Sillier Season

Kevin Drum is right; the volume of inane stories is definitely on the uptick. In addition to the three quasi-stories he mentioned, there's also a fourth, as the press has started writing a meta story about how the 'outspoken' [a word almost exclusively used to describe women] Michelle Obama causes trouble for her husband by making off message remarks, lately the "for the first time in my adult life, I'm really proud of my country" dustup. But let's run down all of these:

• The plagiarism BS seems to have mercifully ended. There are only so many ways to say the same thing. Deval Patrick and Barack Obama are friends and have the same chief strategist. Nobody cares.
• The "media backlash" isn't so much a backlash as the press beginning to revert to general election coverage mode, which treats the campaign as a status competition between two cliques in middle school. Indeed, Team Obama has successfully begun to combat the meme that all he does is give a good speech.
• The Times story on Iseman and McCain's dalliances with many ethical gray areas where many politicians go, but McCain professes to avoid out of ethical concerns, seems tepid. Well, more accurately, the bits about the sex, which of course has everyone foaming at the mouth, seem tepid But as Josh notes, there's a lot of non-denial denial coming from the McCain camp, and McCain had preemptively pushed very hard to spike the story. Meanwhile McCain's known adulterous behavior before the divorce of his first wife to marry Cindy Lou Hensley, heir to an Anheuser-Busch distributor, sure looks like one of those "character issues" the press keeps telling us the American people find important.
  
  On the non-sex front, of course, Team McCain's non-denial denials look less forceful, because after all, John McCain is just another politician, and while he may have a greater sense of honor than most, in thirty-five years in Washington there are bound to be some favors somewhere.
• It looks like the Obama camp has successfully put "proud" back in a box. Michelle  was proud of how Americans were getting engaged in the political process. Time to move on.
• Let's also use this as your weekly reminder that Barack Obama is a Christian, not a Muslim [not that there's anything wrong with that] who leads the Senate in the pledge when he presides and stands with his arms at his side during the national anthem.

And yet it's only February. If I plead "make it stop" will it do any good at all? Is Nepal remote enough that there won't be any election coverage there?

Comments

[Paul]

Is Nepal remote enough that there won't be any election coverage there?

I have a co worker who is currently in Nepal for three weeks (he's from there). He's also politically motivated and knowledgeable. I will have to ask him when he gets back what coverage he was exposed to!

[Shoez]

You think that the NYT McCain story about lobbyists/affairs was an inane story? It looks meaningful to my politically ignorant eyes.

Also, what is the significance of the arm position during the national anthem? Something about not holding allegiance to the flag above allegiance to god?

[Nicholas Beaudrot]

It was part of the whole "doesn't say the pledge" thing. There was a photo of him standing during the national anthem, but with his hand at his side, not with his right hand over his heart. But the regulations, or guidelines, about this sort of thing say there's nothing wrong with that.

I can't tell about the times story. either there's no there there, or there's something there but the lawyers successfully pulled most of it from the paper, or there's there there and the rest of it will drop soon. But it's too hard to tell from here.