Not Your Sweetie

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by The bug on 03/08/2004 10:32:53 PM EST

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Sandy:  Someone who is a journalist (I'm sorry, I don't remember who) posted this piece on this blog several months ago.  It might be part of the explanation.
I've been in the TV business for 35 years, and have known several reporter/newspersons, and let me tell you- there's no IQ test to be in those positions.  These people aren't there for their brains.  They have no original ideas, and steal from one another shamelessly. 

In the case of this election, Wesley Clark did have a brief honeymoon in the very first few days following his joining the race, but a couple of mis-steps mis-handled by his naive staff got him off on the wrong foot.  When other events, like Dean's surge in the fall, monopolized their attention, little effort was made by the Clark camp to garner attention, choosing instead a "tortise and hare" approach to the campaign.

 Meanwhile "the enemy" started floating mis-information regarding Clark, and that's all the news there was to report regarding the General.  Rumors and mis-information, like urban legends, take on a life of their own.  These newspeople, having no interest in researching the truth, fall victim to these rumors and repeat them, and before long they're all passing the same mis-information back and forth among themselves over the airwaves.  By that time the new rumor is that Clark is "damaged goods" and no longer a contender. 

All this from a lack of knowledge of who the candidate really is and what he stands for, and the silly stories originally planted by the likes of Tucker Carlson, George Will, Hugh Shelton, Karl Rove, Drudge, etc.  So they all "agree" to dismiss Clark and treat him like a pitiful crackpot egomaniac (remember Ross Perot?)

Meanwhile, with their lame focus on the horse race aspect of the candidate's bids, they can't think any deeper than who's in first place at the moment.  Remember when it was "all Dean all the time"?  Now it's "Kerry/Edwards, Kerry/Edwards 24/7". 
None of these lightweight newspeople can see beyond them to the more interesting and crucial story: if the Democrats could design the perfect candidate to take on Bush in November, what would he look like?  Of course we already know who that is, and it's very frustrating to see so clearly who the demos' best hope is, only to have the mainstream media stuck in asking the same old tired questions over and over again