I crawled into bed late that November night, stunned by what had happened.  Earlier that night, we had been a hockey game and although I cannot remember the outcome of the game, all in all it had been a good time.  It was election night.  They had flashed the election results up on the big screen late in the first period:  Bush leading by a hair.  My heart sank.  There was a cheer that went up from the crowd and I noted that it was substantial, but not monumental.  Late in the second period the results were again shown, this time with Gore in the lead.  Again, a cheer went up from the crowd, but instead of my spirits being buoyed by the change of events, I instead made a mental note of the decibel level of the crowd cheering - it was exactly the same as the cheer when Bush was in the lead.  I looked at my wife and said "this isn't a good sign."  It proved to be a correct premonition.  

Not a terribly important diary and nothing filled with increadible insight, but just hoping to stir up the discussion and get this word out there...

Although it may be a difficult concept for many to grasp, the single-most detrimental entity for public discourse and exchange of ideas is the television. Life on TV happens in sound-bites, which in turn causes deep, penetrating analysis of complex issues to be rendered moot by the catchy phraseology employed to great affect by the right-wingnuts.  24-hour News is rendering civil discourse useless -- it's all about who can shout louder and use more wedge terminology like "gay marriage" and "war against terrorism"