Thursday, January 22, 2004

Supporting media distortions for short-term political gain

It could be argued many different ways whether Dean's Iowa speech was politically smart or not. By itself it was not any worse than your typical rally-the-troops political barn-burner. I bet you could make a quick reel of similar performances by most prominent politicians. But given the angry Dean fact-esque, it may have been politically unwise for him to give the media that kind of raw meat.

But what is really stupid is the way some Democrats have become willing propagators of the media's spin on Dean's performance. The last thing we, as Democrats need is to validate the media's distortions by supporting them for our own political advantage. Yet that is just what a lot of Democrats, some who dislike Dean intensely and are reveling in his troubles, are doing. By doing so, they are digging their own future graves because some day that media distortion machine will be focused on them and then where will be the people who will defend them?

Democrats have got to understand that the attacks on Dean are primarily because he is a Democrat, not because he is Howard Dean, and that all of the current prominent Democrats can and will be subjected to the same kind of abuse.

I fear that the Democrats as a whole still haven't gotten this basic fact of life. It may require yet another humiliation before enough of them "get it" to make a difference.

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