Dividing & Diverting

Dividing & Diverting

On this week’s edition of the mainstream media narrative, we find one of their more tried and true numbers: dividing and diverting. Last week, we had everybody and their grandmother going to confession; this time around, we have everyone dividing…and the mainstream media diverting us from the real news that matters most.

It began late last week. Extra! Extra!—everyone get diverted by it: “Barack did this MLK event here, while Hill had to save face and do her MLK event there.” “Hillary’s losing the black vote.” “Barack’s alienating whites.” “It’s all about race and gender.” “It’s all about Bill (we like u, but would you PUHLEEZE shut up!)” “Dems. are divided here; they are divided there; they are divided everywhere.”

Tensions grew more heated in Monday’s debate. Hillary and Barack were trying to channel their inner “Hit Me with Your Best Shot:” Barack showed Hillary that he was a “real tough cookie” by mentioning her time with Walmart; Hill put another “notch in her lipstick case” by claiming that Barack once represented a slum lord. So as Hill and Barry went into death-match mode with John Edwards as the only real victor, the mainstream media had set its story no sooner than the debate ended: the Dems. are d-i-v-i-d-e-d. And what’s worse, both the Clinton and Obama campaigns blindly followed in sync with one scud attack after another. The latest word is that yet another truce has been reached.

MEANWHILE, on the other side of the moon—they clearly don’t know what to do or whom to choose. Adrift with Huck Finn, Slick Mick, Nosferatu Giuliani and Rising McCain, the Republicans are far more divided than the Dems. And yet had the media focused on what the republican candidates didn’t do to commemorate MLK’s memory and/or to court minority voters, maybe we could’ve had a fair and balanced discussion on race. Had the media put more emphasis on the 935 lies the Bush administration told about Iraq rather than the half-truths and untruths of Billary and Barack, maybe we could’ve focused more on the war. Had the media greatly publicized the 720 million dollar a day cost of the Iraq war, maybe we could focus less on Hillary’s and Barack’s positions and more on Bush’s bad decisions. Had the media not put the dividing democrat narrative in the foreground, maybe more people wouldn’t have been diverted from the troubling news about the Gaza strip that stays in the background. Should the Democratic Party and its candidates become more focused on taking the White House, they will hopefully shift the focus from these inflated divisions in the party to the many divisions George W. Bush and his party have caused for the last seven years.