Saturday, August 30, 2008

Note to CNN: Presidential Elections aren't Games

CNN's coverage of McCain's choice of Palin for his running mate is every bit as vapid and shallow as I imagined it would be:

Palin: Pioneer, maverick -- and now game-changer
What do we know about Sarah Palin, the 44-year-old first-ever female governor of Alaska, wife and mother of five, and now GOP vice presidential nominee?

On Friday, a new part of her identity dominated the political scene: game-changer.

She enters an already historic election, knowing well two of the biggest things McCain needs her to do: shore up votes among social conservatives and win over disaffected Hillary Clinton-supporting Democrats, many of them women.

Hey, Josh Levs (the hack writer behind the above article), your research abilities are apparently about as faded and vanishingly miniscule as your byline. But don't feel bad--I wouldn't want my name particularly visible on such a trite piece of nonsense.

This isn't a game. It's an election--and an damned important one.

John McCain is 72 and has a history of malignant skin cancer. His VP has to be ready on day one. By which I mean ready to lead, not ready to pander to disgruntled women who think supporting female candidates regardless of their political positions is in some way indicative (let alone compatible!) with serious feminism.

And as I've already pointed out, what we know about Palin is that she denies humanity's role in global warming and thinks creationism is worthy of time and attention in our nation's already embarrassingly low-quality science classrooms. She, like George W. Bush, obviously puts ideology ahead of empirical reality.

All this horse race reporting is pure horse shit. It's so self-referential and devoid of meaning it would make Derrida blush. Of course Palin's alleged identity as a "game-changer" is dominating the "political scene." It's all the hacks in the mainstream media are babbling about. How are substantive issues supposed to enter the public discourse of journalists don't bring them up?

No comments: