I have "frameworks of discourse" on the brain disease lately. I can't look at a news story without thinking, "how does this fit into a bigger picture?". So today, 24 hours after the MA legislature marathon on marriage, amendments and civil rights began and the day that two long-time lesbian and gay rights activists became the first same-sex couple to be officially married in the United States, Drudge breaks a story about John Kerry, presumptive Democratic nominee for President having a long-term affair with an intern.
The infrastructure of belief runs deep, ladies and gentlemen and the Republican idea-management system understands this. How might these stories be related?
I can't help but put them together: as individual press items they can be easy processed and understood on their own. But they also work in conjunction with one another (from opposite directions) to construct the message: Democrats don't value marriage, a position that helps to reinforce the "threat to marriage" theme they want gay marriage to become.
I don't doubt that the Kerry intern story could hurt Kerry the candidate, or that its being approached that way by the Republican spin handlers. But at the same time it also helps to establish this more latent idea, that I guarantee you will be picked up later and used, because people will "feel" in their bones the propaganda line the Republicans will be feeding throughout the campaign: Dems indifferent to marriage.
Where ever they go, the ground is prepared for the next place they want to the nation to be. A real infrastructure.