Voting Was Torture inFort Lauderdale, Florida

Voting was torture. It took three hours. The Florida day was dank and cool. I was close to tears by the time I reached the polling booths, from the pain in my hip and the arthritis in my neck and shoulders.

I finished the last three-quarters of a trashy werewolf novel and had time to knock off a few pages in an internet marketing book I am slowly reading.

A man started standing next to me as I read. He didn’t seem to have been there before. I whisperingly asked the older woman behind me if he’d always been there. She said no. As he inched in front of me, I softly said, “Sir, I was wondering where you came from. Because I’m right behind him (I gestured to a man with a baby in carriage), and she’s right behind me.”

“I was always here,” he said.

The elders in line started shaking their heads at this bald-faced lie. “No, you were back there,” several gestured. He didn’t fall back, but waited where he had been standing as we moved forward. I expect he’d try to find another unaware person – as he must have thought I was buried in my book – or a more timid soul than I who would not challenge him. My hip simply hurt too much after two hours in line to put up with a young buttinsky.

Just as we reached the door into the voting room – a cafeteria in this small development of 10 condominium apartment buildings that served three districts – a busload of handicapped elders came in. They were given chairs and ushered into line before us. I mentioned that I was in severe pain, even though I wasn’t handicapped. People even older than I who had been standing near me also started to grumble. the woman behind me insisted that she go to the check-in ahead of two people who were pushed in front of her. She was 70, at least.

No one wants to be unkind to the handicapped, but after two and a half hours on our feet, our own aches and pains were screaming for attention.

I will never again vote at a polling place. Never, never, never. Absentee ballots are inconvenient, because often they are due before I have all the information I need about the local propositions and local candidates. Nonetheless, when a 19^th century voting system is in place, absentee ballot is how I shall have to do it.

Empty Mall Contradicts McCain's Assurance of Sound Economic Fundamentals

If John McCain really believes America's underlying economy is fundamentally sound, he is not living on the same planet as I am. I invite him to visit the strikingly empty Boynton Beach mall – a once bustling retail center centrally located in an area of average families and retirees.

Boynton Beach is by no means a tourist mecca on the order of Daytona, Fort Lauderdale, or the Keys islands. Sandwiched between the old wealth of Palm Beach and the nouveau riche of Boca Raton, Boynton Beach is an area of mostly newer and more affordable single family homes, over-55 duplex villas, condominium apartment and mobile home complexes.

Boynton Beach Mall has grown in size since the last time I was there, circa 2004 when I moved from Palm Beach to Broward county. It has a new Muvico multiplex, a grand Starbucks, and a TooJays Delicatessen – a favorite in these parts. I was shocked to find the mall all but empty on Wednesday at 1 p.m., as these photos show.

Is this sad? This is not an out-of-the-way, dilapidated strip mall. It is a major commercial retail center that serves a large, densely populated middle-class citizenry.

Another customer at Ritz Camera store said he’d gone to Delray Beach on Sunday where Atlantic Avenue’s many restaurants attract Sunday brunchers. “The roads were empty, and I had no trouble at all finding a parking place,” he said. Usually, one has to drive around to find a spot.

I grumbled that my 403(b)s have lost so much value that I may never be able to retire. “Don’t even go there,” he said. “I’ve lost so much that I will never gain it back in the remainder of my lifetime.” Of course, the economic Big Boys have been playing fast-and-loose with our retirement monies, investing in FreddieMac and SallieMae (according to NPS's Marketplace, even when it appeared these massive housing market lenders were in trouble). We were promised that we would be oh-so-much better off when we didn’t have to rely on fixed income retirement plans. Hahaha.

Earth to McCain: The economic fundamentals are not good for us who cannot afford $313,000 designer ensembles.

Footnote: I stopped by a local Salvation Army before going home. It was Wednesday Madness, with half-off on everything. The parking lot was full, and the store was mobbed. There were lines at the register, even though the store's air-conditioning was out. That is a big deal here in South Florida, when outdoor temperatures are in the high 80s and inside can top the 90s. But we cannot eat T-shirts.

Palin's Speech Is Not Enough

Gov. Sarah Palin gave a rousing, smart-mouthed speech last night as she accepted the Republican vice-presidential nomination in St. Paul. Some people don’t like sarcasm. I do.

That, plus the accolades to John McCain as a national hero, was almost enough to make me switch teams. But not quite. In the end, an election is a question of values, not gonads or hormones. I do not share those of the Republican candidates for the nation’s highest offices, Sen. John McCain and Palin.

Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look

So Shakespeare characterized one of Julius Caesar's assassins in his play of that name. The line, describing a friend tuned traitor, has become a descriptor of ambition. I do not, of course, literally see Senator Barack Obama as murderous or traitorous. Yet, when I see this slim young fellow of somewhat meagre national political credentials, the renowned playwright's words come to my mind.

I remain disappointed, and more so by the day, in the Democratic nomination of Barack Obama. Had he served his full Congressional term – even, in a worst case scenario, waiting out eight years of a Hillary Clinton presidency – he could have run with unassailable credentials of experience.

If he loses, it will be because of his ambition to pluck the golden apple from the tree before he was ripe.

Racism is Color Blind on CNN's Crossfire

A black commentator tried to convince panelists of the subtle racism in John McCain’s ad that juxtaposes images of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears ad with that of Barack Obama at a large rally. The juxtapositions are intended to cast doubt on Obama’s experience to be president. They also create subtle impressions of the classic American fear of black men harming defenseless white women.

Mike Barnicle, filling in for Chris Matthews on Crossfire, and Michele Bernard, expressed shock that the black commentator could say such a thing. “I don’t see it,” one panelist said.

The black commentator was unable to express the notion as accurately as he might have. Nor did he bring up the cognitive tests we now have about people group and assign meaning to images that reveal subtle racism.

The racism in the ad exists at a subliminal level. Like the panelists on Crossfire, people find the idea unbelievable when it is explained as conscious processing. None of us like to admit to these hidden pockets of racism deep within our unconscious. We cannot see it, as the panelist said; it is an unpleasant look at oneself.

National Political Pundits Find No Racism in McCain's Overtly Racist Ad

Maybe I'm out in the woods on this one. I just heard a pretty young African-American commentator on CNN, Michelle Bernard, proclaim that there's no racism in McCain's new political ad.

The ad, in case you've been stranded at sea for the past 24 hours, flashes photos of very blond, beautiful and young airhead Paris Hilton, as well as an image of almost as blond and beautiful, equally young, and narcotically disturbed Britney Spears. These are followed by images of a smiling Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama greeting crowds of believers. The ad questions whether Obama is qualified to lead. John McCain's face appears at the end of the ad.

The imputation, in case you're brain dead from your ordeal at sea, is that Obama is as intellectually challenged as two women who are famous for being famous.

Obama has responded to this and other ads by suggesting he is under attack because he doesn't look like the other faces on our dollar bills.

Aside from the fact that it's silly to devote one's ad to images of a smiling opponent being worshipped by stadium crowds, this ad had a decidedly racial undertone. Let's pan past those images again: Two young dumb blond white girls, clearly needing protection, sometimes from themselves. A powerful black man surrounded by a large and potentially mob. All the ad needs is an over voice. I suggest the robot from the 1960s TV series, Lost in Space (an intergalactic version of the Swiss Family Robinson story), intoning,"Danger Will Robinson. Danger, danger."

Michelle Bernard's position suggests that there are no lingering fears of black men, no fears of unreasoning mobs, and no desire to circle the wagons to protect those beautiful women-children. Huh. I wonder why six times more black men are in prison than white guys, per 100,000, as reported by the U.S. Department of Justice.

If you have doubts about the power of subconscious imagery of this sort, check out today's story on National Public Radio. It's about psychological tests that help us identify our hidden, subconscious biases by the cognitive connections we make when shown photos. From there, you can sample some of these self-quizzes online.

To slide off-topic a wee bit, for a daily dose of intelligent visual deconstruction, check out No Caption Needed. This blog is written by John Hariman and John Louis Lucaites, two communication professors who prove the academy is not a bastion of hopeless eggheads who can't write a readable paragraph.

In summary, the McCain ad is racist. It uses subtle visual images to exploit deeply held racial prejudices. Political commentators who deny this reinforce the fantasy that voters are making a decision to vote for McCain for good reasons. Encouraging people to deny our biases while simultaneously making decisions on their basis is the essence of exploiting people's worst selves. Not only McCain, but our television commentators, should be ashamed.

FLORIDA PRIMARY DATE WAS ANOTHER REPUBLICAN DIRTY TRICK

One thing I do not hear Hillary Clinton or any commentator saying is that REPUBLICAN LEGISLATURE IN FLORIDA is responsible for disenfranchising us Democrats in our primary.

It was the REPUBLICAN LEGISLATURE that set the primary date so that it broke Democratic Party rules. This is just another dirty trick by Republicans. It is making my blood boil that no one -- NO ONE -- has noticed this.

Sexism, Racism, Ageism: America's Dirty Secrets Are Projected Into the Presidential Contest

The competition between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, and the candidacy of John McCain under the Republican Party banner, is a screen onto which the nation’s deepest and most secret biases are cast. Here are a few of these psychological telltales that are circulating this week.

SEXISM. Hillary Clinton plays the “woman card” too often when she says, “The boys are coming after me again” because she has refused to concede the close race. Even a token African-American feminist said last night on Chris Matthews’ Crossfire (MSNBC) that her organization encourages women not to make gender an issue.

But why not, dear girl? Women of Clinton’s generation – and mine – fought and have born the weight of many discriminatory indignities so that you can sit on Chris Matthews’ show and intone against the gender card. How would you like it, dear lady, if Senator Obama was asked to leave the race because he can’t win anyway? It would be called racial discrimination, as indeed almost every observation about his lack of experience or other defects is contextualized. And that brings us to the next projection.

RACISM. It’s always about race when Barack Obama is criticized. Like a teenager at his first strip club and fascinated by the display of pulchritude, TV’s political pundits can’t get their eyes off Obama’s brownness. He is as white as he is black. But the nation’s guilt from the history of slavery is projected onto his candidacy, a country’s dirty secret. The lingering white separatist and supremacist tensions that are predicted to sway male voters, especially in some sections of the country.

AGEISM. McCain is old, doddering, could die in office, and is generally unfit for office due his age, according to political commentors who shamelessly spout ageist comments. Extreme ageism is a comedy joke for David Letterman, John Stewart on The Daily Show, and Bill Mahar on Real Time. Mhar was called on his ageism last night by Robert Reich, former secretary of labor for President Bill Clinton. Ageism is the last ism that many people wholeheartedly believe is all right “because I’m just making fun of my older self,” as one of my students expressed it.

So there we have it: three great isms – sexism, racism, and ageism – playing out across our TV screens as we engage in the quadrennial blood sport of electing a president. Our deepest dirty secrets are now played out on our television sets, the ruminations of a nation’s hearts and minds moderated by stand-up comics and corporate point men posing as political commentators.

In future posts, I will use archetype analysis to discuss other psychological patterns evident in this contest.

Clinton Must Concede for Democratic Party Unity

I started writing about the competition for the Democratic Party campaign nomination when Ted and Caroline Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama. That sealed the fate of Hillary Clinton, I was sure.

Now, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson – former appointee of President Bill Clinton who putatively owes them political fealty – has endorsed Obama. Pundits now wonder what effect this may have on the Hispanic vote, a stronghold of Clinton support.

Neither candidate can win enough delegates in primary contents to earn the Democratic Party nomination, according to news reporters. Clinton, trailing Obama in the popular vote, cannot catch up and can only get the nomination if the super-delegates – party office-holders and appointees who represent influential voting blocs – back Hillary. Overturning the popular vote would, however, create party dissent that would undermine chances of victory against Republican Party putative nominee, John McCain.

Even though I prefer Hillary Clinton because she is the more experienced candidate and, as usual, I see a highly competent female overlooked in favor of a male, I concede:

Hillary Dillary Dock

Time’s run out the clock.

It’s time to go,

To leave the show,

Concede Obama is a lock.

Democratic Presidential Candidates Sound like Kids Squabbling in the Backseat of the Car

“Mom, he hit me.”
“She called me a name first.”
“He’s lying. I didn’t say that.”
“I didn’t do nothing. Leave me alone.”

First, there was Hillary Clinton accusing the press of ganging up on her in the Ohio debate. Her reference to a Saturday Night Live skit fell flat.

Then, a member of Barack Obama’s campaign was fired for calling Clinton a “monster.”

Next, feminist party venerable Geraldine Ferrara, the first woman to run for vice president of the United States as a major party candidate on the Mondale ticket in 1984, claims that Obama has only received recognition because he’s black, not in spite of it.

In the wake of this media tempest, Ferrara resigns from Clinton’s fundraising committee, amidst charges that she was racist. Meanwhile, black males accuse Clinton’s “Is your family safe at 3 a.m.?” ad of playing on ancient racist fears of black men threatening the safety and security of sleeping white women and their children, shades of the Ku Klux Klan.

As the cherry on top, the media unearth videotapes of Obama’s pastor and, in the senator’s own words spiritual mentor, giving a black separatist sermon accusing the U.S. of having provoked the 911 attack by its foreign policies. This is interpreted as blaming the victims by the press. The minister’s words damning America are as unseemly for a potential future president, so a new cycle of renunciation-denunciation is in effect.

Meanwhile, John McCain is busy solidifying his image with the Republican Party and abroad.

The Democratic Party, famous for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, is well on its way. Chris Matthews, on last night’s Crossfire, said the back-and-forth over whose surrogate campaign spokesperson said what was starting to sound like the Inquisition. “Do you recant fully and completely?” sounds too much like a page out of old playbooks that required public denunciation for crimes real and imagined.

If Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama don’t stop that fighting, the country is liable to turn this car around and let your father – John McCain – give you a good licking. I’ve already got the inside word from a scion of a famous political family telling me that John McCain “will be hard to beat.”

The Obama Juggernaut

The Obama juggernaut, aided by pack journalism, moves forward, its momentum seeming unstoppable. According to the MSN Encarta Dictionary, “It used to be said, apocryphally, that worshipers of Krishna threw themselves under the wheels of the Juggernaut wagon in an access of religious ecstasy, so juggernaut came to be used metaphorically in English for an irresistible crushing force.”

Last week, I predicted that Senator Barack Obama will win the general election. Then, overwhelmed by the bandwagon effect of his campaign, I flew away from mob-think to endorse Hillary Clinton. I do not believe that she will win the nomination, but she is the thinking-woman’s candidate.

Obama is now cast by the media as the magician, the one who will bring change out of hope, or perhaps I should write: change out of hype.

According to Eclectic Tarot, the Magician of the Tarot “is someone with a magnetic personality, someone who can convince people of almost anything. For better or worse, his words are magic."

The Senator fits the image of “a regal figure, powerful, graceful, and confident - able to make things happen, and even move mountains. The Magician Tarot card meaning deals with the ability to utilize every resource we have available to us,” according to Tarot Teachings.

I see the triumph of surface over substance, one that is challenging to articulate because to express the idea immediately is transformed into a statement of racial prejudice.

Obama is charming, a word with ancient roots that means to put observers under a spell. But in the end, magic is merely an illusory feat that appears to be supernatural only to naïve observers (Princeton wordnet).

Last night, a TV pundit noted that Nikita Kruschev ran rings around Jack Kennedy’s naïve diplomacy, and our naïve – albeit charismatic – president led us to the edge of nuclear confrontation during the Cuban missile crisis as the wily Russian leader demonstrated brinksmanship.

It’s not out of the question, either, that Obama will be assassinated, like JFK. Racial hatred runs deep in some portions of the U.S. The heirs of the Ku Klux Klan, with their ignorant theory of mud people, will not shy from violence to halt what they will see as a great degradation. So all these comparisons of Obama with Kennedy may turn out more parallel than the Senator’s supporters’ desire.

As president, Obama will not achieve much, and a Republican will be back in the White House four years later.

Hillary for President: Obama Is All Surface, Little Substance

The more my fellow Americans jump on the Barack Obama bandwagon, the greater grows my respect for Hillary Clinton and my desire to see a woman in the White House.

“Hope and change, change and hope,” I hear in endless sound loops of Obama rallies. I see the slogan posters bobbing up and down, and I feel as if I’m living in an Orwellian nightmare. What kind of change, exactly?

The more Obama talks, the more he sounds like an intellectual lightweight. Hillary, as her political fortunes sag anew in the Chesapeake primaries last night, emerges as a polished leader down in Texas. She has indeed found her voice, firing up Hispanic voters, in a hoarse voice. The political pundits, white men with their overfed bellies, are pronouncing her campaign all but dead, but this 60-year-old woman is out there facing down the naysayers -- again -- with a smile on her face.Now, that's bravery.

Damozel at The Moderate Voice writes:

“Meanwhile, those of us who have supported Hillary have done so for exactly the reasons that Obama’s fan base derides her. She is tough, a bit battered by hard experience, hardened to being disliked, a little soiled by her mistakes, persistent, politically astute, intellectually flexible, wary, wiley, and all the things that her critics take for insults but which are really the constituents of the ability to make realistic judgments and politic (as opposed to popular) decisions.“

Hillary is called hard-edged because the patriarchy makes feminine success, by definition, hard-edged. It just isn’t womanly to be that doggone accomplished. It just isn't womanly to beat the boys at their own games. Of course, she is found wanting in the womanly arts department. That, my friends, is patriarchy at work.

The criticism is being raised that it isn’t good for democracy for the presidency to be passed between two dynasties – Bush and Clinton. Oddly, the danger of dynasties didn’t come up when Son-of-a-Bush was anointed by the Supreme Court. What I remember is the conservatives gloating that Jeb Bush would be next up to bat, wishing on America a 24-year reign of narrow-minded, right wing cultural restriction and unfettered business exploitation of working people. Dynasty was just fine with everyone back then.

As for Obama’s vaunted charisma, Damozel is spot-on about that, too:

“True, Hillary doesn’t have Obama’s much-touted ‘charisma.’ I don’t care. I distrust charisma. It’s an aura, a glamour, a trick of the light, too often taken for the outward and visible sign for an inner and invisible grace. Those who compare his candidacy, apparently unconscious of the irony, with JFK’s and Reagan’s have got it exactly right.”

If charisma was all it takes to be a good president, Mick Jagger should have been elected long ago.

Bruce Miroff debunks the Kennedy mythology at The History News Network . As it turns out, Kennedy wasn't much better than Obama at getting down to particulars of policy and governance. Miroff writes:

"John F. Kennedy evoked an era of public service and participation in the most famous line from his Inaugural Address, but when asked to supply specifics to go with the soaring rhetoric, apart from the Peace Corps he was reduced to suggesting such public sacrifices as a curb upon expense accounts and an acceptance of higher postal rates. The later image of "Camelot" was unwittingly apt in capturing the royalist air of the Kennedy regime."

Senator Clinton is, after all, heir to the greatest policy-wonk presidency of contemporary times. She is better prepared on every issue than Obama, because she is a woman and she has to be. She has done the research. She has been working to extend health care to all Americans since her husband’s administration. She is still fighting.

Senator Clinton, with her clear complexion and tireless campaigning, reminds me of a warrior mother, an ancient goddess from matriarchal times, who embodies both strength and protection. What is Obama, one of the newest members of the Senate with just two years under his belt, but just another pretty new face?

He needs seasoning, and what a great word that is. He needs to experience the waxing and waning of the political seasons and the seasons of life before he is prepared to lead our nation in these perilous times. The movement of the electorate toward Obama is yet another illustration of the U.S. population’s preference for surfaces over substances: pretty words, beloved, but what lies beneath?

At 46, Obama can use eight years productively to learn the arts of governance and the wisdom of the years. If elected, his will be one of least effective presidencies ever. He may delight crowds with his so-called rock-star charisma at least for a while, but it is Hillary who has proven that she has the intelligence, the political resiliency, the wit and the guts to clean up the Bush mess.

Hillary vs. The Patriarchy by Erica Jong

In my last entry, I went out on a limb and predicted that Barack Obama will win the Democratic Party presidential nomination. I also expressed my own preference for Hillary Clinton for president.

Erica Jong, writer and seer for women of my generation, has expressed my feelings so much more clearly than I have in an article for the Washington Post,Hillary vs. The Patriarchy.

So long as troglodytes such as Bill Kristol can get away with saying, “White women are a problem. We all know that,” women are still – as John Lennon said so long ago – “the niggers of the world.” Bill Kristol would be excoriated for referring to African-Americans as “a problem,” but it’s just fine to say it about white women.

Ronni Bennett, in her always informative Times Goes By blog, takes the press to task to reducing complex issue debates to race and gender. She is right, of course. I left newspaper journalism a long time ago because it had devolved into idiocy of which I wanted no further part.

As long as journalists distract Americans with simplistic views and the entertainments of blood and circuses on television, democracy will be a sham of one candidate beholden to corporations battling like a gladiator another just as beholden to corporate interests.

Obama most probably will win because it is easier for males to see another man in the White House, even if he is “half-black,” than it is to see a female running the show. If Hillary doesn’t win the nomination and the election, I do not think that another woman will have as good a shot at it during my lifetime.

Why Barack Obama Will Win the General Election in November 2008

One of the first predictions I heard about the race between Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton for the Democratic Party presidential nomination said that it would be easier for Obama to get the nod. A National Public Radio pundit said that would be easier for white men to envision another man in the office than a woman.

The glass ceiling is made of super-strength safety glass or Plexiglas.

As I watched the Lion of Judah Senator Ted Kennedy, last living brother of the dead president, anoint Obama, I felt as if I was watching a scene from the Godfather. Caroline Kennedy, the last living member of JFK’s immediate family, bestowed the mantle of her dead feather’s inspiring leadership on the youthful African-American.

Eviscerally, my gut claimed this is the Kiss of Death for Hillary.

Hillary, in turn, has trotted out the ghost of RFK in the form of his son to affirm a close friendship with iconic California farm workers’ labor leader Cesar Chavez. This courts the Hispanic vote. As in Hamlet with Banquo's spirit roaming the castle, there are ghosts upon the battlements in this race.

During the Thursday night Democratic debate in a star-studded Hollywood auditorium, Barack and Hillary made nice like a family reunion. Reduced to a contest of titans with the withdrawal of John Edwards from the race, both eulogized him as if he were dead. Politically speaking, he is for the time being. MSNBC's Chris Matthews commented that Edwards would make a terrific Secretary of Labor, the first strong man in that position for decades, and a chance to revive this country’s moribund labor movement. Matthews has that spot-on. My Weekly Reader taught us elementary school students about the Big Three in American politics – Big Business, Big Government, and Big Labor. Like the faded star in Sunset Boulevard, labor now cracks, “I’m still big. It’s politics that’s gotten small.”

Politically active star Susan Sarandan reportedly said, “America is ready for a woman president, but maybe not this woman.” There are too many liabilities to a Clinton presidency.

First, there is a yukkiness to passing the leadership of the country – a putative democracy – between two families, Bush to Clinton to Bush to Clinton, should Hillary win..

Second, there is the record of sexual peccadilloes of her husband, our former president, Bill Clinton, and other scandals that erupted during the Clinton presidency.

Third, Hillary polarizes voters. I suspect that any assertive female is always polarizing in a sexist society. Females have such limited choices – be sweet and a doormat or tough and a bitch. A man can be tough-minded and likeable.

I find it hard to believe that any Republican can win the general election at this juncture in history. Bush's mistakes have poisoned the country. But then, I sat unemployed one dank November in Baltimore listening to coverage of Regan’s election in 1980. I couldn’t believe that Americans would elect an actor to be president. I ran out to the polls just before closing, but my puny vote didn’t help.

Reagan turned out to be one of our most beloved presidents, but not by me. I was shocked anew when he fired all the air traffic controllers for going on strike in 1981. After all, Reagan had been president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). That action played a huge role in diminishing the power of employed people to get their fair share of the economic pie, safe work environments, and health benefits, and that action reverberates to this day.

I predict Obama’s victory cautiously. Predictions are risky in a tight contest such as this one. Even though I might like a woman to hold the office, I think the markers say Obama and that could be better for the country. So I’m all in.

Bad Journalism as Usual: Primaries, Caucuses and Choosing a President in the USA

Pack journalism predominates in television coverage of the Democratic and Republican processes for choosing presidential candidates to run for the country’s top office this fall. Pack journalism starts with always referring to these processes as races, contests, and competitions – the first mystification.

So many academic media analysts have commented on the harmful effects of framing electoral politics using metaphors of war and sports that it seems redundant to mention it. Yet, our numbskull journalists seem not to have read a single serious book about the subject they cover.

The latest pronouncement circulating is that the Republican Party is in disarray because no single, clear winner has emerged after only three decision-making events – a caucus in Iowa, a primary election in New Hampshire, an upcoming caucus in Nevada this weekend with South Carolina primaries to follow. “Republicans want leaders,” Chris Matthews has solemnly decided on NBC, diagnosing a sociological mindset for half a nation without a single social science instrument.

Is it true the Republican Party is in disarray, because the multiplicity of U.S. sentiments is being expressed in these early political processes? I doubt it. The purpose of allowing all of the 52 states to offer their input is to arrive at the decision of party candidates by popular vote this summer – not by polling and pundit prediction based on a few states in January.

Meanwhile, every awkward statement gets blown up out of proportion to its importance, instead of useful comparison of candidates’ positions on heath care, Social Security, financial impetus packages for an economy sliding into decline, and complicated issues related to foreign policy, such as the rise of China and India as competitors in world markets.

Former President Bill Clinton clumsily remarks that candidate Barack Obama’s statements about his consistent opposition to the Iraq War are a fairy tale, and the press convolutes this into a statement that the first credible black candidate’s campaign is a fairy tale. Former Arkansas GovernorMike Huckabee supports South Carolina’s display of a confederate states’ flag, while Senator John McCain decries it. Our feeble journalists run the bytes over and over again: This carnival sideshow is the real news for them.

Few of my students want to read or learn about anything that can’t be Googled and read in four minutes, but most want to be on television. It’s no wonder that I live in a know-nothing society. Journalists focus on the wrong things when covering political processes, and democracy suffers.