industry small American towns, or the fight over domestic espionage and FISA, or the makeup of the Supreme Court -- those were of no significance, in comparison.

If a media organization set out to intentionally demonstrate themselves to be self absorbed and ignorant, they could not have accomplished it better. It was not just a tabloid debate, but the tittering of political kindergardeners making and lobbing mud pies. It was politics as game show. The moderators demonstrated that to them and their supposed "news" organization, the presidency of the United States of America is about the trivialities of_politics_, which were obsessed over ravenously, not about the challenges of American governance, which were fully ignored.

Certainly, as mere citizens we could ask little of the network that unapologetically brought us The Path to 9/11, a fabricated conservative pseudo-documentary laying the blame for terrorism at the feet of everyone loathed by the far right. But it is not simply ABC that bears the blame: surely, one could expect similar drivel from any of the other networks or cable channels who have so successfully and self-importantly dimmed the national discourse, these past ten years. For his part, the chairman of the written intellectual wisp, the New York Times' David Brooks, marveled at the "excellent" questions:

We may not like it, but issues like Jeremiah Wright, flag lapels and the Tuzla airport will be important in the fall. Remember how George H.W. Bush toured flag factories to expose Michael Dukakis. It’s legitimate to see how the candidates will respond to these sorts of symbolic issues.

Indeed, how dare his peon readers whine about these things: this is how the political game is expected to be played by the grand masters of our discourse. Symbolic tours of flag factories! Checkmate! That is the elite idea of "issues" in our national debate. Piss on the war, and screw the economy -- somebody find a goddamn flag factory to tour! That is how our most elite media figures like to see political opponents "exposed" as... well, what exactly? What does touring a flag factory prove, other than the media in this country is so astonishingly gullible, tin-headed and shallow that you can actually tour a damn flag factory and get praised for it by our idiot press as being a bold, disarming move against your opponent?

Truly, we have become a nation led by the most lazy and ignorant. It seems impossible to mock or satirize just how shallowly the media considers the actual world ramifications of each election, how glancingly they explore the actual truth behind political assertion or rhetoric, or how gleefully they molest our discourse while praising themselves for those selfsame acts. And that, in turn, is precisely how we elected our current Idiot Boy King, a man who has the eloquent demeanor of a month-old Christmas tree and the nuance of a Saturday morning cartoon.

It seems impossible, but we may yet have an election season in which we can be in a slogging, five-year-long war, and mention the fact only in glancing asides. We may yet have a series of Republican-Democratic debates in which the most pressing issues of the economy are entirely ignored, so that we can more adequately explore the "patriotism" of the candidates as expressed by their clothing. We may have yet another campaign season carefully orchestrated to leave all but the most glancing and hollow of themes untouched, while our press achieves multiple orgasms at every botched line, every refused cup of coffee, every peddled character assassination or character assassination-by-proxy peddled by the sleaziest of paid dregs. A campaign, in other words, perfectly suited to the bereft, rudderless, and substanceless self-pronounced guardians of our democracy.

Perhaps, if nothing else, it is time to take back the debate process and insist once again on moderators chosen for competence, expertise and neutrality, rather than network or cable network fame. The elites of our press have managed to botch the task time and time again; perhaps it should be left to someone with an actual interest in doing the job.

You'd think I was making it up, if there wasn't videotape. And, you know, ten years of the exact same behavior preceding it. Monday, on MSNBC:

['MSNBC Live' anchor Contessa Brewer]: It's interesting, though, because you always have this question that erupts around election time: Who would you rather have a beer with? And so, it's not just what the candidates are saying to appeal to folks -- they want to be seen as the guy or the gal next door -- but they also have to do it. So, we've seen these candidates now in Pennsylvania -- here's Hillary Clinton doing shots in a bar. And then we have video of Barack Obama tossing back a Yuengling, which, anybody who's been to Philadelphia knows they're very proud of their local beer out there. How important is the video? I mean, if -- do these pictures really speak a thousand words, Jon?

[Reuters Washington correspondent Jon Decker]: They do. And let's not forget Barack Obama bowling. You know, this cuts to "is this person real? Do they connect with me as a voter?" You know, for someone who's in a bowling league in northeast central Pennsylvania, in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, they can't identify with someone getting a 37 over seven frames.

My first reaction was the sensible one: to pray to God to please kill me, immediately. Preferably by meteor. But one of the defining characteristics of my life is that God just isn't that into me, and/or all the meteors are already spoken for, so it never works.

In lieu of divine homicide, then, I suppose the only other avenue left is to try to pry some sense from the nonsense. So here goes: what you see, above, is the defense of the petty, the vapid and the embarrassingly trivial as valid "news", worthy of actual air time. The premise goes like this: the news media reports some minor absurdity about the race. Various pundits go on television to tell Americans how the latest triviality should make them "feel". Ten times as many pundits appear to analyze what would happen if Americans actually felt that way. Then comes the man-on-the-street interviews to see if people really do "feel" that way, and regardless of what actually gets said, by how many, the hypothesis is pronounced correct, or at least "newsworthy". (Note: the definition of "newsworthy" is simply "something we felt like putting on television." This could be a story about Abu Ghraib, or a story about a cat that has learned to ride a skateboard, or a story about what Robert Novak thinks about something. It is, in other words a meaningless phrase.)

Then George W. Bush and a half dozen cabinet members in some back room somewhere authorize the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody, but we can't pay attention to that because we've all got to decide whether we want a president with good bowling scores.

Where did we get this notion that the President of the United States should be a drinking buddy? Where did we get the notion that the strongest nation on earth should be led by a folksy, easy-to-like drunk? I don't mean where did the country get this notion, I mean when did the media decide that this was a valid measure of a leader, something worth endlessly discussing, and analyzing, and tittering over? When facing down the leader of a rogue nation in a series of intense negotiations, I don't want the guy shooting pool at the corner bar, I want someone with a head for the job, for God's sake, and I don't give a rats ass if he likes buffalo wings, or bowling, or can smash an empty beer can on his head. (A point of trivia: the first President to try to smash a beer can on his head was John Quincy Adams. Unfortunately, beer cans did not exist back then, only kegs, so Adams gave himself a hell of a concussion attempting the feat.)

Yes, we all understand that, if no other information about a candidate is forthcoming, voters will attempt to divine a candidate's values, positions or general worth from whatever minor points of familiarity can be gleaned. This is human nature; this is how uninformed voters vote. But when that happens, that is a failure of our Democracy, not a strength. There is little excuse for not knowing the positions of candidates after two dozen Democratic debates and a passel of Republican ones, and when each candidate has more than an ample record of past records and statements -- regardless, though, how on earth did we reach the point where the news media themselves seize upon the trivialities and petty trinkets of the campaign as themselves as or more meaningful than the actual political positions and records of the candidates?

Yes, there are uninformed, dull-witted voters in the world, people who will decide who to vote for based on choice of beer. But why -- why, in the name of all that is holy, and several things that are not -- would the political media itself, presumably the group of people most informed about the actual issues of governance riding on each election, choose to celebrate that lack of substantive information and instead wallow in the meaningless?

What, is it a game? Laziness? Ineptitude? Stupidity? Most people who read this site know my own opinion, by now: it is a little of each of those things, but mostly it is institutional stupidity, a stupidity and vapidity enforced by a lack of corporate will or resources to fill the news day with anything more significant. Placing a talking head on television is, compared to covering any news story at all -- especially one that might require leaving the office -- free. It costs nothing more than a camera, a microphone, and the willingness to say whatever enters your head and pronounce it sufficiently pundacious.

In addition, and more troublingly, the shift in the attitudes of those that cover politics continues unabated, and with ever more ridiculous affectations. Political reporters no longer consider themselves observers, or balances to counter the powerful; they consider themselves an integral part of the political game itself. We are barraged constantly with the spin coming from every election camp -- and the spin itself is reported as the story. It is not enough even to report that spin, anymore; now the airwaves are filled with the actual spinners themselves, presenting the absurdity of the day directly to the audience without the noisome filters of reportage or fact checking or impartial rebuttal. The spectacle of debate is the story, not the thing actually being debated. The thing actually being debated, whatever it may be, is just the pointless MacGuffin around which two opposing sides can be booked to scream at each other for a few minutes between commercials.

Even torture is now nothing more than a MacGuffin for the two sides, now. Domestic espionage? Governmental corruption? An astonishing corruption of the Department of Justice itself? Merely trivialities around which two sides can be booked for boisterous, vapid debate.

Talk about elitism: when, exactly, did we get to the point where an assortment of multimillionares can vie, every four years, for the title of most folksy, and most "common", and have the attempts reported with a straight face by the most supposedly intelligent and insightful political minds available? Are we serious? Watching a set of multimillionaires competing desperately to each appear the most down to earth, the most folksy and hick, challenging each other with increasingly "common" costumes, extolling the virtues of barbecue and hot dogs and grits, admiring the local sports team in every individual state they visit; admit it, it is hilarious. It is one of the few contests the rich have, among themselves, that the rest of us get to enjoy as well, for watching a lifetime establishment insider play dress up, and watching them play act as they pretend to be what they see us as being, namely complete and utter rubes, more obsessed with our backyard grills than the fates of our own jobs -- that is a fine play indeed, if you are into truly dark humor.

But we have perfected the game. Now we can watch dozens upon dozens of supposedly intelligent, jaded political reporters tool around the country after them, reporting on their gamesmanship and faux-folksiness with earnest expressions, reporting on their latest diner visits and photographs with puppies -- now that is the game within the game. The politicians consider us rubes. The press consider us rubes, too. And so they work together to tell us how we should feel, when the play is performed for us, and how we should feel when something goes off-script, and they are even generous enough to reuse the same storylines from one election to the next, so we do not damage our poor, piteous brains by having to relearn what we are supposed to think about the elitist, effeminate Democrat, or the foreign policy gravitas-having Republican.

Good God, it is impossible to express how insulted we should be that the guardians of our discourse think this is the only political slop worth serving us.

Very well; I give up. If, as the Reuters correspondent declares, common America has no hope of identifying with someone getting a poor bowling score, then the answer seems obvious. We must quantify how much "connection with the voters" is possible, given a particular score in the sport: this will then allow us to wallow freely in our own idiocy, not bothering the pitiable higher-ups of government or the press with our incessant demands for any more substantive information or knowledge. I therefore suggest the following crude measures of a man, so that the people of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre will not be left in cruel emotional limbo, unable to find an emotional bond with their candidates.

A score of 100 should be the minimum: if a candidate can bowl over 100, after practicing for a week, that signifies that they have the minimal personal integrity worthy of office. They are suitable for heading a lesser government agency, or an ambassadorship.

If a candidate can top 150, they show true intellect, and are worthy of at least a cabinet position. 170 indicates fortitude in the face of adversity, indicating perhaps a position in the defense department is in order. 180 signifies that their tax returns are in order.

If a candidate achieves a score over 200, that means that they are faithful to their spouse. A score over 220 furthermore indicates a loving relationship, and not just a marriage of convenience. A score over 225 signals that they have the love of their children as well, and that their children are free of drugs or unfortunate homosexual tendencies.

A bowling score of 240 or above shows a candidate as capable of leadership. It also testifies to a good relationship between with their God; the presidency may be viable. 250, the typical score of devout Protestants, cinches the deal, indicating God loves them back. A second term may be in order.

A score of 260 indicates competent fiscal management abilities; if they achieve this score on a league night, managerial competence is also likely. Bowling an impressive 270 is a sign of great foreign policy capabilities, possibly including past war hero status. At 280, you can expect a balanced budged to be achieved, as well as at least one great speech about the evils of communism.

A score of 290 will win a war, probably without a nuclear exchange.

And what of the perfect game, the elusive 300? Ah, my children, that indeed shows true greatness. In the entire history of the Republic, only one President has been a 300 bowler: none other than the Emancipator, the great Abraham Lincoln himself.

Because it was Abraham Lincoln's hard-fought perfect game, achieved in the dead of one cold and bitter winter's night, that allowed him to free the slaves.