The Republican Machine and TV

Great moments in television.

Now there's the email flap. I'd bet even money it was made up. New attention - irrelevent to policies or issues - that keeps Palin in the news. McCain can sound solid and effective, even manly defending her. It looks like a political ploy. Somehow they managed to mention that it was her personal email - they even showed family photos - and forgot to mention that she was using it, inappropriately, for government business. Could one ask for a better slant on a "story" if one wants to have viewers sympathize with Ms. Palin and stop asking any of the tough questions that should be asked.

And, thanks to Reagan - ah Reagan, where would your party be without you? - the television stations do not need to spend equal time on the other side. Allowing the Republican media conglomerates to give hours of free air time to McCain and pretend that Mr. Obama isn't even a candidate.
Which they did again today. Evening "news magazine" and celebrity gossip shows offered up Ms. Palin in a "Town Hall Meeting" that was as staged and phony as an event can be. Broadcasting her claims she's ready to lead: try to stump me if you want... amazing bravado considering there was no one there to ask questions. The TV station sure didn't provide any analysis or evaluation: just pure amplification. Meaniwhile Palin's avoided reporters for weeks and has a staff of old hands from Bush's administration placing novel prerequisites between the Governor and reporters. The Governor might dain grant an interview... if the interviewer is appropriately deferential. Say what?! OMG is this America or a monarchy?

It's hard to stomach what these cronies continue to do to our country. The people are being misled and they aren't encouraged with enough cynicism to see through the ploys. While Jon Stewart does a good job of pointing out the truly absurd, there's so much that's just plain and insidious which is poor fodder for humor.

Whitehouse working for McCain?

They've really got it down.

Economic crisis. There's McCain with his quote of the day: I'd fire the head of the SEC. Cut to Dana Perino, Whitehouse Press Secretary and a question so well timed one wonders if it was planted or whether the press really are that naive. Ms. Perino confirms that Pres. Bush has a fine relationship with the head of the SEC.

And so with a single, irrelevant statement, Mr McCain is able to claim that he's effective, a man in charge, on the spot with respect to the economy and he's distanced himself from the man he needs to show he's different from: GW Bush.

You can see this one coming a mile away.

Once again it's time to sharpen our cynicsm. Driving and listening to NPR recite that today the CIA is opening it's "Family Jewels" -- 30 year old "secrets" that might be a big draw to historians yet somehow manage to gobble up most available news bandwidth.

When all the talking heads are spouting identical words it's a clue: they're all being fed from the same source.

A bit of cynicism, if you please.

Why is the CIA opening it's archives now? Gee, real head scratcher. Let's take two guesses:

• distraction
• handily puts the activities of the current President into a context he prefers - you wanna talk warrantless wiretapping: here we've got years of wiretapping history, havva look.

But the big one: by opening old archives this administrative, routinely noted as the most secretive in history, is going to use it as the basis for claiming that they are, in fact, very transparent. See they'll show you stuff that had nothing to do with them. If you can't change the subject try to shift the focus to irrelevant "evidence" of a claim -- to openness -- that they will soon make. They have no basis for such a claim and so are creating one out of items that are of irrelevant to the substance of the claim. Sure, it's good to finally open these archives, but it's irrelevant to the point and hence a distraction.

These are easy to see coming.