All the Time

It seems to me that anytime anything can be used to push an agenda these days it will be made political, or at least to seem that way. I wonder if it isn't a kind of market forces sort of thing, politics has become such a competitive industry that you're always looking for an edge, and looking farther and farther afield for the advantage.

I didn't think of it from that perspective at all. We have tended to treat politics as sport or entertainment for so long, maybe the politicians have strted to think of themselves in that vein as well.

As we've already discussed, the MSM is responsible for the "shot selection" here, not the public. It's the MSM that frames the debate, decides what the issue being pushed is and how it will be pushed.

Imus was deliberately targeted to keep the left in line and prevent any dissent. Rush is a perennial target for these people, as is Fox News. Surely you see it too.

If we commoners had any control over what is being reported, wouldn't we have demanded something more significant than weeks of Anna Nichole coverage? You're blaming the pigs for what was put in the trough before them.

I well understand that the media will do what it wants, but I still think that they are a business first, and will give th people what they want. I think that on issues such as this, or the whole celebrity fascination, it is a vicious cycle. The media gives us a "story", we watch it, they see that we watched it, give us more of it, and we kep eating it up like ..well...swill from the trough (love the farmyard analogy, btw!). I don't mean to let the media off the hook, but i can't let us off the hook either. There was a time when the news was pretty much the news, the networks told you what happened and unless there was some obvious political connection, they left the politics out of it. Now anything that happens becomes reported as a political event if it is at all newsworthy...and we keep eating it up! They will continue to feed us swill until we demand that we be feed something other than scraps.