I Guess I Should Be Glad to Still Have Innocence to Lose

We had the happy, rare occasion last night of a family movie-viewing, this of Mr. Clooney's "Ides of March."  I had no background on this and watched with comparative naivete.  I did learn from the sleeve that this fiction was grounded somehow in the experience of a Dean intern in the 2004 election.  As the movie played out, I found that tidbit increasingly disconcerting, probably foolishly trying to match on-screen to my spotty recollections.  My vague remembrance is that Dean strangely ended up under a bus as a result of a forthright natural reaction to his disappointing showing in Iowa.  I was a strong supporter of Dean (or, yes, anyone who might get us back on course as a non-imperial no-longer-warmongering country) at the time and was mystified and extremely disappointed with how the episode played out over the ensuing weeks.  I had already found the media to be despicable in their coverage of politics, but this was a new low.

That was especially true given how sadly John Kerry, the eventual Dem candidate, basically succumbed to the abhorrent swift-boating affair.