VP Debate: McCain's Big Gamble Comes Up Snake Eyes

Story is here.

This was a reply to another poster's comment, which read in part:

"It is the elected representatives who come here from all over, and the preening appointees who arrive fresh from the campaign, plus their buddies in K Street lobby shops and other special interest groups, who breed "corruption" and even a little "greed (and it is only a little greed, compared with Wall Street)."

My response:

You forgot a media corps that becomes part of the DC socio-political scene, becoming so chummy with the folks they cover that a Dick Cheney can play them like Itzhak Perlman plays the violin. The get so caught up in the backwash of power like groupies following Def Leppard that they can't but help to protect their friends (and sources) in Congress and in the White House to the detriment of providing a clear view of what is happening in the centers of power to the public. They don't speak truth to power, they become stenographers for the "truths" that pols want dispensed to the electorate.

So the political coverage by the media, especially the electronic end of that, is a big dog and pony show. So a Tom Brokaw can be totally sucked in by the untrue McCain hype (see the Rolling Stone article on McCain, which is horrifying) and yet his brethren still hold him in high regard. He is little more than a Potemkin journalist and so are too many of his colleagues.

Approved