Sunday, April 06, 2008
The Important Shit
There's nothing I can say about the media's tiresome obsession with things like Edwards's haircut, Hillary's tits, and Obama's gutter balls that Glenn Greenwald does not say more masterfully.
Well, I suppose I could say it more bluntly: we, the people, don't give a shit. We do not care if one politician fails to wear a flag pin, or if another serves you tasty barbecue, or if another favors the pantsuits. The press corps, however, do. They get boners over these issues. As Glenn says, they claim to speak for "the Regular People," but they just speak for themselves.
For the most part, the press corps these days embodies one of the major cliches of postmodernism -- endlessly arguing about the essence of an object without arguing about its weight. The war, the economy, torture -- all these are secondary to whether or not the candidates are "real Americans," for whatever measure the press determines to be "real."
