You are absolutely right, and here's proof:
Posted on 12/26/2007 5:04:53 AM PST by billorites
FLOATING CROSSES, love babies and hag photos. We're all tabloid now. Two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, politics has gotten not just ugly but unseemly and cruel. If the human appetite for scandal and schadenfreude is satiable, the media haven't gotten the word.
Besides, in a dangerous world of war and terrorism, it's far easier to speculate on sex lives and sensationalize religious belief than it is to evaluate whether jihad is coming to El Paso.
This isn't to blame American voters, but rather the media. Human beings will always look at a roadside accident, but that doesn't mean they want the accident to occur. We're a curious lot, and most will look at what's in front of us (the proof is in the porn stats).
Thus, who puts the thing up for observation is the proper target of our attentions.
Last Wednesday night, "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric asked the leading 2008 presidential candidates whether voters should trust an adulterer. Why not just ask for a show of hands: How many of you have messed around on your spouse?
Couric's inquisition closely shadowed the tabloid gossip item that one candidate has a "love baby" with a former campaign worker. He has denied the accusation, as has the mother-to-be, who has named the person she says is the real father. But no matter.
Splash! It's out there. The suggestion, the innuendo, the lingering question. Just as "someone" hoped, no doubt.
Not so long ago, no reputable news organization would touch a tabloid headline. Now, thanks to the Internet, what's out is out and the source seems not to matter. Mainstream media now feel compelled to report what's being reported. (Response to pot-kettle monitors: Cultural commentary requires cultural commentary.) A few days before the "love baby" made news, Mike Huckabee's "floating cross" was all the talk. One of Huckabee's ads shows him in front of a bookcase.
The intersection of two shelves creates four contiguous right angles, suggestive of a cross, as intersecting shelves are wont to do.
Whether the positioning was intentional or just a divine coincidence is anyone's guess. But the debate, far longer than warranted, was the stuff of alien-seeking tabloids. Is it just me, or was that the Virgin Mary's face imprinted in the wood grain?
Gratuitously cruel was a photograph of a tired-looking Hillary Clinton posted on the Drudge Report and elaborated on by Rush Limbaugh. The photograph was apropos of nothing -- no story was linked -- and merely ran with the caption: "The Toll of a Campaign." Hillary, who is 60, showed a few wrinkles, which is not unusual among men and women of that age. Apparently, both Drudge and Limbaugh were gleefully surprised to discover that Hillary is showing signs of maturity that would be characterized as character on a man's face.
Limbaugh framed his remarks as anthropological observation: "Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?" Can a woman ever get it right? Too much cleavage one day, too many wrinkles the next. A male friend forwarded the picture to me and I replied:
"This picture makes me like her more." My bet is thousands of others felt the same way.
Why? Because we're all aging women, that's why. We're all at war with time. And with calories, one can't help noticing. The seven deadly sins are alive and well in America's garden, for both women and men.
At the risk of sounding like a Christian panderer, we are all fallen.
Perhaps that is why the candidates, when asked about adultery, unanimously said that while important, carnal imperfection doesn't necessarily disqualify someone from being President.
As Barack Obama noted: "Some of our greatest Presidents haven't always been terrific husbands." The indignity of the question should embarrass the interviewer, though nothing seems to embarrass anyone anymore. The uglier the stories, the stronger the backlash -- and the mudslide has just begun.
If private lives are no longer private -- and a woman can't frown in the winter wind -- then we can give up on leadership. Only the perfect need apply and the perfect, having made no mistakes, haven't learned anything.
Our jihadist observers -- who, incidentally, kill adulterers, take religious belief very seriously, and think women shouldn't vote -- have learned much.
Such silly people, Americans. Such simple targets.
Such serious business, this election.
Kathleen Parker's e-mail address is kparker@kparker.com.
bump
Oh boo hoo, we’re all so bad. This is the worst ever...yada, yada, yada. Has anyone read history? We do our forefather’s proud. We are their children and this is the way politics has always been conducted in the shinning city on the hill.
Hey Kewpie, ask if they should trust the enabling wife of an alleged serial rapist.
Did they SEE that picture ? My mean old Communist grandma didn't look that decrepit and ugly at 90.
Fair enough.
Given that it's not possible for me to like her less.
I've seen fascimilies of old newspapers and cartoons from the eighteen-hundreds, and some of them were savage. Men used to duel over them.
That said, however, I'd sure like to see the press draw back form the 24/7 All Sex 'N Sleaze Mode they seem to be in.
I guess the real news- terror, the spread of Islam, nukes in North Korea and Iran, the illegal invasion- are just too scary for them to bother mentioning...
Yeah, it’s irritating that there are people that seem to believe in the “good ‘ol days” political races were substantive, and kind.
Accusing your opponent of having illigitimate children was a routine aspect of 19th Century presidential campaigns, for example.
NO. A bookcase.
A BOOKCASE.
Jeeze...
This wall-to-wall press coverage is designed to degrade our president. It started earlier than usual and receives greater coverage than usual.
The nastiest election campaign, ever:
....or so they keep telling us.
So does this mean Kathleen Parker will vote for Hillary Clinton? Scary thought. If so, maybe this was all a plot from the Hillary camp to make her a victim.........yet again. No, that would be conspiracy theory, and Hillary is not like that.
Of course the biggest rift in American politics resulted in a civil war but those who bemoan today’s “nastiness” always seem to forget those details. And then before that Jackson was a bigamist for marrying a divorced woman before the divorce was final and then there was Buchannan whose roommate Rufus King was often derided as Miss Nancy and/or Aunt Fancy. ;-)
WRONG, it didn't make me like her more but I don't think it is possible for me to like her AT ALL. It has nothing to do with her face either. It has to do with the fact that she is pure EVIL.
“Hey Kewpie, ask if they should trust the enabling wife of an alleged serial rapist.”
Yes!!! Follow-up question for Perky Katie: ask Hillary!666 if there’s inherent risk in having a confirmed sex addict, serial adulterer/sexual harrasser and likely rapist in the White House. And what does covering up for said spouse say about Mrs. Clinton’s character?
“This picture makes me like her more.”
I have a mental picture of the kind of woman who would like Hillary! more because of this picture: perpetually angry overweight menopausal women who have a beef against men in general, white Republican men in particular. In short, they are probably hags just like Hillary.
Kathleen misses the point of the hag photo: Almost all previous photos/video of Hillary! had been heavily enhanced to make her appear to be something she isn’t. Hillary is as phony on the outside as she is on the inside, and photo spotlighted this. Besides, “hag” is more about how a woman acts than what she looks like. (Helen Thomas excepted LOL)
You are absolutely right, and here's proof:
IMHO, I think they are trying to degrade the process so that we can have a dictator or a Chairman. How about Chairman, Comrade Hillary?
....or so they keep telling us.
I think I've heard that claim made every four years since 1964.
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