Up in the Air, Junior Birdmen!

I couldn't resist exorcising (sic) curiosity a little as to the Iowa caucus results tonight.  At the moment it appears a dead heat between Romney and Santorum, with Paul nipping at their heels.  I guess that is about as interesting an outcome as I could have hoped for.  Theoretically it might have been nice to have a very tight five-way tie or something, no one coming out happy and the scratching and yowling kicked up a few notches for our "entertainment."

But that would be pretty shallow stuff, on the level of People mag or the increasingly puerile "talk" shows.  What a joke this "journalism" has become.  Supposedly broke to the point of cutting back on almost all fronts, the primary outlets are yet squandering their resources in pursuit of salaciousness or something in Iowa.  Mr. Sirota, always a good read, can help with this:

This revealing piece in the trade publication Capital New York tells that sad story. The same journalism industry that pleads poverty to justify cutting big city newspapers’ editorial staffs, gutting coverage of state legislatures and city councils, and eliminating every other critical topic not related to Washington’s red-versus-blue fetish from news content — as writer Joe Romero recounts, this same industry has for months devoted a massive army to cover Iowa’s small contest.

In truth, that last sentence should have quotation marks around “reporters” and “cover.” As any perusal of the news (er, “news”) from Iowa shows, most of what this army produces is candidate stenography, a recounting of the latest poll numbers, gossip or naked speculation — that is, most of what it produces is valueless and neither “reporting” or “coverage” in any dictionary-definition sense of those terms.

You'd be well-advised to check out the article in full lest you take the whole Hawkeye State Barnum-and-Bailey too seriously.  The contrast with the consistently loathsome "reporting" on the exuberant and outside-the-box Occupy Wall Street activism is astounding.

For more on that, we turn to the esteemed Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone, under the caption "Iowa: The Meaningless Sideshow Begins."  Here again we have thoughtful writing, well worthy of however much you are able to invest in it.  I want to believe that many of the elite few of you who encounter this obscure blog, whether through your own devices or by way of my angry-bird-like missives, know by now that Mr. Taibbi does not do short and shallow.  There's larnin' to be found in an article like this, brief excerpt barely touching the surface:

The 2012 presidential race officially begins today with the caucuses in Iowa, and we all know what that means …
Nothing.

The race for the White House is normally an event suffused with drama, sucking eyeballs to the page all over the globe. Just as even the non-British were at least temporarily engaged by last year’s royal wedding, people all over the world are normally fascinated by the presidential race: both dramas arouse the popular imagination as real-life versions of universal children’s fairy tales.

Instead of a tale about which maiden gets to marry the handsome prince, the campaign is an epic story, complete with a gleaming white castle at the end, about the battle to succeed to the king’s throne. Since the presidency is the most powerful office in the world, the tale has appeal for people all over the planet, from jungles to Siberian villages.

It takes an awful lot to rob the presidential race of this elemental appeal. But this year’s race has lost that buzz. In fact, this 2012 race may be the most meaningless national election campaign we’ve ever had. If the presidential race normally captivates the public as a dramatic and angry ideological battle pitting one impassioned half of society against the other, this year’s race feels like something else entirely.

In the wake of the Tea Party, the Occupy movement, and a dozen or more episodes of real rebellion on the streets, in the legislatures of cities and towns, and in state and federal courthouses, this presidential race now feels like a banal bureaucratic sideshow to the real event – the real event being a looming confrontation between huge masses of disaffected citizens on both sides of the aisle, and a corrupt and increasingly ideologically bankrupt political establishment, represented in large part by the two parties dominating this race.
Let’s put it this way. What feels more like a real news story – Newt Gingrich calling Mitt Romney a liar for the ten millionth time, or this sizzling item that just hit the wires by way of the Montana Supreme Court:

HELENA — The Montana Supreme Court restored the state's century-old ban on direct spending by corporations on political candidates or committees in a ruling Friday that interest groups say bucks a high-profile U.S. Supreme Court decision granting political speech rights to corporations…
A group seeking to undo the Citizens United decision lauded the Montana high court, with its co-founder saying it was a "huge victory for democracy."
"With this ruling, the Montana Supreme Court now sets up the first test case for the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit its Citizens United decision, a decision which poses a direct and serious threat to our democracy," John Bonifaz, of Free Speech For People, said in a statement.

Now that is real politics -- real protest, real change. Exactly the opposite of the limp and sterile charade in Iowa. This caucus, let’s face it, marks the beginning of a long, rigidly-controlled, carefully choreographed process that is really designed to do two things: weed out dangerous minority opinions, and award power to the candidate who least offends the public while he goes about his primary job of energetically representing establishment interests.

If that sounds like a glib take on a free election system that allows the public to choose whichever candidate it likes best without any censorship or overt state interference, so be it. But the ugly reality, as Dylan Ratigan continually points out, is that the candidate who raises the most money wins an astonishing 94% of the time in America.

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Most likely, it’ll be Mitt Romney versus Barack Obama, meaning the voters’ choices in the midst of a massive global economic crisis brought on in large part by corruption in the financial services industry will be a private equity parasite who has been a lifelong champion of the Gordon Gekko Greed-is-Good ethos (Romney), versus a paper progressive who in 2008 took, by himself, more money from Wall Street than any two previous presidential candidates, and in the four years since has showered Wall Street with bailouts while failing to push even one successful corruption prosecution (Obama).

There are obvious, even significant differences between Obama and someone like Mitt Romney, particularly on social issues, but no matter how Obama markets himself this time around, a choice between these two will not in any way represent a choice between “change” and the status quo. This is a choice between two different versions of the status quo, and everyone knows it.

Indeed.

 

Please read the Whole Thing.