Lewd, Crude, Rude = star quality

Anybody see Obama on TV yesterday?



(If you didn't, your TV is probably broken.)



I saw him on Stephanopolous, and I wondered, when I woke up this morning, if anybody out there would zero in on my favorite part of the interview.



Happily, Politics Daily did:



http://tinyurl.com/ktughf



I, for one, am sick to death of rudeness being glorified in this society. The more obnoxious you are, the bigger your five minutes of fame. And it's not just the media shamelessly creating "news" stories out of morons flicking boogers (which is all it amounts to). Ad space in newspapers and magazines is their life's blood, and it's pretty hard to come by in this economy (and with new technology sending print media the way of the dinosaurs.) Back in the late 90's, when I worked at The Wall Street Journal, we used to turn advertisers away because there was no more room for their ads. Good luck gettin' those days back.



Also, computers have drastically reduced our collective attention spans, so if you're gonna grab someone's attention, you'd better make a strong impression with your 10-second sound bites. "Have a nice day," isn't gonna cut it - nobody cares if someone is being nice to somebody else. Yawn. But try screaming "You lie!" at the president or crap all over someone's acceptance speech on an awards show, and that spotlight is YOURS. And a bigger nobody out there watching your madness will think, "Hey, I can be an even bigger asshole and then, cool - I can be somebody too!"



I thought it took a lot of courage for Obama to speak the truth about this mind pollution to the very agents who are dumping the sewage into the river. There are intelligent people (like George Will or Donna Brazile) who understand that to disagree with someone's ideas or policies doesn't mean snarling at your opponent or throwing a 2-year-old's tantrum at the Kmart. I applaud pundits who can maintain their dignity while respectfully debating one another. But Joe Wilson is not of these. Racists parading around the streets with Obama witch-doctor signs are not of these. Ignorant screamers at town hall meetings - who seemingly have no attention span for facts, yet hang onto every word of right-wing hate talk comin' out of Fox and Limbaugh - are not of these.


And the media needs to stop making them fashionable. The house is burning down and, instead of figuring out - uh, quickly - what we all have to do to distribute the water, we're too busy watching the next 10-year-old who can pop off an arm fart.