Temple of Spectacle

Make no mistake, this year's most-crucial-ever presidential election is rapidly being exploded from within by media madness. Of course the mainstream media has been sticking its not-so-invisible-hand into the picture as far back as the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debate, when it was widely speculated that voters who saw the debate on television thought Kennedy won, whereas those who heard it on the radio felt that Nixon won. But just as the news cycle was settling in to analyze the meaning of the Obama spectacle concluding the DNC in Denver, Hurricane Gustav collided with ex-beauty queen and teenage pregnancy advocate Sarah Palin to create the mother of all spectacles. I mean, how could Fox News Channel and CNN (=Politics) have it any better? Men in red, white, and blue windbreakers with special flap-enhanced sleeves spattering on at the edge of the levies, trying to break through as star reporters and meanwhile, at the northern end of the Mississippi, echoes of Jamie Lynn Spears and tabloid dysfunction drowning out the essential warmongering and police-state repression that is the Republican Party as effectively as an air raid siren. Take shelter in front of your TV sets! The big show is about to begin! The Republicans, now under the stewardship of the Christian Right and Rove protege Steve Schmidt (and perhaps even Rove himself, despite Rupert Murdoch's pathological slobbering) have opened a Pandora's box of media echo-chamber that may well drown out their own message. 

              Meanwhile, we're left to consider the aftermath of the Obama-as-spectacle message? Is he just using the Super Bowl halftime show as a vehicle to end the cycle of media echo-chamber, the repetition of conventional wisdom that has strangled the individual and critical thinking, or is he part of it? Could it be that the spectacle of a black man as president changes everything, even the spectacle itself? Stay tuned.