Echoes of 2004

I can’t help feeling like I’ve reentered the political/mediasphere as it existed in 2004. Back then the Republicans (and yes, let’s be fair, also the Democratic Leadership Council and the Clintons) were doing their best to get Howard Dean out of the race. They were peddling a narrative of his anger. No one was buying it — months and months and months of primary campaigning, and all people saw was a thoughtful state governor who was also a physician. But then came the Iowa caucuses, and a concession speech that wasn’t so much a concession speech as it was a call to keep going — shouted into a microphone over a huge crowd.

Absent the huge crowds' noise, and put out on short video clips, Howard Dean looked like a crazy man -- and suddenly the narrative fit. I remember at the time there was eventually analysis pointing out the problems in the story, and even a shocking "setting the record straight" from ABC news. But none of that mattered. The story had finally bloomed in the media sphere and was off and running. Eventually Howard Dean was forced out the race, and we got stuck with John Kerry (and we all know where that led us)

Now we are in 2008, and again we have certain parts of the Democratic Party who fear losing power seeing their ability to grasp the nomination slipping through their hands. This time the media "meme" they are peddling seeks to paint Barack Obama as an angry Black man, through his association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Can we PLEASE keep focused on the issues that matter? Like the obscene war we are still involved in, in which yet another set of soldiers have died? (and that doesn't even count the civilians -- many of them children). Frankly, I think anger is called for, appropriate, and even righteous at this point -- when marking the obscenity of war, the ever widening gap between rich and poor, the clear and present danger to our globe from environmental havoc, etc. etc., But I DO NOT think it's appropriate to be spending so much time focused on Jeremiah Wright. Can anyone say "bread and circuses"?