Watched the morning news as I was getting ready for work today. Howard Dean is now the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Not really a surprise there, as that seems to have been the foregone conclusion for some time.
What is odd to me is the media talks about what a comeback this was from the debacle of his screechy scream given during his presidential campaign. The TV this morning replayed the screech in full glory, with commentary on how remarkable it was the Dean was able to overcome this tragedy of strategy. WTF?
CNN.com was a little less dramatic:
While avoiding the heated, emotional style of his infamous “scream” speech that contributed to his loss of the presidential nomination…..
[full article @ cnn.com]
So it was the scream that did us in and left us with Bush on one side and Kerry on the other. The scream? I can/can’t believe this can be reported as casual observance without mass reaction along the lines of “Did we, as the public at large, really cause/allow the dimissal of a viable candidate on the grounds of an unfortunate screech delivered during campaigning?”
Oh, Inverted World….
It’s possible, but doubtful. Kerry had already won Iowa at that point, I think, and he was on his way. He was acting like a buffoon when he let out that squeal. Everything in the media is an over-reaction these days. There are 100 news channels and 15 trillion web sites and all of them are trying to create as much drama and controversy as possible. “Remember the Maine!” Yellow journalism is still alive and well.
I saw something the other day about how major news networks are doing marketin surveys and are presenting news based on which age group is most likley to be watching their high-dollar ads. I think age 19-25 is one of the big wheelhouses, so they get high-dollar ads from a bunch of companies and they tailor the news they decide to broadcast to fit what that age group might like. That doesn’t even consider the whole right-wing/left-wing factions where, for example, Fox is a known right-wing stronghold and they tailor their news to make Republicans look favorable and in return they get a lot of cash flow from big GOP supporters. Of course Bush himself has now been caught twice basically paying people off to appear on talk shows and such and make favorable comments about his policy, and no one seems to care. It’s impossible to know the truth anymore since there’s so much vested interest everywhere. Considering the trade deficit and other ill-thought economic and foreign policies, soon we’ll be just another colony in the Chinese Empire anyway.
If for some reason we avoid that fate, I think Dean is a great choice to head the DNP. I wasn’t sold on him as a President myself, but I think he brings good energy to the table and won’t just sit around and prop up a dud like John Kerry. Do you realize that Bill Clinton is the only Democrat to win the White House since 1976? Maybe Dean can make Americans realize that those years were by far the most prosperous the country has seen in the past 25 years and that there just might be a correlation. At least he might put up a more compelling candidate. It shouldn’t be too hard to conclude that these New England stiffs don’t have mass national appeal. A chair could have run against Bush and gotten 45% of the popular vote.