Seeing Is NOT Believing

I usually start my day with the New York Times, to get it over with, but I didn't arrive there today until way up into the jaded afternoon hours, when I'm already way too beaten up by the news to take The Gray Lady with aplomb, so reading this headline, "Disenchanted Bush Voters Consider Crossing Over," and the purported reporting that goes with it, just made me angry. The story is just nothing short of a cruel, hip-wagging tease with absolutely no consequence but is meant to ignite the flames of hope, sort of like putting Britney Spears on stage at a nursing home. "This Republican X, who happily voted for George W. Bush in 2000, says he'd rather vote for a dead wharf rat in 2004." What a waste of ink! Six or seven, or even sixty or seventy such examples of "local color" add up to precisely nothing, and desperate Dems in this post-Ralph Nader moment might remind themselves that the corporate media destroys those whom they first make glad with such nonsense.