Tired of this story

Glenn Greenwald is quickly becoming one of my favorite analysts of the more pathetic parts of the American media. He's back at it today:

And the "bitter" drama merely replaced the "elitist-because-he-can't-bowl" storyline in the spotlight. As I noted the other day, this is just an exercise in reflexively filling in the gaps in the insipid personality-based script -- authored by the Right and amplified by their media partners -- that dominates every one of our elections, regardless of who the candidates are or what they do.

John Kerry's defining trait was that he windsurfed in effete tights. Al Gore's was that he invented the Internet, claimed credit for Love Story, and wore earth colors because Naomi Wolf told him to. Michael Dukakis' was that he looked like a geeky loser in a helmet and didn't seem to show enough manly rage when asked in a debate about a hypothetical case where his wife was raped and killed.

So Barack Obama now takes his place on the ignoble path tread by every other Democratic candidate before him: as an effete, elitist, out-of-touch loser -- just like Mike Dukakis and John Kerry, and just like Al Gore and (when she was leading in the polls) Hillary Clinton. Conversely, the GOP leaders are stalwart and amiable though heroic Men of the People. ...

Given that dynamic, Democrats have two choices and only two choices: (1) allow the Right to wield these themes unchallenged, in a one-sided manner, or (2) engage them just as aggressively and directly in order to neutralize the advantage they confer. The point is that having our elections decided primarily on substantive issues isn't an option, precisely because the Right and the shallow, slothful media ensure that petty personality controversies predominate. The only choice is to engage them or to ignore them, thereby allowing them to rage unchallenged.

When the Right inserts personality-based trash into our political discourse -- and when they build up their leaders based on mythological themes of heroic, morally upstanding character imagery -- it isn't an "ad hominem" attack to highlight the deceit that lies at the heart of those claims, to document the actual character of those individuals. It's a necessary response for debunking the manipulative, substance-free character themes that are outcome-determinative in our elections, for neutralizing the twisted attacks that predominate.

Read his blog at Salon. It's top-notch.

Yesterday I wrote about how I was tired of reacting to campaign nonsense, and while some of my recent posts seem to contradict this, I don't think that's true. There is a difference between trying to rebut every absurd claim and report in the media and analyzing the patterns of disinformation and ad hominem politics in the media. I plan on writing a lot about those patterns during this campaign because I think it is essential, if we are to change politics from petty insult to a discussion of what the government actually does and fails to do, to first identify why it is that most of what is advertised as political journalism in this country is nothing more than a contest of shadows, a pathetic attempt to try to measure politicians according to some fictional rubric of American authenticity. We've seen that system at work, and it has produced more than two decades of reckless, immoral government under both parties.

—Douglas Carlucci