By now, we've all heard (DKos link) that the camp of John McSame is preparing to unleash a full-out Karl Rove-style character assault on Obama. That's the kind of slime they are, and there's nothing we can do about that but try to kick them out of power come November.
However, how complicit will the media be in this slimefest? And is there anything that we can do about those who aid and abet McSame and his disgusting Rovian tactics?
Like most of you, I am a relentless consumer of news. In fact, I'm already booking extra sessions with my therapist and psychiatrist for December, so I can come down from this latest political jag smoothly.
(OK, I'm kidding, but I probably should find one. Or two.)
However, I'm also a producer of news -- I've been a writer and editor, both on staff and freelance, for a number of publications for a number of years, and I can tell you that most of these news outlets (yes, even cable news) make an increasing percentage of their revenue off of web clicks.
I've written before about how I have myself boycotted a number of news sources. It's the least I can do (seriously) to keep revenue out of the hands of lazy and dishonest journos who are letting down the public trust. And although my diaries on the topic received some great comments and the sentiment is spreading, there is still a clicktrail ecosystem reaching out from DKos (and the other influential Left-leaning blogosphere) that, frankly speaking, end up propping up people with whom we disagree with web revenue (prime example -- the sometimes subtle, always dishonest right-wingnuttery of the Orwellian manipulators at Real Clear Politics). (Nate Silver @ 538 link -- give him clicks!)
I also am in favor of us rewarding journalists who do their jobs -- for instance, how cool has Campbell Brown been lately? (Write her here @ CNN) And Katie Couric? And the fine ladies of the View? How embarrassing must it be for the tire swingers like Andrea Mitchell and MC Rove posse members like David Gregory to see these fine women -- as Josh Marshall put it the other day -- delicately mauling Palin and Mcsame?)
But back to the point.
We now stand at the precipice of what is surely to be an unprecedented level of baseless and vile political attacks, engineered by the expert slimemongers in the McSame camp, and designed to take advantage of the propensity of the media to make the conflict -- rather than the truth -- the story.
McSame is out of ideas, money and nearly out of time to drag the country down with him into the pit. Therefore, I'm sure the slimemongers that run his campaign are counting on the media to do their job for them and distribute the slime videos far and wide, for free.
And so, we wait to see. Will the corporate media play the same role they played in 2004, where the "swiftboat" story gained a whole new head of steam through the echo chamber, and became the meta-narrative that sank the Kerry campaign?
And once the McCain campaign goes negative, will they again trot out the false justifications for endlessly looping Rev. Wright's out-of-context clips?
Or, even if they do that, will they be "fair and balanced" about it and trot out some of McSame/Pygmalion's own troubling associations -- many of which date to the last two years? Because that's news too, as Jed Lewison posted this earlier today (link to Huffington Post story)
If we wanted to play his game, we could go after McCain's fundraiser with G. Gordon Liddy who had advocated killing federal agents by shooting them in the face. We could make as a centerpiece of the campaign John McCain's vote against the seminal 1990s legislation that protected women's health clinics from anti-choice terrorists. We could talk about Sarah Palin's involvement with the pro-secessionist Alaskan Independence Party. We could savage her extremist witch-doctor religious freak show.
Like I said, I'm not expecting the media to do its job -- in fact, I think one of the first priorities of an Obama/Biden administration is to reregulate the corporate media, and break up the Murdoch/Turner hegemony.
So I'm not holding my breath, but I am withholding my web revenue from "news" sites that decide to play the same game from 2004. If I see another McSame ad posted by a lazy journo with no context like, "Here is the video everyone is talking about," I will immediately take that site out of my bookmarks, and tell my merry band of boycotters to do the same.
Will you do the same?