Web Letters: The Times, They Have A-Changed

I also greatly admired Obama's speech and was also thunderstruck by David Broder's editorial. And I had to admire Pat Buchanan for his honest enthusiasm about the speech. If only more conservatives were so frank. To find out how Fox was reacting, I took a quick look, just in time to hear Bill Kristol reluctantly admitting the speech was "impressive." I thought he looked rather ashen and taken aback. Obama's talents are so obvious that I can only suspect that his critics are jealous.

As is evident from the web letters posted in response to this article, too many people mistake cynicism for intelligence, particularly in politics. They remind me of my landlady who told me, with great self-satisfaction, of her reaction to an exhibition of modern art: "Who are they trying to fool?" She didn't even seem to know that her reaction itself was a cliché.

Alterman's remarks about the attention paid to hardcore Hillary supporters made me think of a Tom Tomorrow cartoon from the era of the first Gulf War, after a huge antiwar demonstration in the Bay Area. One local TV station gave as much attention to a few prowar bikers (as in Hell's Angels) in Contra Costa County as they did to thousands of people marching down Market Street.

Carol V. Hamilton

Pittsburgh, PA

Yes, blame the media. Every day Barack Obama has to stand in front of microphones to respond to the most blatant untruths that I have ever seen in a campaign. Reporters of the past would challenge the liars and their lies.

I can remember a time when being an investigative reporter meant actually investigating something. It was hard work and even dangerous to dig and uncover a story like Watergate, etc. Now all you have to do is got to Youtube and search.

Albert Johnson

Kirkwood, MO

Brain-dead media? What about the brain-dead public? McCain is now ahead of Obama in the national polls, despite a seemingly collective, albeit subconscious, effort by the media to give Obama a much-deserved edge. We've all read the Washington Post's silly little apology for dedicating more words to an obviously more dynamic and interesting cantidate.

The frustration many of us feel when the latest polls show McCain ahead is worse than maddening. We know that it's more than the media. One can almost smell the covert racism, homophobia, blood lust, imperialistic ignorance and gullibility of our public, and it feels as if we've been unwittingly sucked into some alternate universe.

It is no longer appropriate to blame the media for squandering the efforts of the left. It's almost like war now. It really seems that way. If our public is deranged enough to elect McCain, then where does that leave us? It's not like Obama is the answer to all our prayers. Remember that electing Obama would only show that Americans have taken just a tiny step in the right direction, when it might already be too late.

Josh Hiken

San Francisco, CA

Since I read Alterman with some respect for his learning and analytical insight, it is distressing, so soon after sympathies evinced from a monstrously well-staged show, the Dem convention, to see a generic seconding of such an MSM event, if I may expand the scope of MSM as an exploiter of emotions, promulgating unreasoned, seemingly poignant aperçus.

The two events have an egregiously high demagogic character--one character, and two events. So, much as we like the litany, so opportunistically and glibly spoken by the Dems--then unwitting of the same kind of fatuities that would bounce backwards, the next week--it would be horrifying to be misled into believing, now, that the Dems' oratories were more than vain jactation, until some actions and events prove them-- in some degree--reliable or honest.

See the CounterPunch article "The Obama Poll Drop (It's the Issues, Stupid)", by Michael Colby. We're faced with the frightful prospect of a contemptible selling-out--which I'd expected Obama to resist at least through one term in office (I believe Clinton was way practiced in the anti-Democratic pol-cunning, through lived decades in the den).

What do we got left, at this late moment? Who might we expect to steer against the ruthless statistical gaming that all these clowns are running against us, the "electorate"?

michael hispanosuiza

Del Rio, TX

I actually found the speach boring, not thrilling, as indeed he did deliver the same as previous Democrats. When he campaigned on change, unity and fresh ideals, I thought maybe, just maybe, he is different than the standard politician. What a letdown!

Gene Guffey

Gebüg, Germany

I agree Broder has been "brain dead" for at least a decade. I watched a character named Cliff Kincaid on C Span spout the same kind of rhetoric and listened to the people calling in. These idiots really have a following. Both Broder and Kincaid sound like they have just stepped out of La Grotte de Lascau. There must be a missing link somewhere.

JAMES PINETTE

Caribou, ME