Man, this election is really getting me down. It seems like everyone is so totally polarized, convinced the other guy is evil, convinced his supporters are somehow wrong in the head. The media covers only the worst in either candidate, and both camps are all too anxious to help that effort with all the worst they can dig up and dish out on their opponent. I feel bad right now for Kerry; he wants to stay on message, and all anyone wants to talk about is Dan Rather and Kitty Kelley.

(About which: Dan Rather messed up, but this is a CBS story, not an election story; and, I have never read a Kitty Kelley book before, and I can't see any reason to start now.)

I think there can be no question that the Republicans fight dirtier and nastier; on the other hand, you get the sense the Democrats would if they could. The whole thing is bumming me out. Have elections always been this bad, or has the level of political discourse in this country just continued to sink into the same abyss as the rest of popular culture, or has 9/11 been a totally polarizing and atypical event?

I tend to think the its last two. Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore, Zell Miller, Al Sharpton, Ah-nuld, I tend to think a lot of the political discourse in this country is now conducted by cultural icons on the order of Tonya Harding or Hulk Hogan or whoever ended up Marrying my Dad. Would it really surprise anyone if Zell Miller's trailer blew away in the storm?

And as for the aftermath of 9/11, you have the Republicans playing cowboy, and the Democrats playing Chicken Little. Neither of which is going to fly.

And I don't even want to get started on Iraq, the most polarizing of all events. I will say only this: APW predicts a profound impact on popular opinion about the war on the day when the American death toll exceeds the 9/11 death toll. Whoever is in office then will try to spin it, but we all know that on some visceral level Iraq was the trade for 9/11, and that's the day it becomes a bad trade.

On a lighter note, this correspondent is going to be seeing the Allman Brothers in Atlanta 3 times this weekend, my first time seeing the boys south of the Mason-Dixon line. So look forward to some fine musical punditry. Oh, and two Jill Sobule shows comng up on home turf, bookending the Allmans, and still more NEW RECORDS!

Labels: The politics